The following video was published last week showing the "secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during spring break." Said differently, the company used anonymized mobile phone data to see where spring breakers went after they left the beach. This was in order to better understand how they may have contributed to the spread of COVID-19. If you can't see the video below, click here.

The video is astonishing for two reasons. One, it shows you the extreme reach of just one beach in South Florida. Imagine if they had analyzed all of the beaches up and down the coast. And two, a lot of you are probably freaked out that this sort of mobile phone data is available to private companies. If you'd like to learn more about how this all works, check out this opinion piece from the New York Times.

I was at a family dinner over the weekend and the topic of the Florida homestead exemption came up. The Florida Constitution bestows a number of advantages upon homeowners (provided the home is that person’s primary residence). And like all rules, it impacts behaviors.

For one, your primary residence is largely protected from creditors, meaning a sale generally can’t be forced in order to pay back what you might owe. If you’re out there in the world “betting the farm,” this might be a way to protect yourself.

There are also a number of property tax benefits. You can reduce your assessed value by certain specified amounts, and any increases are (I think) capped at the lesser of 3% or the rate of inflation. (Related post: California’s Proposition 13.)

As we’ve talked about before on the blog, this second exemption likely creates a disincentive for longtime homeowners to sell/move, as even a lateral move would result in possibly much higher taxes. So why move unless you really have to?

The counter argument is that it helps fixed income retirees not get squeezed by rising taxes (and that’s an important consideration in Florida). But it also means that first-time/younger buyers end up shouldering more of the property tax burden — at least initially.

If any of you have strong opinions about the Florida homestead exemption, I would be interested in hearing from you in the comment section below. I am not a lawyer or a tax expert. So please don’t consider this post as any sort of advice.

This past weekend I toured my friend's purpose-built rental project in Wynwood, called Midtown 29. It was completed last year and has already been stabilized.

Real estate development is very much a local business. It is that way because so much of it is driven by relationships, but also because every market has its own little idiosyncrasies.

This is always valuable to see. Sometimes we do things in our home market because it makes perfect sense to do so and sometimes we do it just because it's, "the way we've always done it."

One of the most obvious things about development in South Florida is that the parking is always above-grade. No basements. That has the result of bringing down construction costs; though I understand that, with sea level rise, insurance costs are on the rise.

If (or when) this whole autonomous vehicle thing does in fact take hold, it's going to be a hell of lot easier to convert all of that excess parking in Miami than it will be in Toronto.

Image: Midtown 29 (Art by Peter Gronquist)