Brickell's Short-Term Rental Condo Boom: What Investors Should Check

Brickell developers are building a wave of condos designed to be rented by the night, and the investors buying them are betting that short-term rental income will cover the carry. The catch for buyers: in an ordinary Brickell condo tower, nightly renting can run into the building's own rules and City of Miami code enforcement, so the building you buy in matters more than the rent projection.

What developers are building

The clearest voice behind the trend is Habitat Group. In August 2025 its founder and CEO, Santiago Vanegas, told Miami Today that about half of Brickell's current rental supply is short-term and that roughly 2,000 more short-term rental units are expected in Brickell over five years. Those are the developer's own estimates, not audited counts.

Miami Today described Habitat's portfolio as about 35% of Brickell's preconstruction condo inventory, and Commercial Observer reported in December 2025 that the firm is building more than a third of the short-term rental units under construction in the district. Both outlets named Smart Brickell and Millux Place among its projects, buildings planned from the start for short-term rentals.

Where short-term renting meets pushback

Buildings designed for rentals are one thing. Older towers where owners started renting nightly are another:

• CBS Miami reported in May 2025 that City of Miami code inspectors had received more than 120 short-term rental complaints in Brickell since January, and that 12 had led to liens on properties.
• In August 2026, WLRN, summarizing a Miami Herald investigation, reported that the city told The Club at Brickell Bay, a 43-story, 643-unit tower, to cease vacation rentals, after the Herald found most of its units were being rented short-term.

For a buyer, that means two separate checks before counting on nightly income: whether the condo declaration and rules allow rentals that short, and whether the property's zoning permits them. A listing that says "Airbnb friendly" answers neither.

What Own.Miami's data shows

As of October 13, 2026, 127 of the 1,413 condo listings for sale in Own.Miami's Brickell data mention short-term, Airbnb or nightly rentals in their remarks, and 28 are classified as condo-hotel units.

Investor buying has not lifted prices. Own.Miami's Brickell market report counts 747 condo closings in the last 12 months, down about 10% from the year before, at a median of $608 per square foot, down about 3%. With 1,133 resale condos for sale, Brickell carries about 18 months of supply, a buyer's market by our measure (more than nine months).

The Club at Brickell Bay shows what a rental-heavy resale tower trades at. It recorded 40 sales on deeds between October 2025 and September 2026 at a median of $457,500, and its MLS closings in the last 12 months had a median of $545 per square foot, below the Brickell median. Lenders have not walked away: our financeability records count 28 loans from regulated lenders there in the last 12 months.