(NewsNation) — Shows such as “Selling Tampa” can glamorize a move to Florida, but before you pack your bags, it’s important to know that real estate in the Sunshine State is changing.
Realtor.com recently ranked Florida the least affordable place to live in the nation. Miami was ranked the worst, with rent prices for a one bedroom listed at $2,929, a 55.3% increase compared to last year.
Scott Gerow, the executive director of the CBG Luxury Team at Compass, said it’s simply a matter of supply and demand.
“People originally came for the sun, the beaches, the golf, and the tennis, boating. And then we saw a tremendous influx of tax migration. And that brought us a lot of the buyers that we see that come from the traditional Northeast corridor in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Then it started to shift to the West. We saw a lot of Chicago buyers coming to South Florida. And now, obviously, a lot of California buyers,” Gerow said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Banfield.”
People are leaving high-tax states and going where there’s no state income tax.
“The homebuilders, the condo builders and developers can’t build them quickly enough. And we’re seeing over a thousand people a day coming to the sunshine state,” Gerow added.
Zillow crowned Tampa as 2022’s hottest housing market, beating out Miami and other popular Florida cities.
“The pandemic brought an acceleration of trends we were seeing in 2018 and 2019,” Zillow senior economist Jeff Tucker said in the report. “More affordable, medium-sized metro areas across the Sun Belt saw significantly more people coming than going, especially from more expensive, larger cities farther north and on the coasts. The pandemic has catalyzed purchases by millennial first-time buyers, many of whom can now work from anywhere.”