What Does the Stimulus Mean for Tampa Bay Real Estate?

Published by peter | Filed under Real Estate

Of course this blog is mostly about real estate in Tampa Bay, but the topic on everyone’s mind is the economy and what is happening in Washington to confront the tremendous challenges facing our national and local economies.  The truth is, Tampa Bay’s real estate market has a better shot at improving once the economy awakens out of its doldrums.  That’s why we want to keep you updated on the issues that impact our local economy and real estate market (plus, I need to put those degrees in political science and interdisciplinary social science to use somehow.  After all, what did I take those economic courses for anyway?)

Florida’s share of the current stimulus package includes nearly six billion for education to build new schools and improve technology in the classroom, four billion for healthcare to expand Medicaid and provide healthcare for kids and two billion for infrastructure including completing Interstate 275 project and the I-4 connector.

“Our economy is imploding, people are losing jobs,” says Representative Kathy Castor, the only Florida representative to vote in favor of the House version of the bill. “This is targeted towards creating and maintaining jobs. The Tampa Bay area has the highest unemployment rate that it’s seen in a number of years,” Castor says.

As for education matters, groups throughout Florida have been hoping the $825-billion federal stimulus package now rolling through Congress would ease the pain of some truly gruesome budget cuts ahead. But it has been unclear, until now, how much federal relief may be coming our way.  In this new analysis, the Congressional Research Service calculated district-by-district estimates for the stimulus funds that are specifically targeted to federal programs for low-income and disabled students, and for construction. Here are the figures for the four districts around Tampa Bay:

• Pinellas: $56.1-million in 2009, $30.1-million in 2010
• Hillsborough: $93.6-million in 2009, $49-million in 2010
• Pasco: $24.3-million in 2009, $13.5-million in 2010
• Hernando: $9.1-million in 2009, $4.8-million in 2010

Now all of these numbers are preliminary.  We won’t know the final figures until the stimulus package is signed into law.  But we can see that two factors critical to a resurgent real estate market – roads and schools – will be getting the funding needed to make our market much more attractive.