Almost every South Florida buyer has heard by now that tariffs are raising construction costs. The headlines are not subtle: "+$10,900 per home," "4–10% cost increase," "material prices surging." What's harder to find is the local evidence — is this actually showing up in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach permit data and new-construction pricing, or is it a national projection we're reading about from Washington think tanks?
We went and looked. What follows is every finding we could extract from 4.6 million MLS records and 13,500 South Florida building permits since 2020, focused on where tariff-driven cost pressure is most visible and where it isn't yet.
The simplest place to start: how much have buyers paid per square foot for brand-new construction? We pulled every closed residential sale in the South Florida MLS where the year built equals the close year (or the year before) — the cleanest proxy for "new construction." That's 198,236 sales spanning 2020 through April 2026.
A few things worth noting in that chart:
Permit data is a different window — it tells us what developers and contractors expect projects to cost, disclosed to the county at permit pull. We filtered to large permits ($500K–$50M estimated cost) across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach to focus on structures where imported steel, lumber, and finished components are most impactful.
Important caveats:
Both readings point the same direction: the cost of building at scale in South Florida is rising, and early 2026 is the inflection point.
Those findings are consistent with what national analysts are publishing:
| Source | Projected Impact | Timeframe |
|---|---|---|
| NAHB / Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (April 2025) | +$10,900 per typical home | From recent tariff actions |
| Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center | +$30 billion/year to residential construction | Active + announced tariffs, full year 2027 |
| Regional commercial real estate analysis | +6% materials, +3% total project cost | vs. 2024 baseline |
| Reuters July survey | +4–10% U.S. homebuilding cost | Depending on region and materials |
| Southeast input-price tracker | Wood +8.2%, drywall +6.2%, steel +5.1%, concrete +4.7% | Year-over-year |
The tariffs expected to have the biggest local impact on residential construction:
South Florida has one of the deepest pre-construction and under-construction condo pipelines in the country. As of April 2026, roughly 39,000 active pre-construction or new-construction condo listings are on the market across the region — ranging from $170/sqft in Doral to $717/sqft in Miami Beach.
For a buyer who signed a pre-construction contract at 2024 pricing expecting 2026 delivery, here's the actual exposure:
The single-family side tells a different story. Developers on SFH (Pembroke Pines, Miramar, Homestead, Doral tract homes) absorbed most of the 2021–2022 shock already. Fixed-price contracts with national production builders (D.R. Horton, Lennar, Pulte) protect buyers from mid-construction cost swings, though those same builders have been raising base prices 2–4% per quarter to cover material costs entering 2026.
The specific categories where tariff pressure is most visible on SFH spec sheets:
The permit data shows where cost pressure isn't visible yet. Small residential permits (under $500K — the individual renovation, pool install, re-roof range) have stayed roughly flat on median. That makes sense: these projects use a higher share of domestic labor and standard materials, with less exposure to the tariff-affected imported components.
If you're looking at renovation rather than new construction, the tariff math is meaningfully gentler. A re-roof, pool deck, impact window retrofit, or kitchen remodel is not seeing the same 2026 YTD permit-cost jump as mega-projects — though individual material-specific line items (cabinets, custom steel railings) may still surprise you.
Three actions that matter:
Run any specific property you're considering through our Florida property tax calculator to see your all-in annual cost before the offer goes out. And if you're weighing pre-construction against existing condos, our 2026 new-construction guide has the full pipeline.
MLS data: 198,236 closed residential sales across Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe counties with year_built ≥ close_year − 1, filtered to $200K–$10M and ≥ 500 sqft, 2020–April 2026. Permit data: 13,500 building permits from county issuance records, Miami-Dade/Broward/Palm Beach, filtered to estimated cost $500K–$50M for the large-project analysis. Pre-construction listings: ~39,000 active listings with property_sub_type = Condominium and year_built ≥ 2025 or PropertyCondition indicating new/under-construction, April 2026.
Broker One Research is the data-journalism arm of Broker One. Every post under this byline is backed by an original SQL analysis across our proprietary datasets: 2M Florida parcels from county appraisers, 4.6M active and historical MLS listings, 6.9M Florida business entities from Sunbiz, FEMA flood zones, building permits, code violations, and Census ACS demographics. We publish our methodology — row counts, filters, date ranges — so readers can evaluate the rigor of every finding. We use median-based metrics rather than means to keep MLS data-entry outliers out of headline numbers. If you're a journalist or researcher who wants to cite our work, email research@mybrokerone.com.
