Sarasota and Naples apartments: pay more rent, get less space

Apartment rental markets in Naples and Sarasota were recently tagged as having the fastest-growing rents, on average, among all midsized Southeast markets. Now a new report posits that in addition to paying a lot more — up 38.4% year-over-year in March in Naples and 33.2% in Sarasota, according to CoStar — apartment dwellers in those markets get the opportunity to live in the smallest, on average, abodes.

The new report is from apartment search website and research blog RentCafe. The firm looked at how much space a renter can get, on average, in 99 Florida cities when paying the state’s average rent: $1,700 a month.

Statewide, for spacious apartments at that month’s rent head either to Panama City in the Panhandle for a 1,356-square-foot unit or Titusville, on the Space Coast, for a 1,336-square-foot unit, the report found. On the flip side, the smallest unit on average for $1,700 a month in rent is 506 square feet, found in Coral Gables, home of the University of Miami. Miami Beach and Boca Raton offer the next smallest spaces, the report shows, where renters can get 568 square feet and 640 square feet, respectively, paying the average month’s rent.

Some apartment sizes on the west coast of Florida, compared to those tiny ones in the Miami market, are palatial. Consider Winter Haven, in Polk County, with an average of 1,322 square feet for a unit at $1,700 a month. New Port Richey, in Pasco County, scores 1,238 square feet of space and Lakeland has 1,193 square feet.

Average apartment sizes, according to the report, get smaller heading south from those markets. That includes Bradenton (915 square feet), Tampa (879 square feet) and St. Petersburg (823 square feet.) And after those cities lie the smallest apartments, on average, in the region: Naples at 805 square feet and Sarasota at 788 square feet.