Amazon Searches For Miami Office Space After Bezos' Mansion Purchases
Now that billionaire Jeff Bezos put down roots in Miami, the corporate behemoth he founded is following suit.
Amazon is looking to lease 50K SF of office space in the city, a company spokesperson confirmed. The search comes as Bezos has been buying mansions near Miami Beach ahead of a planned move to South Florida.
Amazon has more than 400 corporate and tech employees in the Miami area, but it has no permanent offices and instead operates out of serviced office space, the spokesperson said. Its plans to sign a lease follow years of organic growth in the region.
Amazon is searching for office space in a market that has shown resilience amid a nationwide leasing slowdown. While a pandemic-driven wave of relocations and expansions to Miami has waned, total availability is at 21%, 80 basis points below 2019 levels, according to CBRE’s third-quarter report.
The 50K SF footprint Amazon is looking for would be among the largest new leases signed this year and well above the 20K SF average for new-to-market leases since 2022, according to CBRE. But the pool of high-quality space on the market is limited despite a 2.4M SF development pipeline, with the third-quarter report saying “it is unlikely any upper echelon space lingers on the market.”
The search for space began before Bezos announced in a Nov. 2 Instagram post that he would relocate to Miami from Seattle, a spokesperson told Bloomberg, which first reported the office plans.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 and became its executive chairman, said in the post that he was headed to Miami to be closer to his parents, who recently relocated to the city. He added that Blue Origin, his space exploration company, has been shifting operations to Cape Canaveral, around 200 miles north of Miami.
He spent $147M on two adjacent properties on Indian Creek, an exclusive island enclave near Miami Beach known as the Billionaire Bunker. Bezos paid $68M in June for a three-bedroom home on 2.8 acres on the island before spending $79M in October for a seven-bedroom mansion on 1.8 acres next door.
Bezos, whose $172B fortune ranks him as the second-wealthiest person in the world on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, will be the latest in a string of Miami relocations for the world’s ultrarich.
Ken Griffin, the 36th-wealthiest person in the world, moved hedge fund Citadel to the city last year and has been buying homes in Coconut Grove and West Palm Beach. Eric Schmidt, a founder of Google who ranks 54th on the billionaire index, paid $63M in September for two houses on Miami Beach’s Sunset Islands, The Real Deal reported.
Miami has become a magnet for wealth migration, with Miami-Dade County adding $7.4B in income inflow in 2022, according to the South Florida Business Journal. The county leads the state for the movement of wealth, ahead of Palm Beach County’s $7.2B.
Together, the two South Florida counties accounted for 37% of the $39.2B that flowed to the state last year.
