Tampa’s real estate market is doing exactly what a healthy market should: attracting capital, building housing, and creating value across the region. A recent CBRE survey ranked Tampa seventh among U.S. markets targeted by commercial real estate investors in 2026, with multifamily housing the top target — 74% of investors surveyed said they want in on the sector.

That’s not a warning sign. That’s a market functioning as intended, and it’s exactly the kind of investment activity that builds the housing supply the region needs.

In East Tampa, longtime homeowner Rosetta Jacobs has watched new construction rise around her property for years. New houses. New apartments. And, notably, no shortage of buyers interested in her land.

“They want to buy your house,” Jacobs said, describing the calls and mail she regularly receives from interested buyers.

She’s turned every one of them down.

“I’m getting up in the age and I don’t want to sell,” Jacobs said.

That’s the part of this story worth underlining: Jacobs, who paid off her home after four decades of ownership, remains entirely free to say no. Nobody is forcing her out. Nobody is compelling a sale. She holds the asset, she holds the leverage, and the choice is hers alone — which is precisely how private property is supposed to work.

The investment interest in East Tampa isn’t random. Travis Brooks, broker and owner of Brooks Realty LLC and third vice president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, said the neighborhood’s location has made it a natural draw as development radiates outward from Water Street, downtown and West Tampa.

“So the location of East Tampa has been quite sought after for some time,” Brooks said.

Brooks doesn’t see growth as something to be feared, but he does think longtime residents should engage with the process rather than watch it happen to them. He’s encouraged homeowners to show up to community redevelopment agency meetings, neighborhood association meetings and city council sessions — the venues where local, accountable decisions about development actually get made.

“We have to be in the decision-making of what comes in your community,” Brooks said.

That’s a reasonable, homeowner-empowering approach: engage locally, know your property’s value, and negotiate from a position of strength. Brooks recommends that residents fielding unsolicited offers consult a real estate professional before deciding anything.

Washington, predictably, has decided the market needs a heavier hand. The federal 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act now includes provisions restricting additional single-family home purchases by large institutional investors controlling 350 or more homes, with some exceptions.

Supporters frame this as protection for regular buyers. But it’s worth asking whether a federal cap on who can buy property is the right tool here, or whether it simply substitutes a bureaucratic threshold for the judgment of homeowners like Jacobs, who are already perfectly capable of saying no on their own terms. Local land-use decisions — the kind made at city council and CRA meetings — have historically been the more accountable venue for balancing growth with community input, precisely because residents can show up and be heard directly, rather than waiting on a numerical formula set in Washington.

For Jacobs, the question was never whether East Tampa should grow. It’s whether the people who’ve lived there for decades get to remain part of that growth, on their own terms — a question better answered by strong property rights and local engagement than by a new federal investor cap.

Follow the St. Pete-Clearwater Sun on Facebook, Google, & X

St. Pete-Clearwater Sun: local St. Pete-Clearwater & Tampa Bay, FL news at PIE-Sun.com