Is the real estate market in Miami to high for investing

[Wendy Lavana]

I buy and hold property and recently did my first flip with my fiancé. We did well with the flip, it was a distressed property that was banked owned and we decided to take a risk with it. It had several violations and we did a lot of work to the house but came out with 60k in profit. We were happy with this but it did take us a year from purchase to finish the house. We actually worked on it for about 3 months, the rest of the time was spent at the county getting permits, approvals and fixing issues with past violations. I did the rehab as an owner because I refuse to hire a GC. Besides the fact that a GC eats up your profits, you can learn a great deal by finding and working with the subcontractors on your own. The knowledge I got from the rehab helps me out with my rental properties and is definitely going to make my next flip easier. The problem I'm now running into with the buy and hold as well as flip opportunities is that I simply can't find good deals in Miami anymore and I wondering whether this market is just tapped out. Any property worth purchasing is being sold at auction and ends up getting bid up to almost market price. The buy and hold investments available have cap rates below 6%. I was also just starting to consider the idea of getting into 10 to 30 unit multifamily and I can't find one in Miami. Last year I purchased two fourplexes in Ft Lauderdale in a low income area and those properties took me 6 months to get together. I'm finally cash flowing approximately $250 per unit in those two properties and I'm wondering to myself whether that was a good investment or not and whether to start looking for property in other areas of Florida like Jupiter, Stuart etc. Anyone else experiencing this in Miami? Whats your take on the Miami real estate market? Is it still a workable market for the average investor? Or do I now have to be a Russian billionaire to invest in Miami?

[David O.]

@Wendy Lavana

 It's definitely getting harder and hard to find deals in Miami because there is a lot of local competition combined with the international demand. However, I was lucky in finding some great off-market deals by introducing myself and being persistent with a respected local broker. Once they know you mean business they will give you the deals to retain you as a loyal customer.