FYI Miami: October 10, 2024

Below are some of the FYIs in this week’s edition. The entire content of this week’s FYIs and Insider sections is available by subscription only. To subscribe click here.

HIGH PRICE, HIGH VACANCY: Miami-Dade’s priciest office space also has its highest office vacancy rate, new figures from the Colliers brokerage show. In the third quarter Brickell landlords were asking the county’s highest average rent rates, $87.62 per square foot, but also had the highest vacancy percentage, 17.9%. Miami Beach had the county’s highest average asking rent for premium Class A office space, but also had the county’s third-highest vacancy rate of Class A space, 23.2%. The Brickell area had the second-highest asking rate for Class A space but had a 22.2% vacancy in that category. Wynwood, with an $80.04 asking rate for Class A space, had the county’s highest vacancy rate for class A space at 24.7%. South Dade and West Miami, which have minimal Class A space, had no vacancies at all, and Coral Way had only a 1.7% vacancy rate. The lowest Class A vacancy rate among the larger districts was in Kendall, which had an average $43.56 asking rate.

INDUSTRIAL VACANCIES GROW: Miami-Dade had a 5.2% vacancy in its industrial space at the end of September, the most since before the pandemic, according to figures from the Colliers brokerage. Rents of wholesale space, which had almost doubled in four years since the outset of the pandemic, have also eased slightly each quarter from peaking at the end of last year and now average $16.42 per square foot, figures from Colliers show. Rents for manufacturing space, which had more than doubled in the four-year span, have also backed off by $3.50 per square foot to average $14.92. Warehouse and distribution asking rent rates are highest in South Dade at $19.97 per square foot and lowest, $15.08, in Northeast Dade. Manufacturing space rents are highest in Miami Airport West at $18 per square foot, lowest in South Dade at $11.77. Flex space rents are highest in Miami Airport East, $31.49, and lowest in Northeast Dade, $28.22.

TRANSIT SCHEDULING SCHEDULE: Finetuning of Miami-Dade’s bus, rail and on-demand transit scheduling via better-targeted software must wait two more years, as county commissioners last week approved two more years of the old system for $660,000 while the transit department validates effectiveness of new software, which could take up to a year. The current contract provides web-based software “to rapidly analyze and evaluate transit concepts, evaluate transit planning scenarios, sketch ideas, and log stakeholder feedback,” said a memo from Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.