This blog article is derived directly from our YouTube video (featured at the bottom)

 Today, we are talking about moving to St. Petersburg, Florida. Is it right for you? Are the characteristics that make this city special in particular, do they fit your lifestyle? So, I hope you find a ton of value in this one.

Things to do in St. Pete

Two, things to do. So, when looking at St. Pete, too, "Do I move here? Is this a city for me?" I think a good way to sum this up is, in my opinion, St. Petersburg does a good, good job, their resonance with intentional living is, a really nice blend between work and life. It doesn't seem like life surrounds coming to work and going back. Seems like the alternative, the opposite, rather. And one of the big things here, to name a few, is art, first of all. So, the art scene's amazing. You have, not only 100-plus street art, graffiti, and graphic scenes and very nice walking, kind of unique, eclectic culture there, but you have the Dalí Museum. You have the CHIHULY Gallery, amongst many galleries, the Museum of Fine Arts, and a lot of traditional kinds of art scenes. You also have full, separate, diverse districts for art. Different parts of town have their kind of scene going on, which is cool.

You have the beaches, so that's low-hanging fruit. So, Pinellas County has, not only some world-class beaches for the whole scheme, like you have St. Pete Beach. You have Clearwater Beach. But they also have a variety, which lets you, one, find places that are calmer than others, lets you be in the thick of it or not, kid-friendly. So, you have Fort DeSoto Park. You have Tierra Verde, Pass-a-Grille, which was my favorite with kids, St. Pete Beach, Madeira Beach, Treasure Island, Indian Rocks, and one of my favorite beaches, Redington, Redington Shores, and Belleair. I mentioned Clearwater. You have Caladesi Island, Honeymoon. So, that sheer variety just gives you a lot of different ways you can go about it.

And then you have sports. So, if you go into Tampa, you have the Lightning, the hockey team. You have the Bucs, football. You have spring training for the Yankees. But by just staying in St. Pete, downtown is where the Tampa Bay Rays baseball stadium is, and it's very easy in and out. It's one of the easiest sporting events to go to and one of the cheapest to park. It's very, very pleasant, in my opinion. I used to have season tickets there forever. You have the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the soccer team. So, plenty of ways to kind of enjoy that, if you want to get inside and watch some sports. And then everything else. Downtown St. Pete is lovely. It's ever-expanding. It's super walkable. You have very high-end districts, like Beats Drive in the front. You have The Pier, which was just renovated. You have Jannus Landing, rocker bar kind of districts. So, really, again, the thing about St. Pete, is I think it has everything from the most bougie to the most eclectic. It really can solve the need for everyone in the crew, if you like the overall vibe. But that's the way if I was articulate enough, I would summarize the differentiation between St. Pete and others when it comes to quality of life and things to do.

 Real Estate & Prices

All right, number three. I want to go over real estate and prices, just to give you as much context as possible for this brief conversation.

So, first of all, when you're moving to St. Pete, what St. Pete is not, is it's not laden with new construction when it comes to single-family homes and townhomes especially. You do have the condominium stuff like any coastal city has, and that's its own thing. But what this is, is historic bungalows, the most popular districts, if you google them. A lot of them are northeast of downtown. They are Old Northeast, Woodlawn, St. Paul Euclid, and that whole area. Right? So, this isn't your big, master-planned development, and a lot of people enjoy that. But any city that is west, that's coastal, it's been popular, and it's in an area that has already been developed, for the most part. So, you're going to want to be in that kind of housing.

So, just to give you the context of what's been happening there, over the last six months, I want to talk a little bit about the pricing data and what's sold, just to give you some barometer. About 2,700 total properties over the last 180 days, and last six months. The average size was about three bedrooms, three baths, and about 1400 square feet. Again, historic bungalows. A lot of these things might be three or four bedrooms, but most of them aren't 3000 square feet.$485,000 was the average list price, and they closed at about $478,000. So, they got close to the list price, which you're sitting at about $328 a square foot, more or less. On the median side, so median would give you maybe a better ... It would take out the outliers, more or less, right? So, the median, is half of the properties would be under and over this price. The median was a three-bedroom, two-bath, of 2700, 1200 square feet was the median. And then you had a median price of $375,000.

So, St. Pete is going to give you access to a mainly resell market of under $500,000. I'd feel pretty good about that in most areas. But depending on the ... You might catch something that's the 1950s, 1980s spaces, crawl spaces. They're bungalows. If you love the charm of a neighborhood like that, then you'll fall in love with a lot of areas that are around St. Petersburg, including like you have historic Kenwood. You have Crescent Lake. There are a lot of lovely areas, but you want to make sure you're into that kind of property. But that's what I would say for real estate and pricing on this video and keep a look out for where I'll do much more comprehensive topics related to this.

Marco Geography

When it comes to St. Petersburg, and whether is it right for you to move, is macro geography. So, once you have basically, "Okay, St. Petersburg within Tampa Metro, I'm into it. I like the vibe. I like it all that," but that's a microcosm of the whole state.

Now, for me, personally, I'm pretty transient. I've lived in many, many cities across Florida, from Sarasota originally. I was in Tampa for 10 years. When you get beyond all of that, you're also saying that maybe no city's perfect, right? You have to pick one spot. But then what else can you do in the state? And from a midsize city especially, there is no better location in the entire state of Florida for access than this particular location, in my opinion.

Because what you have is, where St. Pete sits, you go about 30, 35 minutes south, you have Manatee Sarasota County. So, not only world class beaches that are even different than these, Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key, Siesta Key, Venice, Lido Key.

You have downtown Sarasota's lovely Lakewood Ranch. And then you have Naples. Naples is two hours south of Sarasota. Fort Myers is an hour-and-a-half. Miami is about three-and-a-half with Fort Lauderdale as well. You have about three-and-a-half to West Palm Beach, about four, one way to Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Nocatee, about six hours one way to Savannah, Georgia, which is cool. Orlando's two hours away. All of Tampa, 30, 35 minutes one way from St. Pete. You have Clearwater Beach there, Dunedin. You have all that whole area. Right?

And when it comes to Florida, most of what's happening is in southwest Florida. Except for the Panhandle, everything you want's here. It's all on this side of the state. And if you had to pick one location, all of the rest of those other ones I named are on a fringe. You go there, cool. But you kind of lose access to the rest. St. Pete is in such an interesting spot. And then even hurricane history-wise and stuff, knock on everything, it's been very fortunate, as far as the major damage over the last 50, 80 years or so. So, if you had to pick one for the whole state, especially for a midsize city, I think the Tampa Bay Metro might not be beatable.