New Homes: Best Choice for Tampa Bay Home Buyers

Tampa, Florida has seen the home market react to trends throughout the real estate. While we are still finding our way back to “normal” we are noticing a new trend catching fire.


New construction home interest and purchases have spiked at rates that new home builders cannot keep up with. Homebuilder Lennar Corp. posted first quarter results that showed a 40% increase in revenue from this time last year! CEO of Lennar, Stuart Miller recently stated, “Our first quarter results clearly reflect continued improvement in the marketplace. Current market conditions are driven by strong demand resulting from low interest rates and attractive home price, which have led to very affordable monthly payments, compared to increasing rental rates.”

Real Estate in the real world: Our firsthand experience in Tampa’s real estate market reflects the national statistics. We are being inundated with buyer prospects that are tired of wasting money on renting, exhausted from competing with cash investor buyers, and are now charged up and ready to become new home owners. Our owner occupant buyers are choosing to buy new because of low interest rates and buyer incentives new home builders’ offer. The other type of real estate buyers are the internationally known cash investors. They have kept our market alive for years, but now are finding out that there are no longer deeply discounted properties to choose from anymore. The days of low ball offers are definitely gone, gone, gone..

The available land sites are dwindling and there are very few homes that are “move-in” ready. Lennar also shared in the report released by HousingWire that their number of backlogged homes has increased to 82%. These homes include new homes that are in the process of being completed. K-Hovnanian CEO says they cannot build homes quickly enough. Every area in Tampa that was under construction has now come back to life.

Homes by WestBay in Watergrass, a recent recipient of a Parade of Homes blue ribbon award, have reported great increases in buyer interest in their higher end semi- custom homes.

An important piece of legislation would help push these new home construction starts along. A bi-partisan bill called The Home Construction Lending Regulatory Act of 2013 would substantially improve the efforts to help the flow of credit to the real estate industry. This would have a positive effect on jobs being added to the workforce and would most importantly aid in the regulatory impediments to the credit needs of new home builders nationwide. Chairman of the NAHB, Rick Judson, is promoting the bill and adds that constructing 100 new homes creates 300 jobs and almost $9 million in federal, state and local tax revenue!

If you are thinking of entering the Tampa, Florida new home purchase arena, call us today to find out how you can maximize your buying power.