Report: New Tampa, Fort Myers apartments are shrinking

It's official: Florida apartment renters are getting less for their money.

According to report from RentCafe, new apartment sizes in most major markets in the state have fallen in the past 10 years.

In Tampa, the average apartment now is 941 square feet, down by 80 square feet from 2015. In Fort Myers, the average apartment is 1,025 square feet, 139 square feet smaller than 10 years ago.

The apartment search website found the same decreases in size in six of the eight Florida localities it studied. The report says one reason for the smaller units here and in other sunbelt states is “due to the share of two- and three-bedroom apartments growing smaller.”

Interestingly, only Gainesville and St. Petersburg apartments are bigger than they were 10 years ago, according to the report. Units in the university town average 1,122 square feet, 11 square feet bigger than a decade ago, and the ones in St. Pete average 909 square feet, 22 square feet bigger.

Gainesville and St. Petersburg are more in line with what’s happening across the country where rental units are actually getting larger.

According to the report, the average apartment size in the U.S. grew to 908 square feet in 2024, 4 square feet larger than a decade ago. Studios, one- and two-bedroom units grew the most with studios growing by 13 square feet, one-bedrooms growing by 6 square feet and two-bedrooms growing by 4 square feet.

Nationally, three-bedroom units decreased in size by an average of 15 square feet.

As for the cities with the largest apartments nationwide, they are both in Florida.

The aforementioned Gainesville and in Tallahassee. The capital city’s average apartment size is 1,130 square feet, down 49 square feet from a decade ago.

(According to RentCafe, the rankings are based on the top 100 cities with the largest stock of apartments in multifamily buildings of 50 units or more. The authors excluded cities where the number of units completed in one year was less than 500.)

Average size of new apartments in Florida