Selling now in Wimauma, FL
Berry Bay
1,378 lots in unincorporated Hillsborough County
There are three separate community development districts inside this one community, split by phase, with nothing on the ground marking the lines. The district bill runs from about $182 a year to about $4,055. And the newest of the three has published no budget and no assessment table at all. The whole carrying cost is below.
- Area
- Wimauma, FL
- Lots
- 1,378
- Districts
- Three
- District bill
- $182 to $4,055
At a glance
Berry Bay fast facts
Every figure here comes from the districts' own adopted budgets, assessment tables, amortisation schedules and audited statements, the county appraiser's certified rate table queried parcel by parcel, the county's own issued-permit file, the state register of special districts, the school district's own boundary and capacity layers, and federal flood and state emergency mapping queried directly with controls geocoded from real addresses. Where two official sources disagree, we publish the disagreement rather than picking one, and on this page that happens four separate times.
- Area
- Unincorporated Hillsborough County
- Size
- 1,378 lots across thirteen plats
- Districts
- Three, and one has no numbers yet
- Cheapest district bill
- About $182 a year
- Priciest district bill
- About $4,055 a year
- Same 60-foot lot, two phases
- About $945 a year apart
- Total tax rate
- About 18.25 mills
- Share of the bill that is not tax
- 34 to 46 percent
- In a mapped flood zone
- 30 lots, on a 2008 map
- In a surge evacuation zone
- 64 percent, or 9. Both official
- County insurance average
- Not published, we could not verify it
- Assigned schools over capacity
- All four, on 2020 data
- Homeowner association dues
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
- Current pricing and lots left
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
Figures come from the districts' adopted budgets, assessment tables, amortisation schedules and audited statements, the county appraiser's certified millage table, parcel roll, permit file and ownership records, the state's special district register, the school district's published boundary and capacity layers, and federal flood and state emergency mapping, all as of September 2026. County solid-waste and stormwater dollar rates, any county homeowners insurance average, recorded declarations and association dues could not be obtained and none is published here. All details are subject to change without notice.
One phase here is nearly half a mile of open ground from the rest of the community.
We measured it from the geometry rather than the marketing map. One village sits about 2,137 feet from the nearest other lot plat and about 4,213 feet from the core of the community, and the two are joined only by a pair of undeveloped tracts the developer still owns. It is in a different district from the core, it feeds a different elementary school, and its lots do not exist in the state's own property data. It is sold under the same name and the same entrance sign.
Where it is
South Hillsborough County, on the corridor east of the interstate between Sun City Center and the county line, about eight miles inland of Tampa Bay on the north side of the river. Roughly 2.8 miles across and under a mile deep. Thirteen plats, three districts and an amenity centre that not every phase is walking distance from, so walk more than one before you decide what you mean by this community.
How to buy in Berry Bay without leaving money on the table
The person at the builder's sales desk works for the builder. You can have a Florida agent on your side instead, touring with you, reading the contract and the districts' own assessment tables line by line, and pushing for every incentive, upgrade and closing-cost credit the builder will give. It costs you nothing: on new construction the builder already budgets your agent's fee whether you bring one or not. The one catch is timing. You usually need your own agent from the very first visit, or the builder will not recognise them and you lose it. Start here and we will set it up.
Set up a tourWhat a local would tell you
Three districts, one community, and a third of last year's assessments never appeared on a tax bill at all
Start with the structure, because everything else sits on it. There are three community development districts inside this one marketed community, carved by phase. About 1,040 parcels sit in a district created in 2020, 337 in one created in December 2023, and a third was created by county ordinance in January 2026. That third one is listed as active in the state register and it appears on no parcel's district code, in no county mapping layer, and has published no budget and no assessment table. There is no number to give a buyer, because none has been adopted.
Across the two districts that do publish, the total annual bill runs from about $182 to about $4,055, which is twenty-two to one. That headline overstates it, so here is the honest version: among lots that actually carry bond debt it is about $2,490 to $4,055, and on one identical product, a 60-foot lot, the published tiers are about $3,110 and about $4,055. That is roughly $945 a year between two houses of the same width in the same community, and nothing on the ground tells you which one you are standing on.
Now the mechanism that decides it, because it is not about the house. Operations are allocated identically across the phases by lot frontage. Debt is not. A 50-foot lot pays about $1,595, $1,625 or $1,728 of debt depending only on which borrowing paid for that village's pipes. And the older, cheaper money is the expensive money: one phase carries about 16 per cent less bond principal per lot and pays about 8 per cent more every year, because the earlier borrowing priced in the twos and threes and the later one did not. Per dollar borrowed those lots repay about $2.11 against about $1.67. The two can be on the same street.
Here is the one that is moving right now, and it is the reason a buyer cannot rely on last year's tax bill. About $933,000 of district assessments, roughly a third of the total, was invoiced privately to the developer last year and appeared on no tax bill anywhere. This year the on-roll total rises about 73 per cent and the off-roll total falls about 92 per cent. That money is not new. It has moved onto the homeowners who bought the lots. There is also a separate agreement under which the developer plugs an operating shortfall outside the assessment mechanism entirely, and that obligation ends when the developer's remaining land sells, at which point the cost falls to everyone assessed.
Two more asymmetries. Undeveloped developer acreage inside one district is assessed at about $53 an acre a year against roughly $10,800 an acre for a finished lot, about 204 to 1. And one block of 80 platted lots is levied operations only, at about 12 per cent of the full charge, because no bond has been issued against it yet. A real discount today and a real question about tomorrow.
One thing does not reconcile, and we report it rather than resolve it. About $1,080,000 of bond principal is missing between the district's own audit and its own amortisation schedule. That gap is the signature of prepaid liens, where an owner pays the bond off in full and drops off the debt roll permanently while identical neighbours keep paying. No prepayment schedule and no lot-level list is published by either district, so a buyer cannot determine from any public document whether a specific lot's lien has been paid off. That takes a letter from the district manager.
So ask five things in writing before you contract: which of the three districts the specific lot is in; its adopted operating and debt assessment for the coming year, from the executed document rather than an earlier upload; which borrowing is pledged against it; whether its lien has been prepaid and what the payoff is; and whether any part of its assessment is currently billed to the developer rather than to the owner.
Find out which of the three districts a specific lot is in
The answer is a number between about $182 and about $4,055 a year, and for one of the three there is no number published yet at all.
The record
The unincorporated bill is not the cheap one, and one district publishes two different budgets for the same year
The rate here totals about 18.2515 mills and it sums exactly from eight named components: county general revenue, the unincorporated services levy, two school levies, a combined port, transit and children's board line, the library district, water management and environmental land. We rebuilt it against six real parcels across three jurisdictions and every one footed to four decimal places with a difference of zero.
And it overturns the thing most out-of-state buyers assume. Unincorporated is not meaningfully cheaper than the city here. This community pays about 18.2515 mills; the county's largest city pays about 18.2926. That is a difference of about four hundredths of a mill, or roughly $11 a year on this community's own median taxable value. The mechanism is that unincorporated parcels pay a services levy of about 4.62 mills plus a library levy of about 0.56, which together come to almost exactly what the city charges in city millage with neither of those lines. The city parcels also escape a transit component that this community pays.
That comparison is the wrong frame anyway. Layer the district assessment on top and the unincorporated buyer here pays about $8,016 all in against roughly $4,781 of pure property tax on the same value inside that city. The unincorporated bill in a district community is the expensive one, by about two-thirds, and the entire excess is the part that is not tax.
Now something we would rather flag than smooth over. One of the two districts publishes two different budgets for this year on its own website, both titled adopted, with operating assessments 108 per cent apart. A 50-foot lot is about $730 of operations in one file and about $1,518 in the other; a 60-foot lot totals about $3,110 or about $4,055 depending which one you open. The second file also restructures an entire assessment area down to 77 single-family units at a far higher rate, footnoted that the assignment happens when the property transfers. No adopting document distinguishes the two versions. Both are published by the district. We adjudicate neither, and a buyer should insist on the executed version for their own lot.
On the worked numbers, at this community's own medians. A vacant lot runs about $4,385 a year, of which about 74 per cent is not property tax, because the district charges a bare lot the same as a finished one. The finished spec home runs about $8,016, of which about 41 per cent is not tax. That step is about $3,632, roughly 1.8 times, gentler than most Florida new construction for exactly the reason that makes the first bill high. Homesteaded, about $7,564.
Homestead is worth less here than buyers expect. About $452 a year at this community's median, because the assessment cap has had at most four years to accrue in a community this new. And 299 of the 978 standing homes, about 31 per cent, currently carry no homestead flag at all. A buyer of a finished spec home closes into the uncapped, unexempted number and will not see homestead until the following January.
One limit we will not paper over. The county tax collector's parcel service, which is where the certified solid-waste and stormwater assessments live, returned an error to every request on every host we tried. So this page publishes no dollar figure for county solid waste or stormwater at all, and every all-in number above understates the real bill by whatever those charges are. Water and sewer are separately on a monthly county utility account that never touches a tax record either. The one that runs the buyer's way: street lighting is a line inside the district's own operating budget, roughly $175 a lot, rather than a separate county lighting charge, so it is not billed twice.
What to ask for that is not published: the executed assessment resolution for the specific lot and which district adopted it; the county solid-waste and stormwater charges for that address; whether any part of the assessment is currently direct-billed to the developer; the association's recorded declaration and dues, which are a separate bill on top of all of this; and a real tax bill for a finished comparable in the same plat showing every line.
The area
A flood map that says minimal hazard and a surge model that says evacuate, on the same 480 acres
Take the flood answer first, because it is the reassuring one and it comes with a date attached. About 99.85 per cent of this community is mapped as minimal flood hazard, and only two parcels fall in a special flood hazard area by centroid. Run the same test against the actual lot polygons rather than their centre points and that becomes 30 lots across five plats instead of two across two, which matters for accessory structures, for fill, and for what a lender's determination vendor may return on a specific address.
Now the date. The federal panel governing this community became effective in August 2008. It predates eight federally declared storms in this county since, and it predates the subdivision itself by twelve years, so the minimal-hazard determination describes agricultural land, not the graded and filled neighbourhood that stands there now. There is no preliminary map coming either: this county has none, and the nearest preliminary coverage stops about nine miles short, across open water, in a different county.
Two property-specific map-amendment letters do exist here, covering exactly the lot ranges the polygon test flags. The relief is real, and a letter of that kind never changes the published map, ever. The 2008 panel still shows the hazard over those lots and always will. The relief lives in a document that somebody has to produce at closing, at every refinance, at every insurance renewal and at resale. If you are buying one of those lots, get the letter and keep it with the deed.
Then the contradiction, which is the real finding here. The state and county surge mapping puts about 64 per cent of these parcels in an evacuation zone, and the exposure is the river corridor rather than the bay. Nine plats are entirely in, four entirely out, and not one straddles the line. So the flood map says minimal hazard and the surge model says evacuate under a major storm, on the same 480 acres. A buyer who checks only one, and the flood map is the one lenders force, gets the wrong impression whichever way they looked.
And it gets one layer stranger. The county's own 2026 evacuation services put only about 9 per cent of this community in any zone at all, and change the letter for most of those. Two official county products, live at the same time, seven times apart. We publish both and adjudicate neither. Ask the county emergency management office for a written zone determination by address and keep it.
On what has actually happened to houses here, the federal record is specific. Ten declared disasters have paid about $273 million to owner households county-wide, and in this postcode 7,776 registrations produced 1,750 approvals and about $5.2 million. The approval rate in this postcode is about 22.5 per cent against about 33.5 per cent county-wide, which is worth knowing before anyone assumes a claim is straightforward.
On insurance we have nothing and would rather say so than guess. The state regulator retired its county premium reports and the replacement tool failed on every combination we tried. No county average, no rank, no statewide comparison. A third-party repost was available and we declined to use it. Get a real quote on the actual house.
Schools come with their own limit stated first, because it governs everything else. The newest attendance data this district publishes to the public is five school years old and predates this subdivision entirely. On that data, middle and high assignments are unanimous across the community, but elementary splits across two schools and the split falls exactly on the district line. All four assigned schools were already projected over capacity, the middle school at about 164 per cent and the high school at about 149 per cent, in accounting that did not include these 1,378 lots. No boundary study touching them turned up, which we report as none found rather than none exists, since the district's own site is gated to automated requests. In a corridor that has added tens of thousands of homes since, treat a boundary change as likely rather than remote and ask the district directly.
What you need to know
Buying new construction with someone on your side
Representation is free and the timing is the catch, as above. It is worth more than usual here for one reason: the phase line is the line for everything, and it is invisible. Which of three districts you are in, which bond you repay and at what effective rate, which elementary school your child attends, whether your parcel exists in the state's own property data, whether your address exists in the federal address file, whether you are surrounded by neighbours or by builder-held lots, and under one of the two live mappings whether you evacuate. Six independent boundaries on one seam, none of them marked on the ground.
Two of those surprise people. 405 lots here, about 29 per cent, do not exist in the state's own property data at all, including 30 with finished houses on them. A title or tax search run against state records returns nothing for those lots, which is not the same as returning nothing found. And four plats, 449 lots, have no addresses in the federal address file, so anything relying on address matching cannot place them today.
On the market itself, we would rather give you the unflattering version. Permitted starts here have gone 390, 259, 126, 44, and 67 so far this year. That is about 17 per cent of the 2022 peak, and more than half of this year's figure landed in January and February; May through September produced thirteen. Against last year it has more than quadrupled through June; against 2024 it is down about 37 per cent; against the peak, about 83 per cent. Two new builders entered this year, a real positive signal, though they bought lots from an inventory holder rather than opening new phases.
One number that will mislead you if nobody warns you. Declared construction value is not comparable between builders here. On the same streets in the same year, the ratio of closing price to declared value runs 0.88, 1.75 and 2.60 across three builders. Part of that is genuinely different product, but a three-fold spread is a paperwork practice, not a value signal. Do not use declared construction value to compare one builder against another, or as a proxy for what a house is worth.
Something the ownership roll shows that no sign will. About 28 per cent of parcels are held by companies rather than individuals, but only 9 of the 978 standing houses are, so effectively all of the entity ownership here is unbuilt lot inventory. And it is not spread out: the newest block of 333 lots is about 97 per cent entity-held and 97 per cent vacant, while everything platted before 2024 is 95 to 100 per cent in individual hands. We also want to correct a premise in the other direction, because we checked for it specifically: the largest non-builder holder here owns no houses at all and has no rental exposure, and the second largest is not an outside party but a builder's own land vehicle, identifiable only because its mailing address matches that builder to the suite number.
On rental concentration the answer is a clean negative and we ran the control to prove it. We screened every owner name against 32 national single-family rental operators and found nothing. The same screen run county-wide returns 6,790 parcels, so the screen works and this community genuinely has none. D.R. Horton is the largest builder here, with two more production builders and two recent entrants working alongside it. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, developer or land-holding entity, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean.
The rest is the same everywhere: hire your own independent inspector at pre-drywall, again at final walkthrough, and once more before the one-year warranty expires. On this side of the county ask specifically about lot grading and drainage, since the hazard here is rainfall and river surge rather than coastal wave action. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by D.R. Horton, any homebuilder, any developer of Berry Bay, or Hillsborough County. The builder is identified here because it is a builder of this community, which is a statement of fact and not a representation of any relationship. Community names and marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. Subdiview is operated by a real estate broker licensed in Illinois. We are not your agent, we do not represent you, and we perform no real estate brokerage services in this state. No one at Subdiview is licensed in this state. If you join an interest list, your information is referred to a real estate professional licensed in the state where the property is located, who will contact you directly. We are compensated by that professional's brokerage, not by you. Pricing, plans, inventory, district, tax and approval details on this page carry the dates shown, are as published, proposed or reported rather than committed, and are subject to change without notice.
Questions and answers
Berry Bay FAQ
What is Berry Bay?
It is a 1,378-lot community in unincorporated Hillsborough County, about eight miles inland of Tampa Bay on the north side of the river corridor, built across thirteen recorded plats since 2022. Three builders are working it now and two of those arrived only in 2026. It is roughly three-quarters built: 978 homes stand today and about 400 lots are still vacant, nearly all of them concentrated in one newer block rather than scattered through the community.
How many community development districts are there?
Three, and that is the single most important thing to understand here. About 1,040 parcels sit in a district created in 2020. Another 337, one group of phases, sit in a district created in December 2023 with its own board and its own bonds. And a third district was created by county ordinance in January 2026 and is listed as active in the state register, but it appears on no parcel's district code, in no county mapping layer, and has published no budget and no assessment table. Nothing on the ground marks any of these lines. A buyer touring a lot in the expansion area today cannot get its assessment from any source, because none has been adopted yet.
What does the district actually cost?
It depends entirely on which phase you buy in, and the range is enormous. Across every published tier it runs from about $182 a year to about $4,055 a year, which is more than twenty-two to one inside one community. Restricted to lots that actually carry bond debt it is about $2,490 to $4,055. And on a single identical product, a 60-foot lot, the published tiers run about $3,110 to $4,055, a difference of roughly $945 a year that depends on nothing you can see from the street.
Why is my second tax bill so much bigger than my first?
Less than you might fear, and for an unusual reason. The step from a vacant lot to a finished house here is about $4,385 to about $8,016, roughly 1.8 times, which is gentler than most Florida new-construction communities. That is because the district assessment is charged in full on a bare lot whether or not a house is standing on it, so about 74 per cent of your year-one bill is not property tax at all. The other thing to plan for: a buyer of a finished spec home closes into an uncapped, unexempted number, and homestead is worth only about $452 a year here because the caps have had at most four years to accrue in a community this new.
Is it in a flood zone or an evacuation zone?
Those two questions have opposite answers here and that is worth sitting with. On the federal flood map about 99.85 per cent of the community is minimal hazard, and only 30 lots touch a special flood hazard area by lot polygon. But the map governing this community became effective in August 2008, which predates eight federally declared storms since and predates the subdivision itself by twelve years, so it describes the agricultural land that was here before the grading. Meanwhile the state and county surge mapping puts about 64 per cent of the parcels in an evacuation zone, driven by the river corridor rather than the bay. And the county's own 2026 mapping puts only 9 per cent in any zone at all. Both are official, both are live, and we are not picking one.
What about the schools?
Middle and high assignments are the same for the whole community. Elementary is not: it splits across two schools, and the split falls exactly on the district line, so the same invisible seam that decides which bond you repay also decides where your child goes. On capacity we have to be careful, because the newest attendance data the district publishes to the public is five school years old and predates this subdivision entirely. On that data all four assigned schools were already projected over capacity, the middle school at about 164 per cent and the high school at about 149 per cent, and those projections did not include this community's 1,378 lots.
Before you walk into a sales office
Get your inside track on Berry Bay
We will connect you with a real estate professional licensed in Florida who represents you rather than the seller, who can register you before your first visit, and who will get you the answers this page could not: which of the three districts a specific lot is in and its executed assessment for the coming year, whether its lien has been prepaid, the county solid-waste and stormwater charges for that address, a written evacuation-zone determination, the association's dues, and what the builder will actually give on incentives at your price point.
It costs nothing, creates no brokerage relationship by itself, and does not obligate you to anything.