More than 125,000 residents left New York City for Florida between 2018 and 2022. According to the Citizens Budget Commission, almost $14 billion in income went with them.
Besides the obvious reasons of Florida having no city or state taxes, some said they left because they no longer felt as safe as they did before illegal immigrants rushed the borders, and many of the migrants populated the streets and subways of the Big Apple.
Almost a third of the former New Yorkers chose Miami: Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties. West Palm Beach, where I spend many of the winter months, has two big changes this year. Downtown West Palm is finishing several high-rise office and residential buildings that add beauty and color to the skyline, but the Century Village (about six miles west of downtown) that I hibernate in is experiencing a big drop in condo sales.
Buyers aren’t buying and prices are going south. There are two other Century Villages south of West Palm Beach, one in Boca Raton and one in Deerfield. All three CV’s have over 7,000 units, mostly in buildings that have four first floor units and have mostly two floors. Some buildings have up to four floors and each Century Village has a large Orthodox population.
Boca Raton and Deerfield have over a thousand Orthodox households while West Palm can only boast about half that. Also, Boca Raton and Deerfield have a large year-round Orthodox population while sometimes, in the summer, West Palm barely can scrape together a minyan without its snowbirds.
Insurance prices have skyrocketed and many companies have stopped offering insurance to multi-unit buildings in Florida. My rate for a ground floor 786-square-foot (not counting an enclosed porch) went up over 80 percent. There was only one insurance company to choose from. Of course, insurance companies raised rates and made things tougher for Florida condo owners ever since the beachfront high-rise in Surfside tumbled down, killing over a hundred, including many Orthodox Jews.
Chassidim, mostly from Boro Park and Monsey, came in droves mostly to West Palm Beach over the last eight years or so, and probably inhabit about 250 units. They made things happen; they built a beautiful mikvah building that would make big cities in the north envious. Also, on the transformed campus next to the Ashkenaz Aitz Chaim shul, they paved the entire parking lot, painted spaces, planted over a hundred bushes and some palm trees, installed an attractive lighting system, and most of all, put in a Sefard shul that is back to back to the flagship Aitz Chaim.
Another big change is the separate swimming pool inside the heart of the frum area of Century Village that should be open this year. One reason for the price drop in CV could be the former golf course bordering the village and across the street from the Aitz Chaim campus.
Over 400 homes, four attached at a time, with garages in front of the first and fourth, are supposed to be started this year. It will be for people of all ages, not like CV which is for 55 and uppers. The bedrooms are upstairs, which is not appealing to seniors.
If you’re young and want to be close to a shul and within a mile of a kosher restaurant and about seven miles from Trump’s Mara Lago (winter white house) on the Atlantic Ocean, this may be for you.
However, the question remains, why are sales way down in the other Century Villages of Boca Raton and Deerfield also?
