Homebuyers go to (bidding) war over Odessa property

Tampa Bay home sellers don’t have to live near downtown Tampa or St. Petersburg anymore to make big-time bank. Sale prices have exploded in communities that barely qualify as suburbs, such as Odessa, a town of about 8,000 people in Pasco County that’s a 40-minute drive from Tampa.

About a month ago, Rae Anna Conforti of RE/MAX Alliance Group sold a 1-acre property in Odessa’s Magnolia Farms subdivision for its full asking price of $2.6 million, a record per-square-foot sale, according to a news release.