Writer: Esteban Pages
Regional Review is a year-end series from Capital Analytics that looks at key developments throughout the year and sets the stage for what’s to come in the near future.
3 min read December 2023 — The unbridled growth that Broward County has witnessed over the past year is not without its caveats. While the county continues to enjoy a demographic and business expansions, the pressure is on when it comes to housing affordability, overall costs of living and persistent real estate-driven inflation.
Broward’s economy is the second-largest in the Sunshine State, only behind Miami-Dade, having grown real GDP to $124.84 billion in 2022, from $111.22 billion in 2019, an accumulated 12% increase, according to the latest available figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Not only that, the county continues its aggressive economic diversification strategy, focusing on high-growth, high-value industries. For the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, those include aviation and aerospace, financial services, global logistics, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and the marine industry.
“Interest in Greater Fort Lauderdale and South Florida in general continues to be sky high. The number of people moving here is staggering. There have been billions of dollars in income migration, so that is very beneficial to our area. The dollars are flowing here, and assets are also moving here,” said Bob Swindell, president and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, in an interview with Invest:.
Broward County’s success isn’t lacking in growing pains however. Although still more competitive than Miami’s median home sale price, Broward’s homebuyers have felt the sting of increased demand. According to realtor.com, median home selling prices in November 2023 reached $410,000, a 10.8% increase compared to November 2022’s $370,000. To keep the region attractive and livable across all wages, local authorities and developers are teaming up to ensure a sustainable pipeline of affordable and workforce housing units. “We are working on new projects, and we have been involved in new legislation at all levels of government to address the workforce housing crisis we face here,” said Jeff Burns, founder and CEO of Affiliated Development. “We just delivered a 309-unit project that has two-thirds of the building restricted for workforce housing. More recently, we delivered a 200-unit project that has workforce housing as well. We are getting ready to break ground on a 223-unit project in Downtown Hollywood called the Tropic. That was in partnership with the city and county and half of the units will be workforce housing.”
Affordable housing will also prove critical to dampen the ripple effects of inflation. The Miami Association of Realtors reported a median sales price hike for Broward between October 2022 and October 2023, despite a drop in the number of units sold. The over-the-year Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) for Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach as of October 2023 for all items increased 7.4%, while the index for all items less food and energy saw an 8% hike.
The county’s 1.97 million residents are projected to grow to as much as 2.26 million by 2050; 290,000 additional residents. To ensure the quality of life that characterizes Broward County remains intact, providing a multimodal and cost-effective public transportation service to avoid saturating streets and highways will prove essential.
Despite the great strides made by the Brightline and the services provided by the Broward County Transit (BCT) agency, much remains to be done. A critical piece of the transportation puzzle is BCT’s Premium Mobility Plan (PREMO) – a multibillion- multiyear transportation infrastructure development plan that includes 11.5 miles of commuter rail, 23.3 miles of light-rail transit, 76 miles of bus rapid transit and 100 miles of high frequency bus service, eight east/west corridors and six north/south corridors. In tandem, at the city level, Fort Lauderdale is poised to bet on a cost-efficient commuter rail tunnel to address its congestion concerns.
Looking forward, even as the county enjoyed growth in 2023, Broward remains focused on improvements to ensure it keeps pace, in both infrastructure and quality of life.
