The South Florida real estate market, is on a tear lately. Florida real estate investing is now hot and many areas in south Florida have shot up over 40% since the pandemic’s start. The meteoric rise in the past couple of years here in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade is nothing compared to the increase in these zip codes since 2000 rolled by.

The Sun-Sentinel recently looked at how much home values have jumped since 2000 and found which ZIP codes have seen the most significant increases since then.

They used sale data from Zillow.com during their analysis, and according to their research and the data on Zillow, these 12 ZIP codes had the highest appreciation over the last 20 years.

• Hollywood (33020): 320% with 2022 home value of $333,617 
• Miami near Little Havana (33135): 311% increase with 2022 home home value of$421,236 
• North Miami and Biscayne Park (33161): 309% appreciation with current typical home value of $408,010 
• Miami Shores to MiMo District (33138): 307% appreciation with current typical home value of $647,934 
• Miramar (33023): 297% appreciation with current typical home value of $384,625 
• North Miami Beach (33162): 291% appreciation with current typical home value of $391,002 
• Miami, Wynwood to Little Haiti (33127): 291% appreciation with current typical home value of $387, 672 
• West Palm Beach (33405): 291% appreciation with current typical home value of $445,671 
• Miami Gardens (33054): 290% appreciation with current typical home value of $336,713 
• Lake Park (33403): 289% appreciation with current typical home value of $324,508 
• West Little River (33147): 288% appreciation with current typical home value of $334,828 
• Lake Clarke Shores south of Palm Beach International Airport (33406): 280% appreciation with a 2022 typical home value of $367,929

If you had been investing in these areas since then, you would be sitting pretty right now on that mountain of appreciation. Of course, what you don’t see in the numbers is how the rollercoaster of values here went up and then nearly down to record lows before their current values in 2022. It was a white knuckle ride for investors holding on since the millennium began. 

Take Hollywood, FL, for example. In the year 2000, the typical home value was just $79,422. That same home in 2007 shot up in value to over $250,000! Then just a couple of years after the great recession, the value dropped to $168,392 at the start of 2009, bottoming out at $111,203 by 2011. How much is the property worth now? An incredible $333,617 in 2022!

What is the lesson in all this? Real estate markets move in cycles over time. There are many booms and busts, peaks and valleys, but over a long enough timeline, the trend is usually pointing up and to the right.

Knee jerk reactions to the market are often punishing on your returns, but a calm, steady hand pays off in the long term.    Now that we have inflation stomping on your dollar values, it’s time to create a solid real estate investing plan of action, and stick to it no matter what!

Happy Investing!