May 28, 2025
The Tampa home real estate landscape continues to emerge as a buyers’ market, but that doesn’t necessarily mean home sales are on the rise.
It’s a scenario that’s emerging across the nation. As Zonda chief economist Ali Wolf recently noted in a Marketwatch report, housing conditions may be easier to gauge, but the uncertain economy has potential homebuyers asking questions.
“Is my job safe? Will the economy go into a recession? What do these tariffs mean for me?” Wolf asked. “If you're trying to make the biggest purchase of your life, do you really want to do it if you have no sense of what the next six months look like?”
An array of indicators point to Tampa’s status as a buyers’ market including higher inventory and lower home value. The Zillow Home Value Index is down 3.6% for the area. Inventory is about 20% higher than it was a year ago. As a result, Zillow ranks Tampa as one of the nation’s five best markets for buyers. Not surprisingly, Jacksonville ranked first with Miami third and Tampa fourth.
Given those numbers, you might think that home sales would be greater, but buyers and sellers aren’t quite seeing eye to eye. Pending sales in Tampa are down 1.9 percent according to Redfin, and this market is one of eight in the nation where year-over-year median prices have declined.
“When buyers and sellers are on different planets, one side eventually has to give in, and it’s looking like it’s going to be sellers this time,” said Redfin Senior Economist Elijah de la Campa.
Nationally, according to Redfin, list prices are rising twice as fast as sale prices, signaling a growing disconnect between buyers and sellers. In March, the typical newly listed home was priced at a record $469,729, but the typical home sold for significantly less — $431,057. The $38,672 difference, a 9% gap, is the largest margin between list and sales prices since May 2020.
So, what’s the next trend to emerge? Well, according to a May 8 report from Realtor.com, builders are responding to all the challenges with smaller homes further away from metro centers and two areas near Tampa Bay are among the 26 nationally that have watched a year-over-year decrease of both new-construction median list price and new-construction square footage: Lakeland-Winter Haven; North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota.
This trend may continue to grow as storm damage and property insurance concerns may push people further inland and away from the coast.
However, Joel Berner, who authored the Realtor.com report, noted that, expected “tariffs on Canadian lumber, gypsum (used for drywall) from Mexico, and a variety of other home building components from China” will put the ability of builders to produce low-cost housing in peril.”