Rent is sky high rent in Tampa Bay, according to a report released by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies this week.
More than a quarter of all renters in Tampa Bay are “severely burdened” by high rent payments, according to the report and its forcing renters into some sticky situations.
“I lived with my parents for the last 3 years because there is just no place affordable,” Ogden Clark, a 31 year old man from Manatee County elaborated.
Clark is not alone. Harvard found 42% of folks making under $30,000 a year in the Tampa Bay area are paying more than half of their income just to put a roof over their head.
At the same time, we’re seeing a huge boom across the bay of new apartments being built.
There are 3,764 rental communities under construction right now and just 203 of those are classified as affordable.
The rest are extremely high end units, with resort-style amenities like the Broadstone Apartments in South Tampa’s Hyde Park Neighborhood which are partially still under construction, but are already 65% leased. Get this: A 617 square foot studio apartment at Broadstone rents for $1,350 a month!
Tampa Bay has the 13th highest rent in the nation, and the highest of any area in the state of Florida.
“Yeah, it certainly is a hard time to be a renter. When you get a renewal notice and they are raising the rent $100 and you don’t really have an option for a cheaper place, it’s a very difficult pill to swallow,” Darron Kattan, a real estate expert with Franklin Street of Tampa explained.
It seems a little crazy, but some real estate experts suggest buying a home in Tampa Bay may actually be a better bet if you plan to stay in the area for more than a year’s time. There are only 7 cities across the country where mortgages are less than rent and Tampa Bay is one of them.
So what’s it going to take to get rent to drop?
Demand to fall, and that could take a long while, according to experts, especially here in Florida where people are constantly moving to be closer to the sunny skies and sandy beaches.
