With insurance and home prices so high, some are finding a way out — of Miami | Opinion

Being a homeowner and having a house in the suburbs used to equal financial security for the middle class in America. But that’s no longer the case for some people in Miami-Dade County.

For at least one family — and, if the statistics tell us anything, many others — the cost of living and sky-high property insurance premiums are driving them to make the difficult decision to give up on Florida.

That’s the situation Jorge Garcia and his family find themselves facing. The cost of homeowners insurance and everything, from taxes to food, are the catalysts for the family’s plan to put the West Kendall house where they’ve lived for 20 years on the market in March. They plan to move to Concord, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, by summertime.

With the move, Garcia expects his $5,000 annual homeowners’ insurance policy to drop to as low as $1,100, based on quotes he said he’s received from companies in North Carolina.

Garcia, a 59-year-old financial analyst, appears to be part of a growing trend.

Though Florida continues to be one of the fastest growing states in the nation, the flow of people moving into Florida from other states triggered by the pandemic is slowing. At the same time, a rising number of residents are leaving the state.

In 2023, 637,000 people moved here from other states — still the highest migration inflow in the country. But 511,000 people left Florida, the second-largest amount in the country that year, after California, according to a 2024 Florida Chamber of Commerce report. This was also Florida’s first significant drop in net migration — the difference between people moving and out of an area — during the last 10 years, the report said.

Significantly, a quarter of those who left Florida cited cheaper housing as the reason for their move, according to a 2023 U.S. Census survey.

More recent research points in the same direction.

For the first time in three years, moving company Atlas Van Lines changed Florida’s status from an “inbound state” to one where there is a balance between inbound and outbound movers, citing the cost of housing and insurance, plus the state’s extreme weather, as the likely reasons for the shift. U-Haul also found a similar number of people moving in and out of the state in an annual survey, the Sun Sentinel reported.

While Florida continues to attract new residents, they tend to be wealthier than those who are leaving, according to the Chamber report, driving living costs up for everybody. That’s probably not a surprise for people in South Florida who have watched working- and middle-class neighborhoods being replaced by luxury towers.

Million-dollar homes now make up one-quarter of real estate sales in Miami-Dade County, up from less than 10% in 2019, according to data provided by Gay Cororaton, chief economist at Miami Realtors.

That influx of wealth is likely to continue in Miami-Dade, according to Cororaton.

Driver license data shows that, despite a slowdown, there are still more people moving into the county from out of state versus pre-pandemic levels, in particular from New York and California, according to Cororaton. Migration to South Florida is likely to remain strong thanks to Miami-Dade’s job growth outpacing the rest of the nation, she told the Herald Editorial Board via email.

Think of the sales commissions, moving expenses and tax revenues these transactions generate — the money those new residents spend at local businesses. There’s a clear benefit to the local economy.

The problem, though, is for those who are left behind. South Florida loves its millionaires (and billionaires), but it also needs workers and the middle class — whose struggles affording life in the region are the focus of the Editorial Board’s series “Shrinking Middle.”

Not only do the people leaving Florida have less money than the ones moving in, many are also in their prime working years. The Chamber of Commerce report found a large outflow of people ages 20 to 29.

These are young adults who should be looking to buy their first home. But with a $650,000 median sales price for a single-family house in Miami-Dade and average rents hovering at $2,000 in Kendall, according to Zillow, and even higher in other areas, they are falling behind.

Worries about that exact thing — falling behind, especially for the next generation — are fueling Garcia’s plans to relocate to North Carolina.

He has two daughters, 23 and 33, and an 8-year-old grandson, all of whom live with him and his wife. His daughters cannot afford to live alone in South Florida. While his youngest wants to stay behind in Miami-Dade, the oldest plans to move with the family, he said.

His 33-year-old is “starting her life. She wants to be independent. She wants to have her own home,” Garcia said.

Garcia, a University of Miami alum, was featured in a previous installment of “Shrinking Middle” in July. Back then, his cost of living was giving him doubts about a future in South Florida. In the past seven months, his situation hasn’t changed and he’s grown more resolute in his decision.

Still, he said, “I’m disappointed that I have to leave.”

He’s not the only one who should be disappointed. Florida leaders, who have seen the cost of living in the state become increasingly untenable, should reexamine their own responsibilities to residents. If people like Garcia feel forced out of Florida, will Florida become a state just for the rich?

Click here to send the letter.

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.