Preface / The Study

Okay, so a study came out this week that I was reading through that was all about home shopper intent. So they were focused on the search, creating a popularity bias versus the actual purchase themselves. So these people actually kind of put their money where their mouth was. This was more interest level. And so if you bear with me for a second, I want to take you through a journey of this study. And then the meat of the video, there's been a topic that I've been kind of working through this week that I want to see if I can add you some value by explaining an interesting premise that gives you a nice way of dividing different pieces of the state of Florida.

So study-wise, there are clearly most things, the consensus is that there are fewer buyers in the market simply. But of the buyers still in the market, which is a fair amount, record numbers are searching to leave their current metro. So they're in a metro and IP address searching outside of their current metro. Some of the major index websites, Redfin and Zillow and realtor.com, et cetera, record numbers in mostly January, a little February of people outside of the current metro. A quarter of the total population of buyers are not looking within the metro they live in currently, which is three to five percentage points above any comparable period.

 They took all of that and then they ranked the 10 most desired cities based on that premise in the entire United States, though. Florida happened to be, as the title suggests, five on that entire list. Some are not so surprising, and some are surprising. But I'm going to run you through that real quick and then we'll kind of move on to step two of the video. So I'm going to go from the least desirable to the most in the top 10.

So number 10 was Houston, Texas. I don't know if that surprises you. But Texas and parts of Arizona and that are benefiting a lot of the ways that Florida does in the weather, and Texas especially the climate a lot of times, the financial base and stuff. So if Florida's not chosen, then Texas is chosen a lot of times. So Houston's there.

Number nine's North Port, Sarasota. I would've thought it'd been a little bit higher, but some of these other cities are larger, so I could see that kind of thing. But North Port, Sarasota, Florida.

Orlando was number eight. They're making a push. They have some large industries, they have school systems with UCF, et cetera. And like Lake Nona's making these real modern pushes. So Orlando's getting more popular, in my opinion. It's becoming more interesting.

Cape Coral, Florida, is very much like a boater-centric town. I think more canals in Cape Coral than in Venice, ItalDallas, Texas is number six. Dallas is becoming in a lot of ways, a lot of what makes Sarasota and Tampa so popular. Dallas has a lot of that going on right now. So I know a lot of people are moving there. It's a lot more affordable than parts of Florida. Tampa, Florida's number five. y. A lot is going on there, but that is below Sarasota and above Naples.

Phoenix, Arizona, to that point, is number four. And then Las Vegas is number three. So Phoenix and Las Vegas. So I think a lot of people, in my opinion, like the Washington State, California, don't want to make the whole trek. I've had a lot of clients I've worked with who they went to Arizona first and regretted it and then came to Florida, but it was closer at that first exit where Florida seemed like obviously a corner of the country.

Sacramento, California was number two. I'm assuming Sacramento, California, I would assume the majority has to be interstate. Like they're already there, they're already in California. Unless people are hopping from Washington State or maybe job-related. But I could see them moving from other cities they like less in California to Sacramento. And then number one was Miami, Florida in a big way. It was more than double Houston, Texas. That surprised me because yeah, that one surprised me. I know Miami's popular. The one thought would be the Western United States. Florida's always been popular for New Jersey, New York, Washington, D.C., Illinois, and a lot of Canada. But what COVID created, in my opinion, was a lot of California, Seattle-ish of the world came to Florida a lot more than they were, where a lot of them were going to Texas before. And I'm wondering if some of the cities in California relate a little bit more to Miami because of all that it has going on and it's very coastal. So Miami's number one.

 #1 Tampa, Florida

Starting off with a bang, number one overall on this list, I'm going with Tampa Bay, Florida's metro. So hear me out on this. This is the way I thought through this. So geography, number one. So I view as if you had to pick one spot in the state to live forever, I want it to be coastal because you're already in Florida and I want it to be the most central version of the coast where if I had to be somewhere and I could access the other stuff, I would place this foundation. I think Southwest Florida by far the best location in the state. I mean, you have central proximity to the other surroundings, so you're very close to all the action that's going on, but you're not on any fringe, because I think a fringe is vulnerable, central proximity is good. I like the Gulf waters a little better. This nook of the gun in Florida and the shape and the wife's tails or whatever it may be, seems to get less overall hurricane impact than a lot of other parts of the state. All these things I like. And then this takes me to number two on the industry and economics part. Why not all of Southwest Florida would be equal and Tampa would rise in this capacity is because I think what you need, in my personal opinion, if you wanted the most kind of crash-proof idea, is you need a reason people need to be in a city, not just want to be there. Because you need an economics reason of why they have to be in the city, why the pay in the city would equal the housing in the city, in some capacity it levels out. Where a Naples, for instance, a lot of the money could be end of work career money. It could be money that was made in other states and moved there. So it's like a higher priced city to live in that also doesn't rely on its own economics to support it, which is fragile to me.

If something happened, say you got relocated in Naples and you worked for, Chico's, I think, is there, the clothing place. And what if that job didn't work out and you worked at their corporate headquarters? There's not five Chico's behind it. There's not five competitors that are based in that city. So you don't have enough industry, where I think that's one thing that makes Tampa really up and good location, but it makes it more industrial. And then you also have an education base. I think it's work and education. So you have University of South Florida's headquarters in Temple Terrace, you have Tampa University. And so you have a strong backing as far as students coming there and maybe not leaving.

And then Tampa has some of the most open jobs at any given point in the entire state of Florida. It's the third largest city in Florida. So it's a commercial hub of sorts. You have some large industry, you have the cruise stuff, you have the defense, a lot of defense industry. You have MacDill Air Force Base, which is a large employer. Electronic manufacturing is huge. Tech data. Jabil. They're recruiting entrepreneurs out the wazoo. The river district and all the progressive things they're doing around downtown and the river and the urban districts of Tampa. So you got a lot going as far as it's becoming in vogue. So we did geography, industry. Number three would be variety of life stage. I think this one's very interesting. So take my scenario for instance. So I grew up in Sarasota. We moved there when I was four from Maryland. So I was there my whole childhood, went to high school there. And I left for college, like most do in Sarasota. Well, I didn't come back until I was older than 30 years old because of life stage. So I left for school and I stayed away for work. And where I ended up was Tampa because I worked in finance and economics and I wanted options. And I mean, I liked the hustle bustle and all that kind of stuff, but it really was, I wanted guaranteed stability in a guarantee that I had a fighting shot because there was enough organizations where it is competitive, but I did have a shot because it wasn't just everyone going for one job, basically. So I skipped all these life stages, young, young married, young married one kid, before I thought Sarasota was viable for me at the time. So this variety, I think you could span the whole end of the spectrum from high school to college to young professional to first suburban house all the way to retirement here. Because you have the orientation of this city with three counties, of the metro with the three counties, you have the coastal element, and you have a very big variety of suburbs.

So I can't get into all this in this video, but if you just walk the life stages with me for a second. So you're a young professional, you have North Hyde Park, you have Channelside, you have a lot of mixed use spaces where work and play is more blended. It's like senior version of college basically. And then maybe you have a young kid, you don't want to move to the suburbs yet, and you have Hyde Park proper, Beach Park, you have Old Northeast in St. Petersburg, you have Seminole Heights, Tampa Heights. So still urban, but maybe a little bit more family style house.

You get into the suburbs, maybe you're 29 and you need more house. Maybe you have three kids. Maybe you work from home and you can commute. So you can go east of Brandon, Riverview, Apollo Beach. You can go north to Wesley Chapel, Tampa Palms, Zephyrhills, Land o' Lakes, can get a lot of stuff out there. And then unique about Tampa Bay because it's so far inland, that you can go west as well and still not quite be to the coast yet and have Westchase and Carrollwood and Northdale. So you just have such a variety. And then you go to one step further and you go to retirement, you have really unique places like Dunedin and you have Tierra Verde, you parts of St. Pete. You have areas where it would be like dropping like a mini Sarasota or mini Naples in, but you don't have to leave the total metro. And that's what I mean by variety of life stage if you had to pick one is that you can reinvent where you are in your life many times. And if you weren't allowed to leave, a lot of other places could not satiate that need.

And then my last point as my fourth, follow the money. And I always think it's interesting, regardless if you think I'm full of BS or you don't know who to listen to, who to trust, if you follow what smart people with a lot of money are doing with their money, what Jeffrey Vinik is doing to Channelside with Water Street, Sparkman Wharf. You see the condominium developers that are coming to downtown. You see the lagoon communities that they're building in Wesley Chapel and Wimauma and Ruskin and San Antonio and these areas where they're trying to satiate the need of you have everything but the coast, which makes the suburbs more viable and self-sustaining on their own.

That stuff to me is always an indicator. It's the same builders that are in the game, Poltis parent company, you have David Weekley, Taylor Morrison, these guys know stuff in advance. Starbucks is built, Chipotle pops up next to it, Verizon pops up next to it. These things are well planned. And they kind of have an idea of how many people are in a metro and what it needs. And if you see that stuff coming, it usually comes in waves and it's a good indicator that they at least think that this metro is the one. So that's why a really wordy way of why I'm ranking Tampa Bay number one. But that'll set the precipice of everything post Tampa Bay might be lacking a little bit more weight in one of the four categories, but still interesting in their own outright.