Tampa vs Sarasota | Best Places To Live In Florida #travel

So you're thinking about moving to Florida and you haven't decided whether Tampa or Sarasota is right for you. Well, in today's video, we're going to talk about some of the pros and cons and really the differences between Sarasota, Florida and Tampa, Florida, so you can decide what area is right for you. If this is your first time to the channel, we make videos that are all things Tampa Bay. What it's like to live here, what it's like to work here, what it's like to play here, the food, the dining, the outdoors, the beaches, and the sunshine. I am also a licensed real estate professional and a team leader here with The True Living Group, and we help people just like you buy, sell, relocate, and invest here in the Tampa Bay and Sarasota areas. So if you're into that sort of thing, make sure you hit that subscribe button, and if you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me and my team. All of our contact information is listed down below. So in today's video, we're going to talk about some of the major differences, some of the minor differences, some of the pros and cons, if you will, between living in Tampa, Florida versus Sarasota, Florida. In the interest of full transparency, I live in the greater Tampa Bay area. I live just by the Gulf Coast, just a little bit south of Clearwater Beach in the Indian Rocks Beach area. And I got to tell you, this video is very difficult to make in a few different ways. Number one, it's so difficult to say that one is better than the other, because really, it's all about you. What is your lifestyle? What are your preferences? What are you trying to accomplish? And that is the goal of today's video, so please understand that that is my approach. Number two, this is like being asked to pick between your brother and your sister. Sarasota is just an hour to the south of us. When you look at the greater Tampa Bay area, we sell a lot of real estate up in the Wesley Chapel area. Well, that's only an hour north of where we're at right now, and Sarasota's only an hour south. To me, the greater Tampa Bay area also includes Sarasota. However, I do know that there is a difference, and people who live in Sarasota think that Tampa's different, and they do live a little bit different, and that's what we're going to talk about today. What I want you to know is I'm sharing from experience. I'm going to share some stats. I'm going to share some information that is definitely going to be helpful and useful for you to make a determination. However, what I want you to recognize is both areas are incredible, and if you know what your ideal lifestyle is, matching the correct community should be achievable, because y'all, there is so much to love about living in the area here. I want to start getting into this by asking you one question, which is the most important question. What are you coming for? Are you moving for business purposes? Are you moving for work, employment? Are you moving for lifestyle? Are you investing in property down here? Are you retiring to the area? The reason that I ask is because each one of the answers that I just gave will determine what area is probably a better fit for you. There's a lot of similarities, but they do live differently, and I want to get into some of those things. Starting with the age of the communities, I think this is important to understand, because I know me, when me and my family decided we were going to finally make the move to Florida here a little, it's been almost five years now. We really did a lot of research regarding what was driving the economy, the age of the area we were choosing to live in, because I'm from the Detroit, Michigan area, and I was told by everybody I ever knew that Florida was full of old retirees, and while there is some truth to that, there is also areas that do not fall in line with that. As we started to do our research, we found out that Tampa was one of those areas. Now, most people don't recognize how young Tampa really is. The city of Tampa, the median age there is 35.9 years of age. It's a very young city. It's the unofficial tech hub of Florida, with right around 25% last stat that I read of all the headquartered tech jobs coming out of the Tampa Bay area, which is awesome. As you move south into Sarasota, into the city of Sarasota, the median age now jumps up to almost 46 years of age, so it's 45.9 years of age. There's a 10-year difference, essentially, between living in the city of Sarasota versus the city of Tampa, and if you're looking for a younger crowd, some place that feels a little bit more up-and-coming, if you will, it's obviously going to feel more natural to you to live in Tampa, but if you're looking for a place that's a little bit more established, it's definitely going to be Sarasota. These are things that you need to take in consideration. Now, we're talking about the age of the city, specifically, but what about the surrounding county, the county that the city is located in? Well, Hillsboro County, which is where Tampa is located, the median age there is 37 years of age. When you move down to Sarasota, all of a sudden, that jumps dramatically to 56 years of age. As a matter of fact, Sarasota County is one of the oldest counties in the United States in terms of population. This is something that you definitely want to take into account because, let's say that you have a young family and you're trying to grow that family, well, maybe Sarasota may not be the best fit for you if you're not interested in being around people who are on the last part of their life cycle. A lot of people who move to the Sarasota area are retirees, and that's just something to keep in perspective as to where in Tampa it is much younger. Like I said, 37 years of age in Hillsboro County. If you go over to Pinellas County, where the Gulf beaches are, that's Clearwater, St. Pete, the median age there is 45 years of age, same years as I am. Take this into consideration when you're thinking about the areas because a lot of the times people don't recognize the difference when it comes to the age of the population. I'm not saying one's better than the other, one's a better fit than the other for you for sure. Staying in that, we were talking about the age of population, but let's talk about lifestyle because honestly, y'all, what I find is most of the people moving to the greater Tampa Bay area or the Sarasota, Bradenton, Northport area, they are coming for lifestyle. This is almost 100% of the time. Even if they're coming because of business or work, usually I'm taking phone calls from people like you who have the ability to work remote and it is a lifestyle decision. They're moving up from the Pacific Northwest or maybe the Northeast or even the Midwest where I came from and it is a lifestyle decision. They want to get out of the gray, they want to get out of the cold. Maybe it's for political reasons. We've got lots of different reasons that people choose to move to Florida here, but primarily the drivers that I find are lifestyle. It's the same reason that me and my family moved here. Kate gave me very specific instructions when we were making this move. We looked at a lot of different areas. We looked at Jacksonville. We spent a week there just really doing our homework and what we found is it still felt like the North. There were a lot of pine trees and for us, we were trying to get away from that. We looked at Deltona. We looked at Orlando. Well, we looked at Orlando for a second and for anybody who's watched any of my videos, we did a Tampa versus Orlando video. You can go check that out too, but it was never really in the cards for us. We were beach babies. We wanted to be in a great coastal area. We looked at Cape Coral. We looked at Sarasota and again, we had a young family, so we moved down here. My son was five, my other daughter was four, three and a half, and then Cora was only six months old. And for us, we homeschool, so we were really concerned about having our kids around other kids and making sure that we got them exposed to as much activities and extracurricular activities as we could because homeschooling, we had never done that before and we were worried that our kids were going to be a little bit strange. We heard that before and being surrounded by retirees wasn't probably the best fit for us, so that was another determining factor for us. Again, not right or wrong, just understanding what we were trying to accomplish as a family. That helped determine what areas we're going to move to as well. But what we found was, is the lifestyle was so similar. This flip-flop lifestyle, this laid back lifestyle and mentality that people are looking to accomplish. We have gorgeous beaches here and from Clearwater all the way down to Siesta Key, these beaches are gorgeous. They live similar, the communities are similar, but there are some differences. Those differences being the cost of real estate, which we're going to get into here shortly. But what I want you to know is the lifestyle is very similar. Now, two of the major differences between Tampa, the city of Tampa proper, and the city of Sarasota is one is urban. Tampa is a big little city, if you will, and Sarasota is a typical quintessential, what I would say, suburban city that is supported by a greater metropolitan area, Tampa Bay. And the population density shows that. There's right around 393,000 people that live in Tampa and only 56,000 people that live in Sarasota. I mean, Clearwater alone has over 100,000 residents. So it just goes to show you, it's a little bit smaller for sure, but the greater Tampa Bay area and that Northport, Bradenton, Sarasota area, if you combine all of that, it's roughly about 4 million people. And you can get to all of these locations within an hour and a half, including traffic. So it definitely has a lot to offer. I mean, these beaches, if you talk about Clearwater Beach in the greater Tampa Bay area, which is an award-winning beach, St. Pete Beach, award-winning beach, Anna Maria Island, Lido Key, Siesta Key Beach, all of these beaches have been ranked by TripAdvisor as some of the best beaches in America, if not the best beach in America, depending on what year it is. The shopping that's in the area is incredible. You've got the University Mall in Sarasota, which is gorgeous, y'all. If you've never been there, that's an incredible mall to go check out. St. Armand's Circle in Sarasota, that is, to me, it's one of the, that is like old Florida quintessential, man. It's just a great place to go hang out. All the beautiful shops and local fare that you have there is incredible. Hyde Park in Tampa also offers that type of lifestyle. You've got the Ellington Outlets up in Bradenton, you've got the Tampa Premium Outlets up in Wesley Chapel. I mean, y'all, you're not going to lack for great restaurants, great shopping, amenities, things to do in any of these areas, so they are definitely beautiful. The lifestyle comes with it. You are not going to be disappointed. So let's talk a little bit about drive times, because one of the things you need to know when you move to Florida is driving in Florida is probably a little bit different than driving where you are. You know, if you live in a rural area, you're used to traveling at pretty good speeds, and you're not used to a whole lot of traffic. Well, here in the Greater Tampa Bay, Sarasota areas, you're going to run in traffic. It's just the way it works, and that is out of season. When you're in season, and what I mean by that is season is the time of year we refer to when all of the snowbirds, people from the north or wherever else they're traveling, come to Florida for the winter, okay? Our population swells, our tourism swells, and the roads get very busy, so this is something you want to keep in perspective when you're living here. But let's just talk about drive times. As I'm recording this video, it's July of 2023, so keep that in mind when you see the prices of real estate when we talk about here as well. But I want you to know how long it takes to get to places in the area, right? So again, it's about an hour from Tampa to downtown Sarasota. Not a difficult drive. Right up I-75. From Tampa to Orlando, it takes roughly about two and a half hours. And if you look at the map right now, it's going to tell you it takes about two hours to get from Sarasota to Orlando, but I'm here to tell you right now, it's going to take you longer than that. So put at least two and a half hours, if not three. You know, if you're going to stop, get gas, or whatever, it's going to take you almost three hours to get to Orlando, so just buckle up and get used to that drive time. Some of the surrounding areas, you know, when you look at how far it is away to other things, in Tampa, from downtown Tampa to the airport, it's 10 minutes. Super easy drive. Also the same in Sarasota. So from Sarasota, the SRQ, their airport, it's only a 10 minute drive. The major differences between those two is Tampa is a large international airport, and Sarasota is a smaller international airport as well. To me, after traveling corporate, it feels a lot more like a small regional airport, but it does have some international flights. So bonus there, just keep in mind, prices tend to be better out of Tampa, TPA, so keep that in perspective if you end up choosing Sarasota, because you will want to jump into some of those flights. So let's talk about drive time to the beaches, because this is super important to people. And again, Tampa is a city, it sits right on the bay, it is not on the beach, however, there are gorgeous beaches that are in the Tampa Bay area. So the supporting beaches that most people would go to if you live in Tampa are Clearwater Beach, which is about 45 minutes away, and St. Pete Beach, which is also about 45 minutes away. Now, the dirty little secret is, from Clearwater Beach all the way down to St. Pete Beach, the beaches are exactly the same, it's incredible. There are some differences in the community, I know locals are going to go crazy about it, but y'all, they're white sandy, sugar sand, gorgeous, they're the same beach, stop fooling people. All right, and then when you drive and you're in Sarasota, now you're really close, so you're only 10 minutes to Lido Key Beach, and you're about 15 to 20 minutes away with traffic to Siesta Key Beach as well, so great local opportunity there. If you're in St. Armand's Circle, Lido Key's right there, so just keep that in perspective as well. Now, some of the popular surrounding areas, like Lakewood Ranch, which is the number one master plan community in all of Florida, I think in the country, as a matter of fact, it's always, these things are subjective, but it's definitely one of the most attractive and desirable areas here in Florida, and Lakewood Ranch is a suburb of Sarasota, and it's only about a 20 minute drive, so keep that in perspective. There is a lot of new construction, it has top rated schools, gated communities, amenities galore, shopping, waterside, I mean, there's just so much going on in Lakewood Ranch that is very attractive, so that's something to keep in perspective when you're going on there. So again, Clearwater's 45 minutes to downtown Tampa, St. Pete Beach is 45 minutes to downtown Tampa. If you're gonna drive from Wesley Chapel, Lando Lakes, Odessa area, which is to the north of Tampa, that's gonna take you somewhere between 35 and 55 minutes on average as well. If you're getting any value out of today's video, or know anyone who is considering moving to Tampa or Sarasota areas, do not hesitate to share this video with them, and hey, while you're down there, let us know where you're watching from, and feel free to hit that subscribe button and click that little bell. All right, so now we're gonna get into real estate here, and I gotta share with you, even though Tampa and Sarasota are only an hour away from each other in terms of drive time, the real estate can feel like it's a different planet, and I don't mean because they're different style homes. As a matter of fact, you're gonna find some of the same builders in Tampa that you're gonna find in Sarasota. As a matter of fact, that probably happened 50 years ago. However, one of the main differences is going to be the cost, and right now, at the time of this recording, there is about a $100,000 difference between Tampa and Sarasota. So let's get into the numbers and see where those differences really lie. So let's start here in Tampa. First off, real estate is extremely diverse. At the time of this recording, you can pick up a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Tampa proper for about $145,000 on the low end, but you can also spend up to $14 million at the time of this recording. We have had higher sales, but right now, if you were looking for the most expensive piece of real estate here in Tampa, that's gonna set you back about $14 million. The median single-family home here is a four-bedroom, three-bath, 2,028-square-foot home, and it's gonna set you back about $434,000. The median condo is gonna cost right around $366,000. And at the time of this recording, we're actually seeing just a little dip in pricing in Tampa here on single-family homes, down less than a half a percent, which isn't much, but we've been on a rocket ship for the last three and a half years. So it looks like homebuyers are starting to get just a little bit of relief. Now, Sarasota also has some very diverse real estate. At the time of this recording, you can pick up a single-family home on the cheap end at about $200,000, and on the high end right now, $32.5 million. Right there, we are talking about almost twice as much as what you're seeing in Tampa, so you can start to see the gap immediately. The median single-family home is a three-bedroom, three-bath, 2,359-square-foot, and it comes in at a whopping $552,500. And if you want to pick up a condo, that's gonna set you back about $481,000. So right away, you can already see some of the major differences. I mean, we're talking over $100,000 on average for the same single-family home. Actually, you get another bedroom in Tampa, so this is something to keep in mind. The square footage was a little bit bigger in Sarasota, but you definitely get more for your dollar when it comes to Tampa versus Sarasota. Now, again, once urban, once suburban, once closer to the beach, these have major differences. There's no doubt about it, y'all. So what I wanted to do now is I wanted to take you out. We've seen a lot of great places here in the area, but I want to show you some of these gems, right? We have toured all things Tampa Bay, y'all. We've got lots and lots of videos in our library that you can go check out about the greater Tampa Bay area and Sarasota areas. But what I want to do now is jump out. I want to take you down to the St. Armand Circle, so you can check that out really quick, and then I want to show you a piece of real estate before jumping back into the office here. We are in St. Armand Circle, right in the center of the town in a park that is surrounded by shops and restaurants. It's in walking distance from Lido Beach and Siesta Key Beach. Awesome to spend the day there and then come back and do some shopping. Great restaurants to eat in. I love to go to Crab and Fin or Columbia. There's also a clam bar, Tommy Bahama, and one of my favorite places is Shore. Yeah, Shore is pretty cool, y'all. So we've come here for dinner at the Shore, and one of the most unique restaurants I've ever been in is the Roof Retracts. So underneath, there's a boutique with clothing and accessories, and up top, it's a restaurant. And the restaurant's great. Food's incredible. I just had a grouper tacos today. I think I had steak last time I was here. It was incredible. But the thing that was awesome is we had dinner, and at night, they started retracting the roof. So you can literally have dinner under the stars in a restaurant. So I thought that that was really cool. I mean, there's a lot going on here in Sarasota, as you can see behind us. There are so many shops. You've got ice cream and boutiques. And listen, if it ain't here, I'm shocked because they've got everything. And so many, like, small retailers, too, which is really cool. That whole shop local thing is a reality when you come down to St. Armand Circle here in Sarasota. It is. It's a really great place for the locals and people visiting. So you'll see both. Absolutely. All right, y'all. One of the things you know we love to do is actually share neighborhoods and real estate with you. So we wanted to come to this really cool neighborhood that's just a couple minutes north of downtown Sarasota and share with you some real estate. It's very unique. It's one of those neighborhoods that's right by the water. There's all kinds of access. People got boats all over the place. But you're going to find old Florida here and new Florida here, right? So Marcia, tell us about this house behind you here. Oh, it's great. It's a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,525 square feet. It's listed for $649,000. It was built in 1952, but it was updated. And it has a fenced-in backyard, lots of daylight coming in. It looks like a really cool place. And like Juan was saying, close to downtown. So it would be awesome. Yeah, it's a really quaint little neighborhood. And as you can see right behind us here, they're building a brand new home here. And as you drive through this neighborhood, you're going to find 1950s and 2000s and 2020. Yeah, I mean, this is this neighborhood in a nutshell, right? You got the old Rambler-style ranch, which is what you see behind us there. Right next to it, this home was probably built in the 80s. Let me turn around a little bit. You can tell by the architecture here. And then, you know, as you go through the neighborhood, they're building brand new construction right behind Marcia and I, like you saw. And then you can see these little quaint cottages. I mean, this was very normal for the 50s in the Gulf Coast, right? Like this is what you find when you come out to Sarasota. So we love sharing stuff like this with you guys. Marcia, it was so much fun touring Sarasota today. And I almost hate the Tampa versus Sarasota thing that we have to do because y'all, we're an hour away from each other. Like this isn't a this or I truly believe it's and. Yeah, right. So we talk about that a lot. I have it. And then you say you have it in Tampa. So the cool thing is we both have all the things, you know, it's an awesome place to live. Yeah, truly the Tampa, Sarasota, the whole Tampa Bay region. We're just spoiled rotten. I don't really think you can go wrong. We wanted to get perspective, real estate amenities, things to do. We hope you enjoyed this video today. Well, I hope today's video helped you a little bit. Try to come to a conclusion about what area may be best for you. If you have questions, do not hesitate to reach out. Put questions down below in the comments. I respond to them all myself. But also, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me and my team here in the greater Tampa Bay area. We love to help people just like you buy, sell, relocate and invest in the area or make this dream a relocation reality. All of my contact information is listed down below, including a link to my calendar where you can schedule a time that's most convenient for you. And until next time, go out and live that Tampa life.