Residential recovery: New home starts up in Hillsborough
By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Tampa Tribune
Published: Aug 24, 2015

TAMPA - New home construction starts in Hillsborough County rose 22 percent in the first half of 2015, following a national trend of more single-family home starts this year than before the great recession began in 2007.

Housing starts across the country increased 12.8 percent to the highest rate since December 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The numbers are even higher locally, and Tampa Bay area developers and contractors are celebrating the upswing.

Hillsborough County issued 2,444 permits in the first half of 2015 for single-family, duplex and multi-family home starts, compared to 1,753 in the first half of 2014, said Adam Gormly, director of development services for the county.

"I feel like we'll continue to roll along,” he said. "I would expect the increase that we've seen so far in 2015 would continue at the pace we are seeing now.”

New home starts have jumped 94 percent in just one year in Pasco - an area that still has a lot more open land than Hillsborough, said Tony Polito, regional director for MetroStudy in the Tampa-to-Sarasota area.

Hillsborough and Pasco counties have accounted for about 87 percent of all housing starts in the region over the 12 months ending June 30. About 5 percent of those starts have shifted from Hillsborough to Pasco, Polito said.

Pasco is considered the next big growth area for houses in this region. Pinellas County held about 7.5 percent of the housing starts, with the remainder in Citrus and Hernando.

While Hillsborough has about 50,000 lots available for home-building - Polito called that a healthy amount - Pasco has about 100,000. Pasco started 727 homes in the first half of this year, compared to just 374 in 2014. Pasco has also seen a 44 percent increase in second-quarter closings, he said.

Newland Communities, the developers of FishHawk Ranch in Lithia and Waterset in Apollo Beach, has seen the increases in Hillsborough and will contribute to Pasco's growth numbers, starting with a new development there next year.

"We've had a large improvement over last year,” said Alex McLeod, senior vice president of operations for Newland in Hillsborough County. "We've seen 14 percent growth on top of last year.”

Across its three active communities of FishHawk Ranch, Waterset and MiraBay, all in south Hillsborough, Newland's starts are up 24 percent year over year and up 22 percent in the first half of this year, said regional marketing director Pam Parisi.

New home sales are up, too, Parisi said. Dramatically, in fact. During the first two quarters of this year, Newland saw a 45 percent increase in sales - 69 percent in Waterset, 33 percent in FishHawk and 15 percent in MiraBay.

McLeod said Waterset was ranked by one real estate publication as No. 2 for home starts in the Tampa metro area. "There's a lot of competition in south county, so we are happy to have a project going like that,” he said.

Newland is also planning a big project in Pasco County starting next year and is wagering that will be the next big growth area. Bexley, located off of the Suncoast Parkway, launches in 2016 with homes from the high $100,000s to the $500,000s. The 1,733-acre subdivision was divided off from the 7,133-acre working Bexley Ranch. The Bexley family retained the rest of the property.

It makes sense that Pasco will be the next big growth area, Polito said, because it has more space for development.

"A few positive indicators have helped us a lot, including job growth,” McLeod said. "The other is people moving here. We are again experiencing in-migration, people realizing the quality of life here in the Tampa Bay area. And there's also the affordability factor.”

Tampa Bay typically has lower price ranges for new and existing homes than other metro areas in the state.

ODC Construction, which works in Hillsborough and in the Orlando area building foundations and house shells, has doubled its pace since 2014.

"We're seeing growth all over and getting a lot of work in South Tampa,” said ODC CEO Isaac Lidsky.

Lidsky purchased a struggling residential subcontracting company in 2011 that did just "bits and pieces” of what ODC now does, he said. It had about 100 employees. "Over the last four years, we've tripled in size and expanded. In the second quarter of this year, we've probably begun construction on 600 to 700 homes in our total area.

"It looks like we are blessedly experiencing a meaningful and sustainable recovery, broadly in the U.S. economy and in housing here in Florida,” Lidsky said. "Our Tampa division, for example, in the first six months has begun construction on as many homes as we did all of last year.”

"More housing starts means more construction jobs as well as confidence from real estate developers that people will be buying,” said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University professor and chief economist for job website Indeed.com. "We'll know the economy is really hitting stride when we see these starts in the range of 1.5 million.”

Housing starts in July rose 0.2 percent across the country to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2 million, the commerce department reported.

The economic recovery is now in its seventh year, and an influx of paychecks from nearly 3 million added jobs in the past year has certainly helped the housing recovery. The increased demand for housing reflects that stronger economy, said Selma Hepp, chief economist at real estate website Trulia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

yhammett@tampatrib.com