Tampa Real Estate Market 2026

As of May 2026, the Tampa market is operating at a measured pace rather than the frenzied clip that characterized the post-pandemic years. The median sale price on closed transactions stands at $405,000, a 1.2% gain year-over-year, a deceleration that reflects broader affordability constraints rather than any structural demand collapse. At $229 per square foot, the price-per-unit metric provides a useful cross-check against the tract-level owner-estimated values discussed in subsequent sections.

Supply and demand are in a tentative equilibrium that tilts modestly toward buyers. Months of supply registers at 3.1, a figure that sits below the conventional six-month buyer's-market threshold but is meaningfully above the sub-two readings that defined the 2021–2022 cycle. The sale-to-list ratio of 0.9774 confirms that sellers are accepting modest concessions on average, though the gap remains narrow enough that well-priced listings are not languishing.

Median days on market of 44 reinforces the picture of a market that has normalized without tipping into distress. Taken together, these indicators suggest a transition phase: price growth has not reversed, but the leverage that sellers held in prior years has diminished. Institutional analysts should treat the $405,000 median sale price as a current-transaction benchmark that is distinct from the ACS owner-estimated home values and the Verus-AI forward forecasts discussed below; the data note accompanying the market snapshot explicitly flags this distinction.

The population-weighted median owner-estimated home value across Tampa's scored tracts is $356,500, a figure that sits below the $405,000 closed-sale median, a gap that is common when owner self-assessments lag transaction prices during periods of rapid appreciation. The Verus-AI model covers 323 of the county's 375 tracts, representing 86.1% of tracts with sufficient history; the remaining 52 tracts lacked the data depth required for scoring.

The dispersion of current values across the 15 highest-ranked tracts is notable. This suggests that the model is capturing momentum and income dynamics rather than simply rewarding already-expensive markets, a point worth emphasizing for readers who equate high scores with high price points.

The 2024 value of $294,700 visible in the 2023 observation and the subsequent step to $340,819 in 2024 captures the continued upward drift even as the broader market cooled. The Verus-AI five-year forecast projects a terminal value of $466,952 by 2029, with an 80% confidence interval spanning $408,928 to $533,210, a band width of $124,282 that widens progressively from $43,103 at the 2025 horizon to that terminal figure, reflecting the compounding uncertainty inherent in any multi-year property forecast.

Four carry B+ grades and eleven carry B grades; none of the top 15 carries a risk designation above Moderate, and six are rated Low risk. That all 15 of the top-ranked tracts fall within the Low or Moderate risk tier is a notable feature of this cycle's leadership cohort, it suggests the model is not simply rewarding high-growth tracts that carry commensurate volatility.

Gibsonton leads with a score of 82, followed by two tracts at 81, Lutz and Tampa - Tract 3916. Brandon appears twice in the top 15, with scores of 80 and 78 respectively, and Apollo Beach likewise appears twice at scores of 79 and 78. The recurrence of these area labels is not an artifact; the model scores census tracts individually, and adjacent tracts within the same named community can diverge meaningfully on income trends, density, and value trajectory. Readers should consult the tract IDs in the table rather than treating an area label as a monolithic signal.

Rent-to-price yields within the top 15 span from 4.01% for the Keystone tract to 8.54% for the second Apollo Beach tract, with one tract, Mango, reporting no available rent yield. Keystone, at a current value of $624,600 and a median household income of $164,597, represents the highest-income, highest-value entry in the top-15 set, though its rent-to-price yield of 4.01% reflects the compression that typically accompanies premium price points.

The bottom of the distribution is equally instructive. All five of the lowest-ranked tracts carry grade F designations, and their risk ratings span High (three tracts: Egypt Lake-Leto, Progress Village, and Riverview) and Elevated (two tracts: Tampa Palms and Town 'n' Country). The contrast between the top and bottom cohorts is sharp: the lowest score in the top 15 is 76, while the highest score in the bottom five is 13, assigned to Town 'n' Country. The gap between these cohorts, more than 60 score points, indicates wide dispersion across the 323-tract scored universe, consistent with the score distribution showing a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 82.

Income growth is one of the more forward-looking inputs in the Verus-AI model, and the momentum leaders table reveals a set of tracts where household income is accelerating well ahead of the county median trend. University leads the momentum list with a year-over-year income gain of 111.0%, a figure so large it warrants interpretive caution. Single-year income changes of this magnitude in census tract data typically reflect compositional shifts (new higher-income households displacing lower-income ones, or a small base effect) rather than organic wage growth across an unchanged resident population. The Verus-AI score for University is 60, at the county median, and its five-year forecast of 29.32% trails the county's median forecast, suggesting the model is appropriately discounting the income spike rather than extrapolating it.

Westshore and East Tampa follow with income gains of 37.74% and 30.98% respectively. East Tampa and Sulphur Springs each carry Verus-AI scores of 70 and five-year forecasts of 37.01%, placing them above the county median score of 60.0 among the momentum leaders shown in the table, a pairing that is notable given that both areas have historically carried income bases that lagged the suburban ring. Downtown Tampa shows a 25.07% income gain but a five-year forecast of only 24.84%, again suggesting the model is not mechanically translating income momentum into price appreciation.

The remaining momentum leaders, Bloomingdale, West Tampa, Palm River-Clair Mel (two tracts), and Temple Crest, show income growth ranging from 16.61% to 18.57%, based on the figures in the momentum leaders table. West Tampa's Verus-AI score of 66 and Temple Crest's score of 67 place both tracts near but below the 75th percentile score of 67 in the county distribution, indicating solid but not top-decile positioning.

At the other end of the income spectrum, two of the five lowest-ranked tracts show negative year-over-year income changes: Egypt Lake-Leto at -5.07% and Tampa Palms at -27.53%. The Tampa Palms income decline of -27.53% is the sharpest income decline among the 20 tracts shown in the ranked tables (the top 15 and bottom 5). For context, across all 323 scored Tampa tracts, the sharpest income decline belongs to a different tract entirely, at -39.07%, which underscores that the ranked-table figures represent a selected subset rather than the full range of county conditions. Progress Village shows flat income growth of 0.0%, and Town 'n' Country shows a modest 1.03% gain, neither figure is sufficient to offset the structural weaknesses the model identifies in those tracts.

The mean five-year forecast across all 323 scored tracts is 33.78%, while the median sits at 37.01%. The compression between the 25th percentile (33.92%) and the 90th percentile (37.01%), both of which are at or near 37.01%, indicates that the forecast distribution is left-skewed: a substantial share of tracts cluster at the 37.01% ceiling, while the drag comes from a tail of tracts with flat or negative forecasts. The 10th percentile forecast of 25.08% and the minimum implied by the bottom tracts (as low as -4.9%) define the lower bound of that tail.

Carrollwood is the exception, with a forecast of 35.46% and a CAGR of 6.26%, a modest but real divergence from the cluster. In dollar terms, the forecast range within the top 15 is wide: Keystone's projected terminal value of $855,756 contrasts with Seffner's $423,357, reflecting the large spread in current values rather than any difference in percentage appreciation.

The bottom five tracts present a materially different picture. Tampa Palms forecasts -3.1% over five years, a CAGR of -0.63%. Progress Village is the relative outlier among the bottom five, with a positive but thin forecast of 2.74% (CAGR of 0.54%), the only bottom-five tract projecting any nominal appreciation. Even so, a 2.74% cumulative gain over five years implies essentially flat real values after inflation, and the tract's grade F designation and High risk rating reflect the model's assessment of structural fragility.

The forecast chart for the leading tract, Gibsonton, illustrates how the 80% confidence interval widens over the forecast horizon. The lower band at the 2025 horizon is $342,060, rising to a terminal lower bound of $408,928 by 2029; the upper band moves from $385,163 in 2025 to $533,210 in 2029. These are 80% intervals, not guarantees, two in ten outcomes, by construction, are expected to fall outside this range. Readers should treat the central forecast of $466,952 as a model-derived central tendency, not a price target, and should weight the band width of $124,282 at the terminal year as a meaningful expression of forecast uncertainty in a single tract.

The Verus-AI model scores 323 of Tampa's 375 census tracts, representing 86.1% of the county's tract universe. The score scale runs from 0 to 100, with the current distribution spanning a minimum of 6 to a maximum of 82 across all 323 scored tracts. The 10th percentile score is 46, the median is 60, and the 90th percentile is 71, indicating a moderately compressed upper tail, no tract in the scored universe currently achieves a score above 82.

Confidence intervals are 80% intervals, meaning that under the model's assumptions, approximately 20% of outcomes are expected to fall outside the stated bands. The model does not incorporate forward-looking assumptions about interest rates, insurance costs, or policy changes; it is a pattern-extrapolation framework applied to observed value and income data.

The market snapshot data, median sale price, days on market, inventory, and related figures, is sourced from third-party closed-sale records as of May 2026 and is explicitly distinct from the ACS owner-estimated home values that underpin the Verus-AI scoring and forecast. The two series measure different things: one captures what buyers and sellers agreed to in recent transactions; the other captures what owners believe their homes are worth, smoothed over a survey period. Income figures are year-over-year changes in median household income at the tract level and are subject to the sampling variability inherent in American Community Survey estimates, particularly in small tracts. The anomalous 111.0% income gain in University and the -27.53% decline in Tampa Palms are both plausible given small-tract dynamics, but both warrant independent verification before being used as primary investment inputs.

Verus-AI scores and grades are model outputs, not appraisals or guarantees of future performance. The total population covered by the scored universe is 1,750,292. Grade designations (B+ through F) and risk tiers (Low, Moderate, Elevated, High) are ordinal labels derived from the underlying score; they are intended to facilitate relative comparison across tracts, not to characterize absolute investment merit. Readers should consult the full ranked tables and forecast charts alongside this prose, as the tables contain tract-level detail, including rent-to-price yields, current values, and forecast terminal values, that the prose summarizes but does not fully reproduce.