'They're Doubling Down': Miami's Newest Corporate Residents Hungry For More Office Space

While the trend of companies relocating to or opening offices in Miami has slowed, the businesses that have recently moved to the Magic City have hired more people, expanded their operations and gotten more confident in the city.

Now, they need more space.

“It was easy to hire people,” said Cushman & Wakefield broker Brian Gale, who represents some of the city's premier buildings, including 830 Brickell. “They were probably a little conservative in their initial takedown of space and then realized that, wow, it's a real market. People want to be here.”

New-to-market tenants made up between 15% and 21% of Miami office leasing activity between 2020 and 2022. Now, new entrants have fallen in line with pre-pandemic levels, making up only 6% of 2025 office deals, according to data from Blanca Commercial Real Estate. 

But last year's comeback year for office leasing was largely fueled by corporate expansions. Companies growing their offices accounted for 671K SF of space absorption in 2025, according to Blanca CRE.

After Amazon signed Wynwood's largest office lease with 50K SF at Wynwood Plaza at the beginning of 2025, the tech giant expanded its lease a few months later to 76K SF. Uber nearly doubled its office footprint at 3MiamiCentral when it signed a 23K SF expansion in July.

New York City-based Ripco Real Estate, which entered Miami’s office market in 2021 with a small office at 1221 Brickell Ave., grew by 30% when it relocated to to 5,200 SF at The Gateway at Wynwood in October, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

The trend is expected to increase. Some companies are looking to expand by up to 10 times their current footprint this year, Colliers Senior Vice President Kevin Gonzalez said.

Miami’s lack of income taxes and favorable business climate has led many to expect another corporate migration south as wealthy executives face threats of higher taxes in California and potentially New York.

“It's very much a trend,” CBRE Senior Vice President Randy Carballo said. “In light of the billionaire tax in California, we have seen a strong interest in groups looking at expanding their presence in Florida. The groups that are here are doubling down, and also new-to-market tenants.”

Developed by OKO Group and Cain, 830 Brickell was a magnet for transplants during the pandemic. Two companies, Corient and Citadel, opted to expand their initial leases before the 724-foot office tower even delivered.

Gale, who leads leasing at 830 Brickell alongside Ryan Holtzman and Andrew Trenchman, said one of the building's largest tenants had more employees wanting to move to the Sunshine State than it expected. 

“When they went back to New York and said, ‘Hey, we just opened up a Miami office,’ they had a bunch of people raising their hand going, ‘We want to move there,’” Gale said, declining to identify the firm. “They're like, ‘Oh, my God. OK, let's see if we can get more space.’”

When Canadian investment adviser CI Financial decided to open its U.S. headquarters in Miami in January 2022, it signed on for 19K SF at 830 Brickell. It expanded in February 2024 to 34K SF at the building, Savills senior analyst Andrea Duque told Bisnow in an email.

Corient needed more space as it grew both its portfolio and its headcount, said Savills Vice Chairman and co-head Miami Donna Abood, who represented the company in the lease. It didn't balk at the asking rents in 830 Brickell soaring to never-before-seen heights.

“Compared to what they're used to paying in Toronto, they thought it was a very fair number. A very fair number,” Abood said. “Those of us that were local for decades doing business here, we were blown away.”

It was fully leased when it opened its doors in October 2024, leaving no more room for tenants who want to grow. But that could be about to change.

In November, Banco Master SA — which signed a record-breaking, nearly $200 per SF lease to take the final 27K SF in the building — was shut down and its controlling shareholder was arrested.

This has led to four of the largest tenants in the building — which could include Citadel, Microsoft and Thoma Bravo — to inquire about the remaining space, Gale said.

He declined to comment on which firms are inquiring, but he doesn't expect it to be vacant long once the space is legally returned. The landlords started that process last week when they moved to evict Banco Master.

“Once that all gets worked out, I think it'll lease to an existing tenant in the building in short order,” Gale said.

Many companies moving to Miami are coming with plans to eventually scale up, and a huge driver in tenant expansion across the board is growing headcounts, Abood said.

Black & Veatch plans to double its office footprint in Miami after signing a nearly 7K SF lease at 2121 Ponce de Leon Blvd. in Coral Gables. It plans to grow its workforce by both hiring locally and relocating staff from Kansas City, where it is based.

“South Florida's team has been growing, and the need for a bigger office space has resulted in new lease contracts,” Black & Veatch Director of Governments and Water Resilience Irela Bagué said in an emailed statement.

Some are intentionally choosing spaces with neighboring vacant floors with the anticipation of taking them at a later date, like Connecticut-based Verition, a fund management firm that signed its first Miami lease for 5K SF at 701 Brickell Ave. in April and anticipates an expansion.

“They wouldn't go into a space that was landlocked,” said Gale, who also handles leasing at 701 Brickell. “They would only go into a space where they knew they could grow. I think that's a perfect example of the mentality of some of these tenants.”  

While many new entrants to the market are growing and pushing up rents, longtime tenants who have been in the city for decades are struggling to maintain their presence.

"It's that you're either rightsizing or you're actually growing," Abood said.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Fowler White Burnett left its 35K SF office in Brickell, which it occupied for 20 years, for 20K SF at Citigroup Center in Downtown Miami. A major factor was soaring rents when the law firm reentered the market — prices were nearly three times higher than when it first signed its lease in 2015, Bisnow reported.

But for those coming into the market from New York or California, Miami office rents are about the same or less than what they are used to, Abood said. Many of them still undershoot their true needs, she added.

“The smaller companies that still want to come here and grow, the fintech [and] the tech companies, they're all coming in, and as the broker doing what I've done for so long, I scratch my head when I hear the square footage they want,” Abood said. “Because I know in a year, we're going to be talking about expanding.”