Palm Beach Breaks Record With Exuberant Retail Rent Hikes
If Miami’s Brickell is the new Wall Street then Palm Beach is Fifth Avenue.
While Miami is dominating the office market with mind-boggling rent hikes, Palm Beach is taking the lead in retail growth — with a never-before-seen record of $27.74 per SF direct asking rates for Palm Beach County and a whopping $80 per SF for Palm Beach’s central business district — per Colliers’ Q2 market findings released Thursday.
That $80 rate is the highest in the metro, topping even Miami Beach’s $79.47 per SF average direct asking rate.
The vacancy rate dropped for the fifth consecutive quarter in Palm Beach County, to 4%.
Broward is experiencing similar growth patterns. Asking rates soared to a record of $25.93 per SF while vacancy dropped to 4.4%. And Miami-Dade County also saw vacancy shrink and asking rates increase, to 3.5% and $42.10 per SF, respectively.
Consumer sentiment in Florida is improving, a stark contrast to other parts of the country where national consumer confidence is on the decline.
The Economic Analysis Program at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research found that consumer sentiment in Florida increased 2.1 points in June to 60.8 on a scale of 2 to 150 while the nation’s plummeted to its lowest level on record.
“The increase in June’s consumer confidence in Florida comes as a surprise considering the persistently high inflation,” Hector H. Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research, said in a written statement.
“Even though Floridians were more optimistic in June, it is worth noting that May’s reading was revised down to 60.8, making it the second lowest ever recorded,” Sandoval added.
