Counter balance: Nimble developer finds ways to navigate housing crunch

As home prices skyrocket in St. Petersburg and Pinellas County — which, being a peninsula on a peninsula, has scant land available for new construction — residential real estate developers are reaping the rewards of offering a new vision for surburban living.

Tampa-based Metro Development Group, in particular, has been one of the big winners of the affordable housing crisis that’s taken hold in many Florida cities, particularly St. Pete and Tampa. Five of Metro’s communities — Epperson, Mirada, Southshore Bay, Union Park and Cypress Creek — rank among the 20 fastest-growing new-home communities in the Tampa Bay area. And Epperson, with its 7.5-acre Metro Lagoon swimming and watersports amenity, is the No. 27 fastest-growing master-planned community in the United States. Sales leapt from 350 in 2020 to 638 last year, an 82% spike.