MIAMI IS GETTING RICHER. SO WHY ARE PEOPLE LEAVING?
Miami is booming. But who can still afford to live there?
For decades, Miami was easy to describe.
Sunshine. Tourism. Real estate. Latin American money. Retirees. Luxury condominiums. A spectacular place to live if you could afford it, but hardly a serious challenger to America’s established financial centres.
That description is becoming obsolete.
Capital is moving south. Financial firms are establishing operations. Billionaires and entrepreneurs are relocating. Brickell increasingly looks like a genuine financial district rather than an expensive collection of towers with an excellent ocean view.
Citadel moved its headquarters to Miami and continues expanding there. Elliott Management, Starwood Capital, Icahn Enterprises and ARK Invest are among the financial businesses that have relocated headquarters or significant operations to South Florida. The Financial Times recently examined precisely this phenomenon: Miami has clearly attracted New York’s billionaires, although it remains far from displacing New York as America’s dominant financial centre.
So the fashionable conclusion practically writes itself:
Miami is the new Wall Street.
There is only one problem.
It is too simple.
And the numbers reveal a considerably more interesting story.
Miami is not replacing New York
This is the first myth worth eliminating.
Miami does not need to replace New York to become one of the most important financial winners of this decade.
New York retains extraordinary advantages: financial employment, capital markets infrastructure, universities, professional services, institutional density and perhaps most importantly, an enormous concentration of human capital.
Even after Miami’s expansion, the Financial Times notes that it remains behind Manhattan, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles in financial employment.
The interesting question therefore isn’t: