Inflation, mainly with gas and home prices, keeps pounding South Floridians
prices in South Florida shot up 9.6% during the 12 months ending in April, outpacing the U.S. consumer inflation rate of 8.3% — still hovering around a 40-year nationwide high.
Led by lofty energy (mainly gas prices at the pump) and housing costs, the inflation mark last month for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area was a slight drop from the 9.8% most recent reading in February, according to a bimonthly report released
Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, said the marginal decline in South Florida’s prices was “hard to get excited about,” calling the decrease “not much more than a rounding error.”
South Florida’s consumer price index for the 12month period through April showed food prices rose 4.4%, core prices — homes, cars, clothing, everything except food and energy — jumped 7.5%, while energy costs rocketed 41.5%.
The huge increase in South Florida’s energy costs came as no surprise to McBride, who noted regionConsumer al residents have been contending with ballooning prices of gasoline. For those commuting to work, it has been more of a financial burden.
For example, pump prices in Miami have soared from an average of $2.88 a gallon in May 2021 to $4.40 a gallon last week, according to Gasbuddy.com data.
That, coupled with people in South Florida using more air-conditioning to cool their homes as late spring pushes temperatures and humidity much higher, has inflated energy costs, he said.
Also, the region’s everincreasing prices for houses and apartments remain a
key inflation driver, registering a 10.5% annual boost in the housing portion of the area’s consumer price index.
Although the Federal Reserve remains in inflation-crushing mode, McBride doesn’t think recent increases in interest rates — and more rate hikes are coming this year — will cool South Florida’s housing market.
The people paying cash
for houses in South Florida are unaffected by rising interest rates on mortgages.
“The demand [for homes] so far exceeds supply, and South Florida has a higher share of cash buyers than most other markets around the country,” McBride said. “Those cash buyers are not interest-rate sensitive.”