Tampa Bay Bound

[Jen Bastian]

Hello BP! I'm a new real estate investor getting ready to relocate to the Tampa Bay area to flip houses with my husband. We've never been to the area so any suggestions or thoughts on up and coming neighborhoods that are relatively safe and provide good bang for your buck would be much appreciated. I've read some forums here that mention Seminole Heights as a good area for flipping. And Historic Kenwood with all the 1920s bungalows. Clearwater potentially? Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance! 

[Michael Haynes]

@ED Marchand, Hello, I have lived around Tampa for more than 30 years. I used to work on ships, so I paid a lot of attention to weather and zones of climate. One of the reasons I chose Tampa was because it is just North of the Tropic of Cancer and my Union Hall was here. If you look at an Equator map you will see that the two best zones to live in around the Earth are the areas at about 23 degrees North or South of the Equator. These are the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. This is where you have all the green zones and the food and water and beaches. Tampa has similar winters to where I have properties in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rio has the same amount of cloudless days, 320, as Natal in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil except we are on the Coast with the Mata Atlantica and the range of mountains that runs North along the coast. Natal is in the desert northern area. In Tampa we have had 90 degree weather into November and gone to the beach on Christmas. Usually we get three months of winter, with three weeks of rainy days and cold. Since I have lived around Tampa, the Freeze Zone had dropped down twice, killing the majority of citrus fruits north of Tampa which is where that zone has stopped moving South. There are usually a few freezes that scare all the strawberry and citrus farmers during the Winter season, but, it never really goes below 32 degrees for more than a few hours. The farmers turn on their sprinklers at those times to put a coating of ice on the fruits to try and protect them. I live on the Hillsborough river and just picked some really good Manzana bananas off of my trees. If I could I would fill our big yard with tropical fruit trees, but, that is best done down by Miami. The cold winds can kill most of the tropical plants around this Latitude. In order to see a patch of real ice on the streets around Hillsborough County is almost impossible. One of the reasons I would not even consider moving North of Tampa is because I grew up in California and I hate cold weather. The West Coast of Florida is the extremely humid and unbearably hot side of Florida for about nine months of the year. I used to surf and I would have rather lived in the Fort Pierce area with metal detecting on the Gold Coast beaches, but, for the hurricanes. The winds blow more on the East Coast and make for waves to surf and bearable heat. For my Buy and Hold rental property portfolio I chose Tampa because we have only had one direct hit in 1921 and there weren't a lot of people living here then. We do have lots of Flood Zones, but, the only way we could really have catasrophic flooding is with the hurricane that comes up through the Yucatan Channel, heading straight across the Gulf of Mexico for Tampa Bay and comes up the ten mile long Bay when we are having High Tide. Everyone is building here with seemingly, no concern for this possible event. No one worries about the cold spells that last for a day or so, except the farmers. The thing you want as a RE investor is a shortage of good housing and a big demand for them. The way they are building here in Tampa, there will be a saturation point and a fall in Market values to watch out for. We just sold a property, near downtown Tampa with two old farm houses on it, sight unseen, for $330K. We pocketed $110K profit with a ten year hold and got completely out of Debt, again. Enjoy it while it lasts.