Are South Florida Rents Falling in 2026? What Leases Show

Last updated September 30, 2026

Published by Gia Freer, Broker of Record, PBP Real Estate, LLC · Florida broker license BK689801

No. On leases that closed between July 1 and September 29, 2026, the median South Florida house rented for $3,900 a month, +4.0% against the same weeks of 2025, and the median condominium or townhouse for $2,500, +1.3%. The one segment that softened is units listed in the MLS as apartments, which in Miami-Dade rented for $2,000 against $2,200 two years earlier. That distinction matters this week, because the national headlines about apartments are about large complexes and the loans behind them, not about the houses and condominiums that individual South Florida owners rent out.

Are South Florida house and condominium rents falling in 2026?

No. House rents rose in 4 of the five counties, and condominium rents were within 2% of last year or higher in 3. We took every residential lease that closed through BeachesMLS in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties between July 1 and September 29 in 2024, 2025 and 2026, split it by property type, and took the median monthly rent for each county and year. Houses and condominiums are kept apart throughout; a $4,200 house in Palm Beach and a $2,400 condominium are different markets with different tenants.

Two things stand out. First, the house medians moved up in the three large counties, +5.1% in Palm Beach, +3.9% in Broward and +2.6% in Miami-Dade, after little change between 2024 and 2025. Second, condominium rents have not moved in two years: Broward $2,200, $2,200, $2,200; Miami-Dade $2,800, $2,800, $2,750. Palm Beach is the exception at +4.3%. Martin County's condominium figure (-8.4%) rests on 100 leases and should be read as a small-sample reading, not a trend.

What about apartments, the sector in the national headlines?

That is the segment that softened, and it is a small slice of the South Florida record. BeachesMLS carries a property subtype called Apartment: a unit in a rental building rather than a condominium owned by an individual. Only a fraction of the region's apartment stock is ever listed in the MLS, since large complexes lease from their own offices, so these figures describe the apartments that traded through agents, not the whole sector.

The Miami-Dade apartment median went from $2,200 in 2024 to $2,100 in 2025 and $2,000 in 2026, -9.1% over two years on 708 leases. Broward went from $1,900 to $1,760 (-7.4%). Palm Beach moved the other way in 2026 (+5.7%) on about 200 leases a year. A median of whatever leased can move because the mix of buildings changed as much as because rents changed, so read the direction, not the decimal.

How does this square with rising apartment-loan delinquencies?

Two different things are being measured. The charts circulating this week show the share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multifamily loans that are 60 or more days late rising to levels last seen around 2009. That is a statement about apartment owners' debt: complexes refinancing into higher-rate loans while, as reported, their rents stopped growing. It is not a statement about what a tenant pays for a house in Coral Springs or a condominium in Boynton Beach. The two are connected only loosely, through the tenants that apartment buildings and individual owners compete for. We have not independently verified the delinquency figures and cite them only as reported.

What does an outside source say about South Florida rents?

Zillow's Observed Rent Index for the Miami metro was $2,666 in August 2026, +1.6% year over year, and that is its highest reading in a series that begins in 2015. The same index for Port St. Lucie was $2,340, +2.1%; for the United States as a whole, $1,948, +2.5%. Zillow's index is a smoothed, repeat-listing measure of asking rents across houses, condominiums and apartment buildings for the whole Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro, so it is not the same statistic as our closed-lease medians. It points the same way: level to slightly up, not down.

What does this mean if you are deciding between renting out and selling?

The rent side of that decision has been flat for two years while the cost side has not. An owner weighing a lease against a sale in September 2026 can expect roughly the rent a similar property drew in 2024, while insurance, property tax and association costs are set elsewhere and, for many owners, have not stood still. That is a cash-flow question, and a specific one: it depends on the property, its insurance, its association and its mortgage. Three points of process apply to every South Florida rental. As licensees we write annual leases of up to 12 months; a longer term needs an attorney. In a condominium or other association, the owner chooses the tenant but the association gives the final approval, through an application, a fee, sometimes an interview, and a two-to-four-week timeline; an accepted offer is not an approval. Asking rents on our rental market pages are a different measure, current listings rather than signed leases, and are not directly comparable with the closed-lease medians here.

None of this is an opinion of value or of the right rent for a particular home. It describes the market a property will be leased or sold into. Our county market reports carry a companion measure, rent yield against the 10-year Treasury, for homes that both sold and leased.

How we counted

South Florida figures. Closed residential leases from BeachesMLS through our direct data feed, five counties, 244,790 closed leases from January 2023 to 2026-09-30. For each year we took leases whose close date fell between July 1 and September 29, so the 2026 window is compared with the same weeks of 2025 and 2024. Houses are the MLS single-family subtype; condominiums and townhouses combine the condominium, townhouse and villa subtypes; apartments are the MLS Apartment subtype. Efficiencies, mobile and manufactured homes (3,202 leases) are excluded. Within each county, segment and year we drop rents below the 1st or above the 99th percentile before taking the median. We report a county figure only where both years have at least 30 leases and mark the exceptions. Recent months are still being reported to the MLS, so 2026 counts are lower than 2025 for that reason as much as any other; we do not draw conclusions from lease volume. The feed is limited to listings permitted for internet display. These are market statistics, not an opinion of value for any property. AI assists the research and the assembly; a licensed broker authors every figure; no automated estimate.

Outside check. Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), smoothed, all homes plus multifamily, metro level, retrieved 2026-09-30; latest month August 2026. Multifamily delinquency figures are cited as reported in third-party charts built from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Mortgage Bankers Association data and were not independently verified by PBP Real Estate.

Source: closed residential leases in five South Florida counties, listed in BeachesMLS and permitted for internet display through PBP Real Estate's data feed, as of 2026-09-30. PBP Real Estate, LLC is a South Florida brokerage and housing-data publisher.