Jonathan Levin, Columnist

Miami Housing Is Expensive. Just Don’t Call It a Bubble

The Florida city tops this year’s UBS ranking of global cities with elevated home prices. But the market’s fundamentals may not be as weak as they seem.

September 30, 2024 at 10:00 AM UTC

By Jonathan Levin

Jonathan Levin is a columnist focused on US markets and economics. Previously, he worked as a Bloomberg journalist in the US, Brazil and Mexico. He is a CFA charterholder.

Not a gloomy outlook.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America

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The relentless surge in Miami-area housing prices has earned the city the top spot in this year’s UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index, a ranking of bubble risk in residential property around the globe. Miami’s inflation-adjusted home prices continued to grind higher in the past year, defying the slowdown elsewhere and helping it eclipse former “bubble” leaders Zurich and Tokyo.

But the ominous distinction should be taken with a grain of salt. Bubbles are sustained deviations from underlying values, often associated with speculation and excessive leverage, and I question whether those conditions have really been met.