Tag: housing market

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Sarasota: #2 Moving Destination in the United States (Combined with Tampa)

For the second year in a row, Sarasota made the “Top 10” list for moving destinations in the United States.

In its annual report published January 22nd, Penske Truck Rentals shows Sarasota climbing from the #10 slot last year (based upon 2012 data) to the #2 position this year (based upon 2013 data) in a new combined entry with Tampa. The company analyzes its one-way truck rentals in order to determine where people are moving within the United States.

Atlanta remains the top destination in the US for this year, and the Orlando—the only other Florida city in the Top 10—holds on to its number 4 slot.

Not surprisingly, Penske cites “the Northeast” and “the Midwest” as big originating points for many of these migrations.

Given this year’s harsh winter conditions, it’s easy to picture this trend continuing in 2014.

Why Combine Tampa and Sarasota?

The report acknowledges Sarasota’s previous #10 ranking, but fails to mention the rationale behind combing Tampa and Sarasota into a single, new entry for this year’s report. I guess we can speculate that Tampa, which didn’t make the Top 10 last year, must have seen an increase throughout 2013. CNN Money apparently believes that Tampa is the only city worth mentioning, as they dropped Sarasota completely from their story about the report. HuffPo managed to get it right, including Sarasota in the #2 slot.

As any resident of the region knows, the Tampa market and the Sarasota market are significantly different. In an infographic published with the report (see below), Penske compares a couple of key market dynamics which they compiled from other sources.

It paints a somewhat amusing picture of the region, showing Sarasota’s median income at $40,813 (6% less than Tampa’s $43,514 figure). Seeing that number compared side-by-side with the average listing price, which is $613,779 for Sarasota (compared to Tampa’s $258,675 average listing).

So… on average, we make 94% of what Tampa’s residents make, but our real estate costs 2.37 times as much as theirs!

Well… that’s the conclusion someone might draw who looks casually at Penske’s data, anyway.

The true story, as we know, is much more complicated than that. Thanks to the perfect storm of 2008, which combined the collapse of the residential housing market and a local Sarasota economy overly dependent upon new construction, our real estate is still a jumbled mess of foreclosures, an unusually high percentage of rental properties, and vacant or abandoned houses. That mess, alongside so many high-end properties on Casey Key, Longboat Key, Bird Key, and Siesta Key (let’s hear it for the #1 beach in the US, right?), makes for a statistician’s nightmare.

In any event, it’s nice to see Sarasota make the list again, even if we were combined with Tampa to get to #2. Perhaps the real estate market will really finish its rebound! Well… one can hope, right?

Infographic: Penske Truck Rental
Photo of Sarasota: Stephen B. Goodwin via Big Stock

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Civic Fundraising and the Blue Light Special

Tough economic times wreak havoc with the law of unintended consequences.

Time to Pay Your Road Usage Tax!

After noticing what seemed like a significant increase in the number of traffic stops lately in and around the Sarasota area, I decided to do a little research. After all, maybe it’s just me. And even though I haven’t been pulled over myself, it seems like more and more often I’m hearing in random conversations about people getting pulled over.

It turns out that in the midst of a statewide budget crunch, lawmakers in the State of Florida are expecting an extra $32.5 Million in 2009 thanks to increased traffic fines.

Great.

So… tourism is down. The housing market is in the toilet. Business is suffering. Here’s a thought: let’s extract it from the taxpayers without calling it a tax.

So… State and local governments do what they’re incentivized to do: adjust their levels of roadside fundraising.

Is there a conspiracy to do this? Probably not. But who needs a conspiracy? There’s a wide-open fundraising channel that appears to be underutilized. Every municipality and county that is getting squeezed will naturally gravitate towards it.

So this brings up a fundamental question:

Is speeding a public safety issue or isn’t it?

After all, if all of us decided tomorrow that it really represented such a fantastic risk to our well-being and we decided to stop speeding, public safety officials would be thrilled, right?

Wrong. Your driving behavior helps make up for budget shortfalls.

As with all other “sin” taxes, what we forget is that we, the people, have put ourselves in the speeding business. We are now, as a society, financially dependent–at least partially–on something that is supposed to be a danger to us all.

But of course we don’t really believe it’s dangerous. Sure… the testosterone-crazed teenage male with a freshly-minted driver’s license flying through a school zone at 100 mph is dangerous. And naturally, they take his license and lock him up.

But the soccer Mom who’s not paying attention to her speedometer as she races from one place to another… is she really a public safety hazard? Probably not.

But she’s a great target for a fundraising effort… one that makes her feel stupid and ashamed. One that carries a gun. One that distracts law enforcement officers from fighting crime and turns them into monkey grinders.

And, as unintended consequences do, this one multiplies. Now we have multiple law enforcement officers gathering in one place to pull over the drivers who don’t move over while their colleagues are performing their sideshow.

And of course, this fundraising activity is dangerous… not because the State has decided that speeding drivers are a scourge that must be stopped, but because the State has chosen to keep its law enforcement officers in harm’s way to extract additional money from the drivers.

You might call me a cynic.

But I remember owning a 1974 Chevrolet Caprice Classic. It was already an “antique” (as automobiles go) when I bought it, mind you. But that car had something unique that the 1973 model did not have: a catalytic converter. Why? Because someone, somewhere decided that automobiles were creating too much pollution. So the Federal government mandated these devices to reduce pollution. Simple solution to a problem that was harmful to society. Require the automakers to put a device on the cars to reduce the problem.

When was the governor invented?

I rest my case.

So… if the State of Florida (and the local counties and municipalities) want to tax drivers whose speeds creep up, fine. But let’s call it what it is: a road tax. Let’s kill this whole “public safety” charade. What a joke.

It’ll probably make the officers who really are concerned about your safety on the roads feel a lot better about their jobs. After all, the people they report to are certainly incentivized to keep you driving “dangerously.”