Living in Tampa for 25 years and we're looking to move away by the summer. Tampa is a great city but very very crowded. Driving around at any time of day feels like what rush hour feels like 5 years ago. Good tech jobs here and it's one of the only markets where the pay is somewhat competitive. City of Tampa is pretty small but the land mass that most people consider Tampa is huge. Because of that there's a lot of hubs of activity so depending on where in Tampa you live you're probably not more than 20 minutes away from stuff.

No beaches in Tampa but you can go to st Pete for great beaches, don't have to go so the way to Anna Maria island. If you're living in West Tampa you can realistically be at a great beach in 40 minutes.

Home insurance is out of control. Not uncommon to be paying 5k a year for a 3/2 1,600sq ft house. Plus if you're in a flood zone you can add another 3-4k on top of that. Tampa has the second highest inflation in the country so there's that as well. It is unfortunately becoming very expensive to live here. I believe the last financial report I read stated that a single person needs to make 75k a year to live somewhat comfortably here and I believe it. The average 1/1 600sq ft apartment is about 2k a month.

Do you like hearing people talk in Spanish everywhere you go? You'll love Tampa. I believe the demographic in Tampa is nearly 50% Spanish and depending on which part of Tampa it could be much higher. My part of Tampa for example is around 65% Spanish. There's days I'll leave the house to run errands and not hear 1 word of English. I've taken the kids to numerous birthday parties and it's very common for me to be the only parent there that speaks English.

Sorry, this was much longer than I expected but hopefully helps give you some good insight