Fort Lauderdale Welcomes Spring Breakers & Their Condo-Buying Parents

POMPANO BEACH, Fla., March 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- It's spring break time in Fort Lauderdale, and thousands of college students and their friends are headed to the Florida beach town. Condo developers are hoping their parents might visit, too, and buy one of the city's new multi-million-dollar condos.

Spring Break Time in Fort Lauderdale

It's that time of year again. The cold weather is almost gone, and thousands of college students are headed to Fort Lauderdale, the original spring break town that began back in the 1950s when northern colleges sent their swim teams there to train and compete in the city's Olympic-size pool. It wasn't long before news of the town's beautiful beaches, warm weather, and affordable hotel prices spread to the rest of America's college students.

After the 1960 hit movie "Where the Boys Are," about four pretty coeds who spend their event-filled spring break in Fort Lauderdale, the beach town became the #1 springtime destination for thousands of beer-drinking and hotel-packing college students. Florida's liberal rules on alcohol availability at age 18 (until 1986) sent the partying into overdrive. By the 1980s, over 300,000 students and their friends were making the annual spring trip to Fort Lauderdale.

By the 1990s, Fort Lauderdale's city leaders had started to transition away from its party town reputation to attract a more sophisticated and wealthy crowd, cracking down on the college student parties, the overpacked hotel rooms, and sleeping on the beach. While college students are still welcome, the days and nights of wet tee-shirt contests and public drunkenness are mostly over. Today, Fort Lauderdale has become one of Florida's most glamorous beach towns. Instead of rowdy partiers, the city is now attracting an older and affluent crowd who are buying many of the new Fort Lauderdale oceanfront condos. And with over 300 miles of ocean, canals, and rivers and more affordable land than nearby Miami Beach and Naples, much of South Florida's waterfront condo construction has moved to the Fort Lauderdale area.

At the northern end of the Fort Lauderdale Strip, the town's primary vacation area, Howard Johnson's was one of the state's most popular spring break hotels from 1958 until it closed in 2005 and remained vacant for years. A fond memory for aging baby boomers, the hotel was demolished in 2014 to make way for the first Fort Lauderdale new oceanfront condo building in over a decade. Since then, upscale Fort Lauderdale oceanfront condo buildings, including Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, and Auberge, have been built with starting prices over three million dollars for the best ocean views.

Even more of a change, Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale's next-door neighbor, was a sleepy beach town for years but is busier now with more oceanfront condo construction than any other Florida beach town. The new Pompano Beach condo developments that began in 2007 with the construction of the Plaza at Oceanside and Sonata buildings have now entered the highest end of the Florida luxury condo market with the Ritz Carlton Residences and the Waldorf Astoria Residences under construction and the Pompano Beach W and Armani Casa residential projects in pre-construction. A dozen more Pompano Beach condo projects near the ocean are under construction or are in the pipeline.

While the spring surge of college students heading to Fort Lauderdale is not likely to go back to the 1960s-to-'80s levels, those baby boom-era kids are now over or near retirement age and are the peak target for the developers of the city's condo market. While some beach towns, such as Miami Beach, are trying to keep spring breakers away with curfews and $100 parking fees, Fort Lauderdale still welcomes them. And city leaders are especially happy to welcome their parents to visit, who have the money to buy one of the city's new beach condos.

TopTenRealEstateDeals.com is a real estate company in Pompano Beach, which focuses on the Florida pre-construction condo market.

SOURCE Top Ten Real Estate Deals