The real estate prospects for Tampa Bay next year are better than those of downtown Detroit, Las Vegas or Sacramento, California. This is according to a survey of 51 big markets that has appeared in the 2013 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report. Although Tampa Bay-St Petersburg may not be quite in the same league as the likes of New York, San Francisco or San Jose, California, it has landed almost right in the center at number 29 in the report unveiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute on Wednesday.
"The Tampa-St Pete market is one where real estate investors will proceed with caution," says the co-chair of Emerging Trends, Mitchell Roschelle, who is also the head of PwC's New York national real estate supervisory practice, while adding that the same market could benefit if investors feel that the market in Miami is starting to overheat again and begin looking for nearby real estate opportunities in Florida.
"The enduring low-gear real estate recovery" is set to continue next year, according to Emerging Trends. Safe but extremely low interest rates will have the effect of increasingly driving away yield-hungry investors from plain-vanilla financial instruments. The "ever-seesawing" stock market is also likely to point the same investors in the direction of real estate markets that are coming out of recent bottoms.
In terms of battered Florida, Miami has managed to break into the survey at number 12 in terms of national real estate markets. This ranking is based on three measures: development, investment, and the potential for home building. Just ahead of Tampa Bay at number 28 was Orlando, with the only other city in Florida measured, Jacksonville, coming in at number 39. Miami was deemed "mostly good", Orlando and Tampa Bay were designated as "fair", and Jacksonville was deemed "modestly poor".