High Florida Mortgage Costs, Other Factors Can’t Slow State’s Population Growth
Spiraling Florida mortgage costs. Congested highways. Hurricane fears. Property insurance and property tax crises.
All these things are supposed to be making South Florida a less attractive place to live and work.
Yet new Census estimates released by the Miami Herald show the region continued to be a people magnet, drawing 455,869 new residents - primarily immigrants - from April 2000-July 2006.
That’s the ninth-largest metropolitan area increase in the country during that time.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines the metro area as Broward County, Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County. The new report shows a 9 percent increase in population the past six years.
“That’s a lot of people, and that’s major growth for an area already as large as we are,” said Ted Leonard, senior planner for Broward County.
It’s also a significant enough increase to ratchet up urgency for solving problems like traffic congestion, the affordable housing crisis and other growth-related concerns, planners say.
“That amount of growth brings consequences,” said Richard Ogburn, assistant director of research at the South Florida Regional Planning Council.
And there is no end in sight.
A slowdown in population gains during the past two years is a momentary lull. Census numbers released last month showed that from July 2005-July 2006 the number of people moving into Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach from other states - known as domestic migration - was less than the number moving out.
The South Florida housing market growth is being fueled almost entirely by foreign immigration, a trend the new U.S. Census report says is happening in large metro areas across the country.
Without immigrants pouring into the nation’s big metro areas, cities like New York, Los Angeles and Boston would have shrinking populations as well.
Statewide, Florida metro areas continued to grow, with the Orlando housing market the state’s fastest-growing, with a 21 percent increase.
Among smaller metro areas, Cape Coral-Fort Meyers had the third-fastest growth rate in the nation, while Naples ranked seventh, despite the staggeringly high Florida mortgage loan costs in Southwest Florida.
“The slowdown or plateau we’ve seen in the domestic migration is not a break,” said Leonard. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it for another year or so until the housing market straightens out and home prices and income achieve more equilibrium. But it’s just waiting to take off again, and it will.”
SOURCE: Miami Herald
