You know your city’s housing market has arrived when it is the subject of its own cheesy Netflix reality show.
“Selling Tampa” highlights the escapades of the luxury real estate firm Allure Realty and its founder, former U.S. Army paratrooper Sharelle Rosado.
Launched in December, the series (a spinoff from “Selling Sunset,” which highlights Los Angeles) introduces the mostly-minority, all-woman team, adding empowerment in with the drama around the sales of multimillion-dollar homes and the lavish commissions they generate.
And no wonder — even if all the homes aren’t selling in the same eight-figure range as the ones handled by Allure Realty, this Florida city on the Gulf of Mexico coast has earned a lot of attention from real estate investors.
While Derek Jeter, Tom Brady and Tom Cruise may all own homes here, there’s still plenty of room for mere mortals when it comes to investment in Florida real estate at more moderate values.
The median home value is at $371,600, up 24 percent year-over-year, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting.
As for rental rates, median single-family home rent is $1,895, up 14.6 percent year-over-year, according to JBREC.
Median days on market in June was 41, down 4 days year-over-year.
“Tampa's one of the main success stories of the post-pandemic recovery,” says Moody’s economist Emily Mandel. “The area has benefited from a surge of new residents and strong job creation. The metro area's employment rebound ranks among the top 10 of metro areas with more than one million residents.
“Importantly,” she adds, “the new jobs being created are generally of high quality, including strong growth in high-paying finance and professional services.”
Among other attractions are the Sunshine State's relaxed tax laws, including no individual income tax.
Even as mortgage interest rates rise, going past 5 percent after hovering at historical lows around 3 percent throughout 2020 and 2021, this Florida real estate market remains strong.
“Tampa is still a seller’s market as of now,” said Bryan Waters, a broker for Mynd in St. Petersburg.
“Properties are still moving, if a bit more slowly,” he said. “With rental rates still on the rise, there are some opportunities to acquire a good rental property. Those still move quickly. Larger, high-end homes are staying on the market longer than normal."
There are a lot of buyers, including those looking for investment property they can buy remotely, and institutional groups, and people moving to Central Florida from places like Boston, New York, and Chicago, according to Waters. With many folks stuck at home, in Tampa they can afford more space and can go outside year-round.
Tampa’s post-pandemic real estate recovery
Many cities in Florida have taken a hit during pandemic lockdowns, which have seen travel and tourism plummet. But Tampa’s real estate market made a strong comeback, partly because its economy is less dependent on tourism than, say, Orlando, its neighbor to the east and home to Disney World (and countless other theme parks and tourist attractions).
A number of Fortune 500 companies are located in the area, including Publix Supermarkets, electronics wholesaler Tech Data Corp., tech manufacturer Jabil Inc., WellCare Health Plans, Raymond James Financial, and casual dining company Bloomin’ Brands (which owns Outback Steakhouse and Bonefish Grill).
Partly due to its major port, the city is a regional trade and distribution center, and the economy is also bolstered by financial and insurance services, manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, and the presence at MacDill Air Force Base, all creating a diversified job market.
And there’s a new entry into that long roster of industries. A Forbes report says the tech scene is “exploding” and that this Florida market is positioned to become one of the tech capitals not only of Florida but of the South.
The city’s economy is growing, strengthening the job market and underpinning the demand in Tampa’s real estate and housing market.
The Tampa Bay Economic Development Council points out that according to the latest U.S. Census, the area ranked fourth in the nation for net migration in 2020, with nearly 49,000 new residents, or 134 every day.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area population is about 3.2 million, up from about 2.1 million at the turn of the millennium.
A recent study commissioned by the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority predicts the population of Hillsborough County (of which Tampa is the seat) could grow up to 30 percent by 2040. There has been good growth in the cohort from 25 to 44 years old, who are in their prime home buying age.
So it might be time for St. Petersburg to retire its enduring sobriquet: “God’s waiting room.”
Tampa Bay attractions: winning sports teams and beaches
Tampa's Clearwater Beach is known for its calm waters, which draws visitors for jet-skiing, parasailing, and paddleboarding.(Credit: Flickr/Anthony G. Reyes)
There are plenty of reasons for people to keep coming. Thrillist was raving about the food scene in 2018 — Tampa is, after all, the actual birthplace of the Cuban sandwich.
One very big sell is the white sand beaches of neighboring St. Petersburg and Clearwater, which regularly get high ratings on TripAdvisor. And there’s plenty of other fun to be had.
Locals call the area “Champa Bay” for its concentration of winning sports teams: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the 2002 and 2020 Super Bowls and have made 11 playoffs, while the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team are multiple World Series contenders.
But ice hockey may be the most popular in this subtropical metro; the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2020, and the team averages among the highest attendance numbers among all National Hockey League teams.
As for other tourist draws, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay draws millions every year, and visitors love the Florida Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Ybor City State Museum, which preserves the local history of the cigar trade.
People used to line up to visit the tigers, lynxes, and jaguars at Big Cat Rescue, the sanctuary run by Carole Baskin, until it closed to visitors due to bad press in the form of that other trashy Netflix show, “Tiger King.”
Visitors can still take in St. Petersburg’s Salvador Dalí Museum, where 400,000 a year flock to see the creations of the Spanish Surrealist, the Master of the Melting Clocks. Those who want to get a Church of Scientology personality test for kicks can head to its global headquarters in Clearwater.
Locals can also be proud of some of the region’s infrastructure highlights; J.D. Power named Tampa International Airport second-best for customer satisfaction among large airports in 2021, the fifth year the airport has been in the top five.
The area’s educational infrastructure is also outstanding. There are some 23 schools near Tampa, enrolling more than 110,000. The University of South Florida has risen in the US News and World Report ratings, moving from 94 to 46 among public universities and 67 spots among all universities (170 to 103). It currently ranks as one of the nation’s top 50 public universities.
Tampa’s aviation past and projected future growth
Tampa’s background mixes agriculture, military concerns and a curious landmark in aviation history. While the city’s name is of uncertain origin, it might be a Creek word for “a nearby place,” as in by the Bay.
Originally inhabited by Calusa and Timucua peoples, the region was later home to Fort Brooke, an 1824 military post, and began to see new industries after the 1884 arrival of the South Florida Railroad. Spanish entrepreneur Vicente Martinez Ybor introduced cigar manufacturing to the region, and Ybor City became a worldwide center for the trade.
Though it lasted just four months, the world’s first scheduled passenger airline service, inaugurated in 1914, sprang up to connect Tampa and St. Petersburg (now just a half-hour apart on I-275).
Today, local citrus fruits, along with the phosphates that are a major industry, leave the Sunshine State via the port at Tampa, while essentials like petroleum, coal and steel come into this regional trade and distribution center.
If there’s a worrisome factor weighing against Tampa’s long-term future, it’s one that many low-lying coastal cities worldwide will face: climate change and the rising sea levels that will result. Both Waters and Mandel factor it into their assessment of the city’s prospects.
“I definitely keep flood zones in mind,” says Waters. “If you have a mortgage, you need flood insurance, which is an additional expense. If there’s a hurricane, you’re more likely to get flooded. If the water rises, you’re more likely to get flooded. St. Petersburg does a great job, but there is a lot of developed land that’s under sea level. In the Shore Acres neighborhood, if it so much as sprinkles, it’s flooding. You just have to know that.”
All the same, experts are betting on the city’s future. No less a figure than Bill Gates is investing in the Water Street Tampa multi-use project, which includes the city’s first “true five-star luxury hotel,” the JW Marriott.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Urban Land Institute’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2022 report ranks the metro area #2 nationally among homebuilding prospects and #5 among overall real estate prospects, classifying it as a “magnet” (alongside cities like Phoenix and San Antonio).
Job growth is expected to be a bit better than the national figure, says the report, which indicates that about two-thirds of new building is expected to be single-family homes, well above the national figure of 57.3 percent, leaving plenty of room for investors.
The city may also grow at such a rate that it may be part of a new phenomenon, a “megaregion,” with population projected to climb by 2025 to almost 25 percent higher than 2010 figures.
The future promises even better days, especially for those sassy entrepreneurs at Allure Realty. Long may they be, as they put it, “closing deals in heels.”
