Why have the ultra-wealthy deserted Miami’s old Millionaires’ Row?
Real-estate agents say the younger money is moving to neighbourhoods like South of Fifth, on the opposite end of Miami Beach
Not too long ago, Collins Avenue in Miami Beach between 41st Street and 62nd Street was a celebrity hot spot, lined with lavish oceanfront mansions and hip luxury hotels.
Real-estate agents still sometimes use that term to refer to the area, but the ultra-wealthy no longer move there.
“In the 80s and 90s, Millionaires’ Row was New York’s Central Park West,” Melissa Rubin, a broker-adviser for Compass in South Florida, told Business Insider, adding that the homes were elegant and the affluent flocked to the area.
Now, you can easily buy a condo on Millionaires’ Row for less than US$1 million, and “it is not a location where the affluent are gravitating to”, Rubin said.
According to Dina Goldentayer of Douglas Elliman, it has to do with money getting younger.
“Those buyers – in their thirties and forties – are strongly concerned by walkability,” Goldentayer said. “That is why communities like the Venetian Islands have boomed the last five years because of their proximity to the hip Sunset Harbour neighbourhood.”
On a recent trip to Miami, I spent an afternoon walking along the stretch that was once dubbed “Millionaires’ Row”.
The buildings were once elegant and the affluent flocked to the area, Rubin said.
Historian Paul George wrote in the Biscayne Times: “The ostentatious homes that made up this exclusive community were designed by the most prominent South Florida architects of the era. Many were designed in the popular Mediterranean style, featuring barrel-tile roofs, arches, twisted columns, and balconies.”