Tom Brady Follows Big Business Trend in Miami

‘”I think that it’s important to know that the vertical and downtown markets, of course, serve a population, of employers that choose to be in the CBD (central business district),” Blanca, founder and CEO of her namesake CRE firm said.

“Given the existing entity that is there and the business community that exists there already is the largest in the county so that that has a place for us to be able to serve the needs of those larger enterprises.”

Why are more businesses finding Miami in particular attractive? Blanca attributes it to the population growth thanks to the unique lifestyle features in the area and simple navigation.

“Generally speaking, transit mobility is important whether it is an executive or a stay-at-home, parent who needs to do ultrasounds, do errands pick up kids in school, or go shopping for groceries,” she said.

“It’s hard to go from one neighborhood to another without having restaurants and solutions that facilitate that as we grow with more vehicles out on the streets. So these communities offer public schools, private schools, shopping, dining, and residential housing options of various types.”

Meanwhile, a recent trend that Blanca has been seeing in Miami is businesses are having “some level of obsolescence” with some existing properties.

They “need to be either positioned for alternative office uses or schools and excess land that is going to be repurposed for the kinds of village settings and communities that people are seeking both for their offices and living,” Blanca said.

She listed Assurant as an example, which has been trying to sell its campus in Miami Dade. It originally had a $160 million deal with the county but it fell apart. However, Assurant wound up investing in 78,000 square feet of office space in the Waterford Business District of Miami.

But the one segment that has caused some unease in CRE is the office sector, with the work-from-home trend getting exacerbated by the pandemic. However, Blanca isn’t concerned thanks to the flexibility of hybrids that allow workers to come into the office some days and work from home on others.

“I think hybrid work provides the opportunity to empower your team to be extremely productive and happy at the workplace, which I think in turn can increase productivity,” she noted.

“Even pre-COVID, no office building or office was 100% full all the time. People come and go, they travel, and take vacations. So, I think that in this region, in particular, we have seen occupancy levels rise and the contraction that has existed by existing businesses are contractions that would have happened, regardless of COVID.”

Plus, the demand in Miami has been encouraging in the office space. While vacancies inched up to five percent from three percent in the second quarter, positive absorption in the market reached 531,000 square feet and over a million for the entire first half of 2024, according to a CBRE report.