West Palm Beach feels growing pains amid wealth influx as neighborhoods navigate change
The COVID pandemic fueled a historic migration of wealth to Palm Beach County. It's an influx of money that is transforming the style, landscape, and fortunes of our area, with some communities more and more resembling the tony town of Palm Beach. The changes will be permanent, and could prove a boon for some while deepening the affordability crunch, traffic frustrations and even school waiting lists for others. This is one part of a Palm Beach Post multi-part series titled The Palm Beaching Project.
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Sudden and brutal and beautiful came the change for West Palm Beach’s stately historic communities where post-pandemic affluence rampaged like a wrecking ball or waved like a magic wand.
World War II-era ranch-style houses have been razed in droves; entire blocks transformed by sleek sophistication rising from the rubble of nostalgic cinderblock.
At the same time, century-old houses moldering like Miss Havisham’s in “Great Expectations” are being renovated into storied charmers — polished antiques on the outside humming with 21st century conveniences inside.
It’s part of the COVID-spurred money migration into the county, $7 billion in gross income in one year alone, according to one count. That influx of capital has spurred a residential renaissance in West Palm Beach, a 130-year-old town that has had two distinct building booms, first in the early 1920s and then the 1950s.
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One hundred years since the initial surge of residents changed the city’s landscape, the nascent years of the 2020s may prove to be a third turning point as the town built to cater to its well-heeled island neighbor comes into its own.
“It’s been a very fast change,” said West Palm Beach resident D.J. Belock, who moved with his wife Korinne to the area in 2017 from New York City and is now treasurer of the historic El Cid Neighborhood Association. “I think people moved here not really knowing what Palm Beach County was, but I don’t know of anyone who has moved back.”
Belock lives in a 1920s-era Mediterranean-style home just south of downtown West Palm Beach, now dubbed “Wall Street South.”
Along with other historic neighborhoods, it is trying to maintain the sentiment of a more than 100-year-old community while negotiating with multiple builders looking to surround it with new retail and residential construction.
Palm Beach County's transformation: How wealth migration impacts our area
And the Belocks have an interesting perspective. They are also small business owners of Palm Beach Regency vintage design store. As such, they hope for a balance that allows for growth, without overgrowth.
“We aren’t anti-development,” said Belock. “We want developers to make money and we want something that works with the neighborhood, and I think that’s possible to do.”
Population and wealth growth in West Palm Beach
Nationally, the swell of affluence in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach has kept the two cities repeatedly in a “Top 5” list of the fastest growing areas for accumulating millionaire residents.
Between 2013 and 2023, they experienced a 93% increase in millionaires, ranking them third in this year’s Henley & Partners USA Wealth Report.
An analysis in the report says that millionaire retirees, especially from New York and California, are contributing to the growth in the two cities. However, it also attributes the increase to transplants coming from the fund management and entertainment sectors.
“In-migration of high-income individuals can be transformative to an area,” University of Florida researchers Conor Comfort and Stefan Rayer wrote in an April report that highlights Palm Beach County's growth. The report noted that the average adjusted gross income that came into the county just from the Manhattan area between 2018 and 2021 was a “remarkably high” $469,180.
Where they will live
West Palm Beach gained about 4,740 new residents between 2020 and 2023, ranking it 22nd out of 100 Florida cities for population growth in that time period, according to the University of Florida.
Many transplants settled in areas close to downtown where city resident and real estate developer Gus Renny specializes in renovating historic homes. He’s bought and renovated and sold 2,000 homes in his career but his first historic makeover was in 2018.
Since the pandemic, he’s sold a 1926 renovation to a couple from San Francisco, a 1928 redo to a couple who flipped it to a new arrival from Brooklyn, and a 1925 home to a New Jersey businessman. He also lives with his wife and young daughter in a 1949 home he restored in the Southland Park Historic District.
Renny, 48, said he’s gambling on a continued migration to West Palm Beach as office towers built by Related Cos. of New York and its owner billionaire Palm Beach resident Stephen Ross fill up.
“They are going to need beautiful places to live,” Renny said. “Smart people like Stephen Ross have put the work in, and there’s an old saying, ‘If a Starbucks opens up, build something next to it.’”
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A Starbucks opened in 2021 about a half mile north of Renny’s newest project, a 1928 home that has been vacant and neglected for two decades after the previous owner died at the age of 101 with no immediate relatives.
“These homes are an important part of the history here,” Renny said. “People think the old houses should just be knocked down. That’s not the case.”
For buyers who want a home close to downtown but with a modern aesthetic, they can find newly-built houses in older communities that aren’t recognized as official historic districts — a designation that restricts what can be built and demolished.
Eyebrows were raised when a rundown 900-square-foot one-bedroom home with no pool or water view went on the market for $1.1 million in 2023. But it was in a small carveout from historic Southland Park, meaning it could be demolished and rebuilt. It sold for $950,000 and was followed by three similar sales on the same street. All were razed for new construction.
"West Palm Beach has always had so much potential," said West Palm Beach real estate developer Sam Fisch, who recently completed a new boutique townhome community called Park Central in a hip industrial area southwest of downtown. "Now with more industry moving here, there are more real jobs for people."
One popular neighborhood south of downtown West Palm Beach is nicknamed SoSo for its location south of Southern Boulevard. This is where small single-story, Midcentury homes succumbed to the pandemic-driven growth spurt in lieu of newer styles modeling the British West Indies and "island contemporary."
Five of 10 homes on the north side of Summa Street between Olive Avenue and Washington Road in SoSo are under construction or newly built. The 1950s-era homes with 1,300 square feet resemble doll houses next to the new two-story houses that are more than double — sometimes triple — that size.
Caitlin Kirk, 26, grew up on Summa Street in a 1950s-era home of cinderblock and stucco. Her parents still live there. Now an aspiring actress in New York City, she says the SoSo community is changing with an influx of affluent buyers.
“It is a little funny to see our petite house next to these very beautiful ornate large homes,” Kirk said.
Growing up she remembers her neighbors were a dentist and his wife, an older lady who lived with her son, and an artist who painted wallpaper.
“It definitely felt less Palm Beach back then,” Kirk said about SoSo. “Now it’s very much retired business moguls and the homes are of the price point that Palm Beach homes used to be.”
A new home next door to Kirk’s childhood house sold to former Palm Beach residents in May for $6.7 million.
Firms still flocking to Wall Street South
The Bahnsen Group, a wealth management firm with $5.5 billion in assets under management, announced this year it is opening an office in West Palm Beach.
Associate Private Wealth Advisor Jeremy Polon is relocating from Newport Beach, California, to work full time out of One Clearlake Center west of downtown. The firm was in the process of hiring a handful of employees in June and expects to grow from there.
Newly announced tenants to the One Flagler office tower include Paulson Capital investment management services firm and banking giant JP Morgan Chase. Northwell Health, New York's largest healthcare provider, has also signed a lease.
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Recruits of these firms will find a different housing market than just a few years ago, with prices supercharged by the pandemic.
The median price of a single-family home countywide increased 78% from April 2020 to April 2024’s record high of $650,000. The average price during the same period grew by 101% to April 2024’s $1.17 million.
D.J. Belock, the former New York City resident, said his friends in the Northeast ask him if migrants who moved to South Florida during the pandemic are reconsidering their choice. He doesn't think so.
"Yes, it's hot in the summer, but it's 97 degrees in New York today," Belock said in a June interview. "Imagine getting on the subway in that heat. When you live here, the commute is a 5-minue drive down Flagler."
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: As rich people move south, West Palm becomes more like Palm Beach
