For the Latin American buyer looking at Miami from abroad, renting sounds like throwing money away — month after month, with nothing to show at the end. It's a widespread instinct across the region, and there's a number that confirms it, or disproves it, without needing an opinion: the price-to-rent ratio. The problem is that number, on its own, tells only half the story.
This note explains how the ratio is calculated, compares six markets in the region against Miami, and makes the point the number alone doesn't show: who pays for what, once the property is actually yours.
What the price-to-rent ratio measures
The price-to-rent ratio is simple: divide a property's purchase price by what it would cost to rent it for a year. The result is, literally, the number of years of rent equivalent to the purchase price. A US$300,000 condo renting for US$1,500 a month (US$18,000 a year) has a ratio of 16.7 — it takes 16.7 years of rent to cover the purchase price.
As a rule of thumb, used by market analysts and Numbeo itself: a ratio below 15 tends to favor buying; between 16 and 20 is a gray zone, depending on your time horizon and financing; above 21, renting and investing the difference elsewhere tends to make more sense. It's not a law of physics — some markets justify buying at a ratio of 18 on expected appreciation, others don't work even at 12 because of holding costs — but it's a reasonable first filter.
Six cities, one number
Using Numbeo data from July 2026, here is the downtown price-to-rent ratio in six cities where much of this site's audience lives:
| City | Price-to-rent ratio (downtown) | Quick read |
|---|---|---|
| Santiago, Chile | 22 | Rent, clearly |
| Bogotá | 18 | Gray zone |
| Buenos Aires | 15 | Gray zone, buy-side edge |
| Lima | 15 | Gray zone, buy-side edge |
| Mexico City | 14 | Buy, clearly |
| Miami | 11 | Buy, clearly |
At first glance, Miami wins by a wide margin: with a ratio of 11, buying pays for itself in a little over a decade of equivalent rent — half the time it takes in Santiago. It's the number that circulates on social media and at the dinner table as a closed argument for buying in Florida. It's also the incomplete number.
What the ratio leaves out: who pays for what
The price-to-rent ratio compares purchase price against bare rent. It doesn't include a single dollar of what it costs the owner to hold the property once bought — and in Miami, that cost weighs more than in almost any other market on the list, for three concrete reasons.
The association fee is paid by the owner, not the tenant
The tenant pays a fixed rent, set by the lease. The HOA — the condo association fee, which in Miami has climbed sharply since 2020 under the post-Surfside law requiring buildings to fully fund real reserves — is paid exclusively by the owner. (I covered this in detail in why Miami HOA fees soared.)
Homeowner's insurance in Florida is among the highest in the country
Florida leads the United States in residential insurance cost, a combination of hurricane risk and an insurance market that partially pulled out of the state in recent years. That cost also falls entirely on the owner: at best, the tenant carries a contents policy — a small fraction of insuring the full structure.
Property tax, without an exemption, runs close to 2% a year
This is the most underestimated point. A buyer who doesn't live in the property — the profile of nearly every foreign buyer — doesn't qualify for the homestead exemption, which in Florida sharply reduces the taxable base. Without that exemption, the combined millage from the county, city and school district in Miami-Dade runs roughly 18 to 22 mills, which works out to an annual tax close to 2% of the property's value — about US$20,000 a year for every million dollars of value — per county tax-rate data (taxbycounty.com) and Miami-Dade property tax guides cited by mortgage lenders such as JVM Lending. I covered elsewhere why the homestead exemption almost never reaches the foreign buyer, and why that doesn't change even if Governor DeSantis's proposal to eliminate the tax on primary residences moves forward: it's designed for the resident, not the investor.
It's not what buying costs. It's what owning costs.
Added together, HOA dues, insurance and property tax show up in neither the numerator nor the denominator of the price-to-rent ratio. They show up later, in the owner's real bill. And in Miami that bill runs higher than in any of the other five cities on the list: neither Santiago, nor Bogotá, nor Buenos Aires, nor Lima, nor Mexico City sticks the owner with an annual tax close to 2% of the property's value, on top of insurance that leads the nation and an HOA fee on a structurally rising path.
That doesn't mean Miami stops being an attractive market to buy in — it is, and a ratio of 11 remains, comparatively, the most favorable of the six. It means the real margin is narrower than the headline number suggests, and that deciding on that number alone — without loading in what belongs to the owner — leads to underestimating what it costs to hold the property, not what it costs to buy it.
The ratio is a starting point, not the answer
The price-to-rent ratio works, and works well, as a first filter for comparing markets against each other. What it doesn't do — what no aggregate ratio does — is replace the specific math of one particular property: its actual HOA, its actual insurance premium, its actual millage, its actual market rent. That math changes building by building, even unit by unit within the same building.
For anyone who already owns in Miami and wants to know whether their real number — not the headline one — still justifies holding the property, or whether it's time to rethink the strategy, the first step is having the right data: what the unit is worth today, and what it actually costs to hold per year. I can give you that first step at no cost with a valuation of your Miami property, using public-record data and real comparables from your building.
Frequently asked questions
What is the price-to-rent ratio?
It's a property's purchase price divided by the annual rent it would generate. The result is the number of years of rent equivalent to the purchase price: a ratio of 15 means it takes 15 years of rent to cover the purchase price.
What is Miami's price-to-rent ratio in 2026?
Per Numbeo data from July 2026, Miami's downtown price-to-rent ratio is 11 — the lowest among Santiago (22), Bogotá (18), Buenos Aires (15), Lima (15) and Mexico City (14).
Why doesn't Miami's ratio tell the whole story?
Because it compares price against bare rent and leaves out the costs only the owner pays: HOA dues, homeowner's insurance — among the highest in the country — and property tax, which without a homestead exemption runs close to 2% of value a year.
How do I know what a Miami property really costs to own?
Add annual HOA dues, the insurance premium and property tax — without an exemption, roughly 2% of assessed value — to the purchase price, and compare that figure against the rent it would generate or that you're forgoing. That's how you decide well — with those numbers, not just the ratio.