Every Florida metro and county, ranked twice: where the market stands today, and how the next one to three years are set up. Built from official sources and CoStar data, rebuilt from source every edition.
Published Q4 2026 · SP Multifamily Group
MSAs COVERED
COUNTIES COVERED
ANALYTICAL CATEGORIES
RANKED HORIZONS
METHOD VARIATIONS TESTED
DATA VINTAGE
The Florida Economic & Growth Intelligence Report is SP Multifamily Group’s statewide ranking of where to own and operate apartments in Florida. The 2026 Edition scores and ranks all 22 metropolitan areas and 67 counties on the same basis, using the same official sources, and profiles each on its own page. The report shows investors, lenders, developers, and owners the evidence behind the Florida market, so decisions rest on data rather than reputation.
Where the market stands today: the strength of its economy and population base, how its apartments are performing in terms of rent, vacancy, concessions, and absorption, and how actively they trade. This is the main rank on every page.
How the next one to three years are set up: whether new renter demand is likely to outrun the apartments being delivered, and whether the market has the momentum, resilience, and capacity to carry it. This rank opens every Strategic Read.
The two reads are built to disagree, and the disagreement is the finding. Citrus County ranks 1st today and 21st forward, because 1.9% vacancy in a 2,100-unit stock says little about the demand to come. Marion County ranks 4th today and 1st forward, because 14,665 new residents in 2025 meet a pipeline that falls short of them. A buyer of occupancy and a buyer of growth are looking at different lists, and the report keeps them separate.
All 22 metros on both horizons, and every county’s position. Metros and counties are ranked as separate groups: a metro’s rank is always among the 22 metros, a county’s among the 67 counties. Switch between the Current and Forward lists, then look up any county.
| Rank | Metro | Tier | Composite | Other rank |
|---|
County Current scores range from 39.4 to 61.3, while Forward scores range from 33.4 to 69.6, and 13 counties move 10 or more places between the two rankings. Duval County ranks 27th today and 7th forward, because the state’s most resilient economic base meets a mid-table pipeline. Among the metros, Ocala leads the Current ranking and sits 3rd forward, while Jacksonville ranks 8th today and leads the Forward ranking.
About 52,942 rental units a year are delivering statewide from the 2023 to 2025 permit cohorts against blended renter demand of about 27,720 households a year. Only 9 of the 39 Investable counties and 6 of 22 metros show demand running ahead of deliveries. Miami-Dade and Orange alone account for a third of the 63,075 five-plus units permitted in 2025, while statewide permitting has shifted toward houses, with 111,173 single-family units permitted.
Florida’s counties added 196,680 residents in the year, and nine counties lost population, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Pinellas, where the estimate recorded 11,834 fewer residents, the largest loss of any county. BEBR projects 305,948 new residents a year to 2030. The Forward engine blends the two, half the latest Census change and half the projection path, so a single soft estimate neither sinks a deep market nor hides a real trend.
Ocala leads the 22 metros, and Citrus leads the 67 counties, with Sumter, Palm Beach, Marion and St. Johns completing the county top five. Of the big three metros, Orlando ranks 4th, Miami 5th, and Tampa 17th. The median Investable county has effective rents down 1.1%, vacancy of 10.4% against 7.5% stabilized, and concessions of 5.2%; only 14 of the 39 Investable counties recorded rent growth in the year. Absorption is the counterweight, with 60,571 units absorbed statewide.
Florida's tightest markets are small: Citrus has 2,114 tracked units at 1.9% vacancy, and the 19 counties that recorded no apartment sales in the year are all Thin markets. The report classes every county by depth: 39 counties with 2,000 or more tracked apartment units rank as Investable, ahead of the 28 Thin markets. Liquidity concentrates further: $14.0 billion traded across 1,156 county-level sales, most of it in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange and Hillsborough.
Across 64 reasonable variations of weights, windows, sources, and the market-class line, rank correlations stay above 0.99 for counties, no metro moves more than three places, and 58 of 67 counties are Stable on the Current read. The two Unstable forward reads, Indian River and Okaloosa, are disclosed on their pages. Leaderboard seats require a top-five place in at least 60% of those variations, so a seat is a durable finding rather than a point estimate.
Six statewide boards seat five counties each. A seat requires Investable class, a confidence score of at least 60, and a top-five place in at least 60% of the 64 method variations, so a seat is a durable finding rather than a point estimate.
| # | County | Score | Cur · Fwd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Citrus County | 61.3 | 1 · 21 |
| 2 | Sumter County | 61.0 | 2 · 11 |
| 3 | Palm Beach County | 60.7 | 3 · 3 |
| 4 | Marion County | 60.4 | 4 · 1 |
| 5 | St. Johns County | 59.8 | 5 · 8 |
Strongest Fundamentals seats the five Investable counties with the highest Current composite. Citrus leads on 1.9% vacancy and rising rents in a 2,100-unit stock; Sumter and St. Johns seat on growth and momentum despite vacancy near 18%; Palm Beach is the one large market; Marion also tops the Forward read.
| # | County | Score | Cur · Fwd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marion County | 69.6 | 4 · 1 |
| 2 | St. Lucie County | 66.3 | 7 · 2 |
| 3 | Palm Beach County | 65.3 | 3 · 3 |
| 4 | Polk County | 64.7 | 13 · 4 |
| 5 | Orange County | 62.1 | 15 · 5 |
Best Positioned is the Forward ranking's top five. Marion and St. Lucie lead on demand running ahead of deliveries, with 2025 population gains of 14,665 and 10,857; Palm Beach and Polk add depth and resilience; Orange seats on resilience, 2nd of 67, despite about 6,700 rental units a year from its 2025 permit cohort.
| # | County | Score | Cur · Fwd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Duval County | 73.7 | 27 · 7 |
| 2 | Orange County | 72.2 | 15 · 5 |
| 3 | Clay County | 69.7 | 21 · 9 |
| 4 | Broward County | 69.6 | 25 · 22 |
| 5 | Palm Beach County | 68.2 | 3 · 3 |
Most Resilient scores low unemployment, diversified output, low severe rent burden, steady operating metrics and durable trading. Duval and Orange lead; Broward and Palm Beach are the South Florida seats; Clay, at 8,600 units, is the one small market. Resilience is what holds when growth pauses.
| # | County | Score | Cur · Fwd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palm Beach County | 64.6 | 3 · 3 |
| 2 | Citrus County | 64.0 | 1 · 21 |
| 3 | Marion County | 63.7 | 4 · 1 |
| 4 | St. Lucie County | 60.3 | 7 · 2 |
| 5 | Sumter County | 59.1 | 2 · 11 |
Fastest Emerging combines operating performance, acceleration, forward setup and momentum: markets improving from where they stand. Palm Beach leads with rents up 2.8% and 5.6% vacancy; Citrus and Marion follow; St. Lucie and Sumter seat on momentum. Four of the five also hold a Strongest Fundamentals seat.
| # | County | Score | Cur · Fwd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Duval County | 20 places | 27 · 7 |
| 2 | Escambia County | 16 places | 31 · 15 |
| 3 | Clay County | 12 places | 21 · 9 |
| 4 | Hillsborough County | 11 places | 35 · 24 |
| 5 | Orange County | 10 places | 15 · 5 |
Greatest Opportunity Disconnect seats counties whose Forward rank sits furthest above their Current rank, among those in the top half forward. Duval ranks 27th today and 7th forward, a 20-place gap; Escambia 31st to 15th; Clay 21st to 9th; Hillsborough 35th to 24th; Orange 15th to 5th. The metro board seats four.
| # | County | Score | Cur · Fwd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Flagler County | 63.3 | 24 · 36 |
| 2 | Pinellas County | 61.0 | 39 · 39 |
| 3 | Lee County | 60.5 | 28 · 27 |
| 4 | Charlotte County | 60.4 | 26 · 37 |
| 5 | Sarasota County | 59.0 | 29 · 19 |
Greatest Headwinds combines weak resilience, weak operating performance and a weak forward setup; a higher value is a stronger headwind. Flagler leads with rents down 9.1% and 21.0% vacancy against 5.6% stabilized; Lee and Sarasota are repricing with vacancy above 16%; Pinellas lost 11,834 residents in 2025.
The ranking is built in three layers, scored separately and never blended into a single undifferentiated number. The Structural Foundation draws on eight official public source series, organized into eight categories: Population Growth, Migration, Workforce, Economic Strength, Income, Business Environment, Housing Demand and Affordability, and Education. Seventy-three structural measures feed those categories across all 89 geographies. A second layer scores apartment operations from CoStar quarterly data through 2026 Q2: fifteen measures covering effective rent growth and acceleration, overall and stabilized vacancy, the lease-up gap, concessions, absorption and volatility, drawn from more than 6,000 county-quarter observations. A third layer records capital-markets liquidity from every arm’s-length apartment sale by county from 2010 to 2026 Q2, more than 4,000 county-quarter records of transactions, dollar volume, and units sold. A forward supply-demand engine sets the rental units expected from the 2023 to 2025 permit cohorts against new renter households, blending the latest Census estimate with the BEBR projection path to 2030.
Every measure is ranked within its own Florida universe and scored by percentile. Missing data is never estimated or set to zero: its weight moves to what is observed and the gap is disclosed. Every rank was recomputed under 64 reasonable variations of the method and labeled Stable, Sensitive, or Unstable; every score was reconstructed independently by a separate process before release; and every source file is logged with its URL, retrieval time, and cryptographic hash, so any number on any page can be traced to the record it came from. The model is rebuilt from source every edition.
Census PEP — County population estimates and components of change — Vintage 2025
Census ACS — Households, renters, income, rent, home value, attainment — 2020–2024 five-year
Census Building Permits — Annual county permits by structure type — 2025
BLS QCEW — Employment, wages and establishments by industry — 2025 annual averages
BLS LAUS — Labor force and unemployment — 2025, eleven-month average
BEA Regional Accounts — Real GDP by industry; personal and per-capita income — 2024
IRS SOI Migration — County migration flows, exemptions and AGI — 2022–2023
BEBR (University of Florida) — County population projections, medium series — 2026 edition, to 2030
CoStar Market — Multifamily 5+ units: rent, vacancy, concessions, absorption — Quarterly to 2026 Q2
CoStar Sales — Arm’s-length apartment sale comps — 2010 Q1 to 2026 Q2
Dollar Values in 2025 dollars (CPI-U)
125 pages: statewide rankings, six leaderboards, statewide observations, the watch list and concluding judgments, a two-page profile of every metro, and a dossier for every county with its data table, category scorecard and two written reads. Use the arrows or scroll inside the viewer; the download gives you the file.
The report ranks every Florida county and metro on the same evidence. If you own, lend on or are considering an apartment asset in Florida, we will walk you through how its county reads on both horizons, what is driving the rank, and what to watch over the next twelve months.
Senior Director Investments
(407)557-3889
benjamin.skinner@marcusmillichap.com
Senior Director Investments
(407)557-3888
matthew.prozzillo@marcusmillichap.com
Scores measure relative position within Florida at the stated vintages: public data to 2025, CoStar to 2026 Q2, BEBR 2026 projections. A rank or tier is a comparison, not a credit opinion on any asset. Forward statements describe conditions and what could change them; they are not predictions and do not replace local diligence on demand, supply and operations. Apartment operating and transaction data are sourced from CoStar Group under license; neither CoStar nor any agency named has reviewed or endorsed this publication.
To cite this report: SP Multifamily Group of Marcus & Millichap, Florida Economic & Growth Intelligence Report, 2026 Edition, October 2026.
Media inquiries: benjamin.skinner@marcusmillichap.com & matthew.prozzillo@marcusmillichap.com
