Is it cheaper to rent or buy in South Florida? See the housing data
If you’re looking for a place to live, it’s the question on everyone’s mind: Is it better to rent or buy?
For renters, there’s first, last and security. For buyers, there’s the down payment and a monthly mortgage.
So, which option is actually more affordable in South Florida?
New data from the national real estate data provider ATTOM shows that in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, it’s more affordable to rent.
The difference is small in both counties, but it’s a trend that may persist. The data also showed home prices are rising faster than rents in both counties.
In Miami-Dade County, the median rent for a three-bedroom apartment is $3,395 this year, which is down by 1.6% from last year. In Broward County, rents have remained flat during the same period, with rent for a three-bedroom apartment averaging $3,500 a month in 2025 and 2026.
ATTOM calculated rental affordability by dividing the average monthly wage in a county by the median monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment.
In Miami-Dade the median rent is about 54% of the average monthly wage, while typical monthly homeownership expenses represent 56% of the average monthly wage. ATTOM includes a mortgage based on a 20% down payment, property tax, homeowner insurance and private mortgage insurance in its costs of homeownership.
In Broward, the median rent takes up 59% of the average wage, and monthly homeownership expenses take up 60%.
In a majority of counties across the country, the monthly cost of homeownership is more affordable than the cost of renting, according to ATTOM. That’s the case in Palm Beach County as well.
Like in South Florida, It’s cheaper to rent in Tampa than to buy, but rents are rising faster there than the median home price.
But even in places where homeownership costs less on average per month, buying a home is a major up-front expense that not everyone can afford.
In Miami-Dade, the median home price in 2025 was $645,000, up by 3.2% from the previous year. In Broward, the median price for a single-family home in 2025 was $615,000, up by 1.5% from 2024.
Median single-family home prices are rising faster than rent in two-thirds of counties in the U.S., according to ATTOM.
But there’s some good news in South Florida: Wages are rising faster than both rent and the median home price. Weekly wages rose by 3.7% in Miami-Dade and by 5.4% in Broward.
