Miami

Most people who say Miami mean the beach. The city itself is the other half of the decision, and increasingly the more consequential one. Downtown and the arts corridor north of it have absorbed the money, the offices and the cultural institutions that used to be reasons to keep a base somewhere else — and a buyer who intends to actually work here, rather than winter here, tends to end up on this side of the bay. What is being built reflects that: fewer resort towers, more residences designed around a working week, with the bay on one side and an actual city on the other.

The city proper is not one market but a run of them along the bay, and they price differently street by street. Downtown and the Arts & Entertainment District carry the density and the newest towers; Brickell sits to the south with its own centre of gravity; Edgewater and the Design District run north with a lower skyline and a different buyer. What they share is the bay, and how much of it a residence actually sees is the single largest variable in what it costs.

Almost everything transacting at the top of this market is a condominium, which makes the building itself as much of the purchase as the residence. Association health, reserve funding, the age of the systems and what the building is contractually obliged to do over the next decade all sit behind the price. Two apartments with the same view and the same finish can be very different assets depending on which of those they carry.

The city is also where the practical questions concentrate: which causeway the commute uses, how a hurricane season is handled, what parking is deeded and what is not, whether short-term letting is permitted. These are unglamorous and they decide how a residence lives. They are worth settling before a floor plan is chosen rather than after.