For those interested in exploring various areas of Florida for possible real estate development or investment, there are more and more ways to find interesting and valuable information online.  Consider the following information, available online at no charge, for two of the biggest development targets in the State of Florida right now:  Orlando and Miami-Dade.

Orlando Economic Development Information

In Orlando, located in Central Florida, there is the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission where economic indicators for that area are studied and reported on each month.  You can download its overview of September 2012 Economic Indicators for Metro Orlando online for free. 

For those interested in commercial real estate, the web site also provides things like this:

• Orlando Office and Industry Market Statistics
• National Industrial Comparison - Metro Orlando
• National Office Comparison - Metro Orlando
• National Retail Comparison - Metro Orlando

Miami - Dade Economic Development Information

The City of Miami has its office of Economic Incentives which provides lots and lots of information about the Greater Miami area as well as information regarding incentives that the City of Miami offers to those interesting in doing business there, such as its New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program, where "... low interest, private capital [are steered]  into distressed census tracts to capitalize hard to fund commercial and residential projects."

Miami-Dade County also has its Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources which hosts the Economic Development and International Trade website.  Economic trends are reported on a quarterly basis (not a monthly report like Orlando provides) and these are also offered for free as a downloadable pdf document (get the Second Quarter 2012 Report for Miami-Dade here). 

Miami-Dade also offers an overall economic forecast for 2012, published March 2012 by Chief Economist Robert Cruz.  Here, information including the following is provided:

"Except for office market, commercial real estate in Miami-Dade starting to show signs of improvement: vacancy rates down, lease rates up, and positive net absorption in 2011."

"In 2011 the value of total trade was up 19.5% vs. 2010. 2011 saw continuing diversification in value of trade among trading partners (+Europe, +Asia)."

Regional and State-Wide Sources of Economic Information for Florida Commercial Real Estate

There are other sources of economic information and analysis of Florida's economic future as well as details about its economy, not only at a local level as these three sites demonstrate, but also at the regional and state-wide levels. 

What are they describing?  Florida has suffered economically for the past few years, but things are not as bad now as they were a couple of years ago for most Florida industries and economic sectors - and there are optimistic opinions that we're going to see a stronger and more stable Florida economy in 2013 and beyond. 

However, some regions of Florida do look to be bouncing back and offering more opportunity than others, as for example the Orlando area especially its Lake Nona region.  Within the state, some areas are indeed doing much better and offering more to the commercial real estate investor than others do.  If the rest of Florida follows the lead of Lake Nona, then the future will be very bright, indeed.