Median home prices rise to almost $195,000
Prices in Little Haiti continue to rise, as shown in a recent report from Miami-Dade Realtors. For the month of February, the neighborhood has seen the median house price rise to $194,562.
The rise marks an explosive 64 percent growth in median home prices from last year, and corresponds to a general rise in house prices across Miami-Dade County. The median sales price, however, is still significantly lower than the median sales prices across the county for existing single-family homes. Miami-Dade County prices increased 6.4 percent in February, from $254,000 to $270,221. This makes the area still competitive for sellers, despite the slower rate of sales last month in Miami-Dade County, which fell by 5.8 percent compared to last year.
The rising, but still competitive, home prices bring good news for Little Haiti residents interested in selling their homes and increasing their personal wealth and buying power. But some local activists remain concerned that this same competitive prices will encourage gentrification in this historically significant neighborhood in the diaspora, pointing to the rising in both residential and commercial investments from high-priced developers looking to cash in the development boom happening in nearby Wynwood and the Design District.
A report released last month from Little Haiti-based non-profit group, the Haitian American Community Development Corporation (HACDC), called for a broader spectrum of home affordability in the neighborhood. The report found that “a housing affordability analysis for owner units in Little Haiti shows significant gaps at the median household income category…and extreme affordability gaps at each of the lower house income categories.”
