Foreign buyers have long powered South Florida’s condo market, but many are now pulling out because of high interest rates, expensive prices and, more recently, restrictive immigration policies.

The Miami Association of Realtors reports that home sales to foreign buyers dropped to 10 percent of all transactions in the region from August 2023 to July 2024, the lowest level since 2015 and a stark drop from 50 percent in 2018.

The study polled nearly 2,400 real estate agents in South Florida’s Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties. Foreign buyers were defined as those who were not U.S. citizens and whose primary residence was abroad, as well as U.S. visa holders for at least six months and green card holders for less than two years.

Most foreign buyers in South Florida come from Latin America, with that region accounting for nearly 60 percent of buyers last year. They’ve been attracted not just by Florida’s year-round sun, but because real estate investments in the United States were considered safe from the prying hands of their home governments.

After South Florida’s housing bubble burst in 2007, international buyers flooded in to take advantage of reasonable prices and low interest rates. “During the Great Recession, foreign buyers bailed out the South Florida condo market,” said Peter Zalewski, an independent condo analyst based in Miami.

Covid-19 changed the calculus. South Florida became one of the nation’s hottest and priciest markets when American buyers, desperate to escape pandemic restrictions, gobbled up the supply. Meanwhile, rising interest rates and a strong dollar drove down foreign demand.

After the deadly 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida’s legislature passed laws requiring condo owners to pay for costly renovations. Faced with expensive assessments, sellers flooded the market to record levels, data from Redfin shows.

But this time, foreign buyers are unlikely to come to the rescue, as President Trump’s immigration and tariff policies have rattled global markets. “Not only are they still dealing with the currency issue, but add in the immigration policy and the disrespect,” Mr. Zalewski said. “It’s a real conundrum for condo sellers.”

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