What other cities really are “overbuilt” in the high-rise condo market, in comparison to Austin?
The most extreme examples are Miami and South Florida. A huge volume of simultaneous projects are flooding the market with some 60,000 high-rise units; some single projects have 1,500 units. Developers there have speculated on sales to second-home buyers and investors (many from outside the U.S.), not area residents. “One project alone in downtown Miami is larger than the entire number of units being delivered in Downtown Austin over a six-year period,” Burns pointed out. By his calculations, Miami is building one condo for every 40 residents; Austin is building one new condo downtown for every 1,022 residents. Mitchell cited a Feb. 13, 2009, Miami Herald article reporting that 17,299 condos had been built since 2003 and 70% have been sold. That leaves some 5,000 to 7,000 condos unsold. In Downtown Austin, just more than 500 units are unsold – many of them not yet completed, and thus not yet attractive to “sniff-and-see” shoppers. Armstrong notes that compared to Miami and Las Vegas, “
