Three years ago, a Bay Area client moving to Miami was a story we would tell at dinner. In 2026 it is a Tuesday. Thirty-eight percent of the buyers our Lincoln Road office represented this year came from the Peninsula or San Francisco, and most of them sold a home with us in the Valley first.
What the money buys
At $10 million in Atherton or Palo Alto, buyers are typically choosing between a well-located home that needs work and a newer house on a smaller lot. In Miami, the same budget reaches a waterfront home in Coral Gables or Key Biscayne with a dock, or a turnkey new-construction house in Miami Beach, though not usually on the islands.
The gap narrows at the top. Prime deep-water frontage on Sunset Islands or Indian Creek trades at prices that would surprise anyone who remembers Miami as the cheaper coast.
The question is no longer whether Miami is cheaper. It is whether the life it offers fits the way your family wants to live.
The tax picture
Florida has no personal state income tax. For a household with significant wage or capital-gains income, that difference can outweigh the purchase price gap in a few years. Property taxes run the other way: Miami-Dade effective rates on a non-homesteaded home are higher than California's Proposition 13 baseline, and insurance on the coast is materially more expensive.
Domicile rules are real and the timing of a move matters. We bring your CPA and counsel in early, and we plan closing dates around their advice.
Schools and flights
Miami's private schools have expanded quickly to meet demand, and the best of them now run waitlists. We start school conversations at the same time as the home search. As for travel, nonstop flights between SFO and MIA run several times a day, and most two-coast clients keep a foot in both.
