Broward County Looks To Buy Apartment Complex, Ensure Affordable Housing

With an affordable housing crunch intensifying by the day, commissioners in Broward County (in red, left) are considering buying a Deerfield Beach apartment complex that the owners plan to convert from rentals to condominiums, according to Miami Herald notes from around the county. Kristin Jacobs, who heads the county’s new affordable-housing committee, will present the idea to fellow commissioners at today’s meeting.

Jacobs said it represents one way to ensure that affordable apartments aren’t removed from the market.

The results could be a telling sign as the county aims to ease the widespread shortage of affordable South Florida real estate. It would be the first time that the county has considered buying an apartment building to save it from condominium conversion, which has become an enormously popular practice statewide. Jacobs did not say how much it would cost to buy the apartments, located at 5390 NE Fifth Terrace.

It’s also not known if the county would rehab them and then rent them out, or whether the county will work through a developer or the Broward County Housing Authority.

Those are the issues that county officials need to discuss in the coming meetings, Jacobs said, with County commissioners set to meet today at the Governmental Center, at 115 S. Andrews Ave., in Fort Lauderdale. There is no mistaking this trend as a flash in the pan. For the fifth straight year, Florida home price appreciation shattered records, pushing more and more citizens (particularly in the Southern part of the state) out of home-buying contention. The lack of affordable rental units has also become a major concern. Over the past year, Broward officials estimate that more than 18,000 former rental apartments have been converted into condominiums, leaving many middle- and lower-income people with few rental options.

”This craze to convert apartments to condos, it’s so easy to make money doing that. You just saw an amazing vacuum in rental apartments last year,” Jacobs said.

What’s clear is that incredible appreciation has pushed housing costs beyond the reach of a wide segment of Americans, with similar trends seen in California and Virginia real estate markets along with numerous others. What’s less clear is how effective officials such as Jacobs can be in addressing this trend locally, and whether low Florida home loan rates will fluctuate enough to help buyers make inroads.