The Wellness Edition | Issue 34 | June 2, 2026

Tampa Bay added more than 10% since 2020 and adds roughly 92 a day. Local medical office occupancy is running near 93%, which means only about a 6% vacancy rate. CBRE projects new MOB construction will drop about 26% in 2026, the lowest level in a decade. Supply is tightening. Demand is accelerating. This is the Tampa Bay wellness real estate market right now, by the numbers I actually use.

Most market reports about Tampa Bay are written by someone who has never set foot in Wesley Chapel on a Tuesday afternoon. They quote MSA averages, drop in a population stat, and call it intelligence. That is not intelligence. That is wallpaper.

This issue is different because I work this market every day. The numbers below come from CoStar, CBRE, Florida Medical Space, Plan Hillsborough, and the deals I have been part of in the last 18 months. If you are operating, leasing, or buying wellness real estate in Tampa Bay this year, these are the data points to know.

Population is where every wellness CRE conversation should start, because patient demographics drive site selection more than rent does. Tampa Bay adds around 92 residents per day, more than 270,000 since 2020 (Plan Hillsborough). The growth is not evenly distributed.

The submarkets to watch:

Tampa Bay's median household income is around $75,475 with a median age near 35.9. That is the profile of a population with disposable income and an active wellness spend. It is why multi-location brands like Hermann Aesthetics, SOHO Wellness, and TAO Wellness are following growth corridors out from the urban core.

The CoStar Tampa Medical Office Report shows trailing 12-month sales volume around $315 million, 221 transactions, and an average price of $212 per square foot. That is well above the $176 per SF benchmark for all-office assets. Stabilized medical office buildings are running at or above 93% occupancy.

Asking rents for Tampa medical office are running near $28 per square foot on average, with premium space climbing meaningfully higher. There are roughly 65 active medical office listings right now, but the inventory that actually fits a wellness business is a fraction of that. The advertised number is not the actionable number.

The construction pipeline is what makes the next 24 months interesting. CBRE projects new MOB construction starts will drop roughly 26% in 2026, the lowest level since 2014. No wave of new supply is coming to relieve pressure. If you are leasing in 2026 or 2027, your negotiating window is shorter than it was in 2023.

Most brokers will hand you a list of available spaces sorted by square footage and price. That is the wrong starting point. The right starting point: where does your ideal patient actually live, work, and drive between, and which corridor sits at the intersection of those patterns?

For a med spa, that pulls you toward South Tampa, Westshore, Westchase, or the Wesley Chapel and Trinity ring depending on whether your patient base skews urban-affluent or suburban-affluent. For PT or orthopedic, toward submarkets near the Tampa Medical and Research District or the AdventHealth Connerton corridor. For functional medicine and longevity, toward higher-income St. Petersburg waterfront and Lakewood Ranch.

The chiropractors I just placed wanted retail visibility plus drive-thru access for older patients. The med spa I worked with last quarter needed luxury retail co-tenancy that signaled affluence on its own. Different practices. Different corridors. Same framework: the patient drives the location.

Retail is Tampa Bay's strongest CRE sector right now. Q1 2025 retail sales volumes were up about 34% year-over-year locally. Medical and wellness tenants are a meaningful share of that demand. Retail-to-medical conversion, what CBRE calls medtail, is accelerating because wellness consumer demographics and retail foot traffic line up almost perfectly.

Class A office availability in Tampa has dropped roughly 500 basis points from the 2022 peak, but overall office vacancy is still around 19.4%. The bifurcation between quality and commodity space is extreme. Properties positioned for wellness tenants (parking, ADA, plumbing capacity, electrical for medical equipment, signage rights) are commanding meaningful premiums. Properties positioned generically are losing tenants to better space across the street.

Tampa Bay CRE delivered about 6.5% returns in 2025, outpacing the national slowdown by close to 20%. The region benefits from three structural tailwinds: population in-migration, no state income tax, and a pro-business regulatory environment since the certificate of need repeal in 2019.

The cluster that matters most for wellness CRE investors is the Tampa Medical and Research District. Tampa General, USF Health, and Moffitt Cancer Center anchor an employment node no other Florida submarket replicates for wellness. Tampa General's Innovation Center in Ybor City opened in February 2026 as a testbed for AI-enabled care delivery. Wellness real estate within a 15-minute drive of that node benefits from the spillover. Watch Ybor and the surrounding corridors.

Not software. Financing. Launched in October 2025, Florida stood up a $50 million revolving loan fund specifically targeting innovative healthcare solutions. WLicensed healthcare entities, clinical training providers, and certain eligible organizations investing in healthcare innovation should review eligibility.  One of the few state-level capital sources designed to underwrite healthcare tech adoption. 

Two medical office buildings traded in Tampa for a combined $12.85 million in March 2026. One in St. Petersburg, one in Westshore. Mid-size assets with stabilized wellness or medical tenancy. Cap rates were tighter than national averages, reflecting institutional appetite for this asset class. Translation for owner-occupants: if your building fits a similar profile, it is worth more than you think. Translation for landlords: the market is telling you what your asset is worth, and the number is going up.

 I have served the Tampa Bay market for over a decade and have seen the shift happening slowly.  The demand is higher now more than ever. The current cycle is different: wellness and medical demand are decoupling from the broader office market in a way that did not happen before. Office can be at 19% vacancy and medical office at 93% occupancy in the same MSA in the same quarter. That is the regional version of the bifurcation everyone has been talking about nationally.

What this means practically: if you are operating, leasing, or buying inside the wellness CRE category in Tampa Bay, the data points to track are not the headline office vacancy numbers. They are medical office sale prices, medtail conversion velocity, the construction pipeline, and demographic growth in second-ring submarkets. Those four data sets, read together, tell you where to be in the next 24 months.

I publish a quarterly Tampa Bay Wellness Real Estate Market Report with lease comps, vacancy data, submarket-level absorption, and the expansion trends I am watching. Reply with the word MARKET REPORT and I'll send you the Q2 edition the moment it drops. To talk through your specific submarket or property, book a Q2 strategy session:

calendly.com/leigh-a-brower

Until next week,

Leigh A. Brower

Fractional Chief Real Estate Officer

The Next Gen Dev | The Wellness Edition

The Next Gen Dev - Wellness Edition is your weekly briefing on the strategies and frameworks that separate wellness businesses building the future from those stuck in the past.