Poll says most Miamians have considered moving. The (obvious) reason why | Opinion

Miamians don’t need studies, polls or reports to tell them the obvious: That, faced with the high cost of owning or renting a home, they — or somebody they know — have at least considered moving somewhere else.

Now we have some numbers to put that into perspective: In a poll released Monday by Miami-based firm Bendixen & Amandi, 56% of respondents said they have “actively considered” relocating from Miami-Dade County because of the cost of living or “affordability issues.” The survey of 600 registered voters has margin of error of 4 percentage points.

It’s hard to tell how many of those people will actually move out of South Florida, but the Herald Editorial Board has followed the experience of one former Miami-Dade resident who made that difficult choice. When we first wrote about Jorge Garcia, a 60-year-old financial advisor, last July, he was considering selling his home of 20 years in West Kendall to move out of state because of his cost of living, mainly property insurance.

In August, Garcia moved to Mooresville, North Carolina, with his wife, daughter and grandson. They bought a four-bedroom, two-story house for $470,000, which would be hard to find in South Florida. He misses Miami’s Cuban food and the good hospitals he had near West Kendall but said his insurance costs dropped 50-60%. North Carolina, unlike Florida, has a state income tax but he doesn’t know yet what the impact of that will be on his finances.

Overall, “we’re saving money and the quality of life is better,” he said.

The fact that more than half of voters in that poll might have at one point thought about leaving their home is “shocking,” Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi, of Bendixen & Amandi, told the Herald Editorial Board. This was the first time the firm’s polls asked Miamians that question, he said, so we don’t know whether there’s been an increase in people thinking about relocating. But there’s plenty of data that helps us understand why that’s happening.

More than half of Miami-Dade households are run by people who are employed but don’t make enough to afford a basic “survival” budget — a 40,000-household increase since 2023 — the Herald reported. Homeownership is increasingly out of reach thanks to rising property values. Greater Miami has one of the lowest homeownership rates among major U.S. metropolitan regions, according to real estate brokerage and technology company Redfin.

But even as we talk about people leaving Miami-Dade, there are still a lot of people moving into the county — which is actually part of the problem. South Florida is a hot spot, especially for the wealthy, who are driving costs up.

Migration from other states to Miami-Dade has slowed from pandemic-era highs, but it still remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to an April Miami Realtors report based on driver-license transfers.

Statewide, Florida continues to attract new residents, but here’s the important piece: They tend to be wealthier than those who are leaving, according to a 2024 Florida Chamber of Commerce report. Although Florida had the highest migration inflow in the country in 2023, it also had the second-largest number of people leaving a state, the Chamber found.

And the people who are leaving Florida tend to be younger, in prime working years, ages 20 to 29, according to the Chamber. We don’t have individual figures for Miami-Dade County, but how can young workers and families afford to buy a single-family home at the median price of $670,000 or $405,000 for a condo?

What all this polling and statistics indicate is not a surprise: Florida, and Miami-Dade County, specifically, are making it harder for the middle and working classes to survive, which is what has inspired the Editorial Board to write its series “The Shrinking Middle.”

This community must either address the affordability issue or South Florida’s already growing income inequality will worsen, leaving only the wealthy or the poor, who cannot afford to move, and a shrinking middle-class forced to flee.

This story was originally published October 8, 2025 at 2:22 PM.