Transplants driving apt. rents through roof MIAMI GETTIN' '$OAR' AT NY

The cost of renting an apartment in Miami is soaring, and locals are pointing the finger at newly arrived New Yorkers who flocked south not only for the sunshine, but for Florida’s low taxes and relaxed COVID restrictions.

A survey by Realtor.com found that rents for Miami-area apartments have risen 58% since March 2020 — the fastest rate for any major US metropolitan area.

Landlords of some of Miami’s luxury apartments have hiked prices by as much as 160% from last year as overall inventory has fallen to a fraction of what it was at the start of the pandemic, real-estate agents told The Post.

Craig Studnicky, a Jersey Shore transplant who owns a condo on Sunny Isles Beach and who is now CEO of luxury real-estate firm ISG World, said that “thousands” of New Yorkers have moved south in the past two years.

“It was all a reaction to COVID,” Studnicky told The Post.

Studnicky said that as New Yorkers arrived, most of them decided that they would initially rent “because they weren’t sure in which neighborhood of Miami . . . but we didn’t have so much supply.”

Bigger families have been hit by sticker shock the most as prices for a three-bedroom apartment have skyrocketed to $9,400 a month, a 160% jump from the same time last year, according to Rent.com.

“Miami has been calling for New Yorkers to come down and they got their wish with COVID,” Cody Vichinsky, the co-founder of Bespoke Real Estate, told The Post.

He said that a greater number of “high-end, affluent” New Yorkers are paying premium prices to rent condos because they still save due to a lower cost of living and lower taxes.

“It’s not just a fleeting snowbird season,” Vichinsky said.

Ryan Cerny, 25, a tech salesman, moved to South Florida from Westchester County in January 2020, weeks before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

He told The Post that he and a roommate were paying $1,750 a month for a two-bedroom, twobathroom, 1,000-square-foot condo in the heart of downtown.

Cerny said they were told to leave when the unit was sold earlier this year. The new landlord claimed he could fetch $2,800 a month, he told The Post.

One of the perks of living in Florida during the pandemic, Cerny said, was that restrictions such as mask mandates and lockdowns were lifted much quicker there than in New York.

The atmosphere in Miami “was nothing compared to the cautiousness” that was prevalent in New York, Cerny said.

The combination of record lows in inventory, inflation, the surging costs of construction and the rising demand to live in an area with warm weather year-round have left locals in a lurch.

Real-estate agents also note that plenty of California transplants have relocated to South Florida.