If you've been thinking about retiring to Florida, you might be curious as to which part of the state to start your search for a new home.
Florida is a big state with plenty of options, but each of those options comes at a different cost of living. In order to focus your search efforts right from the start, you will want to know a little more about which areas of the Sunshine State have more expensive homes and which areas have less expensive homes.
According to a recent report from Coldwell Banker, the average Florida home listing price for a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Florida in 2015 is $250,534. That's up roughly 4% over last year's average of $240,901.
While there isn’t much information to be gained from a state-wide average, it still gives us a good point of reference to work with when we compare different Florida real estate markets.
The Coldwell Banker report broke the state of Florida down into 127 different real estate markets and then ranked them based on what the average listing price of that four-bedroom, two-bathroom house would be in each market.
Since comparing 116 different markets can be incredibly overwhelming, let’s just look at the top ten and the bottom ten, which we will consider the ten most expensive and the ten least expensive real estate markets in Florida.
The Ten Most Expensive Real Estate Markets in Florida
1. Doral – $552,390
2. Palmetto Bay – $525,019
3. Parkland – $504,836
4. Fort Lauderdale – $481,066
5. Delray Beach – $471,470
6. Weston – $459,089
7. Boca Raton – $427,446
8. Ponte Vedra/Ponte Vedra Bch – $422,900
9. Cooper City – $414,930
10. Naples – $394,303
Just outside the ten most expensive real estate markets in Florida were the Windermere, Hollywood, and Davie markets.
The Ten Least Expensive Real Estate Markets in Florida
1. Fort Pierce – $154,418
2. Seffner – $149,267
3. Lake City – $147,079
4. Leesburg – $145,385
5. Lehigh Acres – $143,471
6. Poinciana – $139,526 123
7. Citrus Springs – $138,473
8. Spring Hill – $137,637
9. Palatka – $123,295
10. Hastings – $95,267
Just outside of the ten least expensive real estate markets in Florida are the Inverness, Deltona, and Titusville markets.
Comparing Expensive & Inexpensive Real Estate in Florida
Depending on how familiar you are with the Florida real estate market, you may or may not have noticed that the majority of the most expensive markets are located along the east coast of the state.
Conversely, most of the least expensive Florida real estate markets are located in the central part of the state.
Once again, we are just talking about average Florida home prices here.
There are good and bad deals to be found in any real estate market, but this will give you a general idea of what to expect if you are looking in a particular area. Keep in mind that the average four-bedroom, two-bathroom house that is listed for $250,000 would be a killer deal in Delray Beach, but that same home would be overpriced in Fort Pierce.
Of course, location within each market, age of the home, type of community and the amenities within all affect home prices to a great extent.
But everything in real estate is relative to location, so use these averages to gauge what you might be able to afford based on where you are planning to move to in Florida.
I am sure there is genuine approach to this article but this leaves little to the imagination.I noticed not one of your inexpensive cities sit on the water and futhermore none of them are remotely close to the Azure water of the Emerald coast which piqued our interest intially….Who wants to go to Leesburg?how about inexpensive priced beach areas around Navarre??Thank you for the article
“Inexpensive” and “beach” are mutually exclusive……I don’t care what beach you’re talking about….OK, maybe not in Nova Scotia.
How many retirees are going to purchase a four-bedroom,, two bathroom house? Florida’s southeast is the most expensive for family (mom, pop, sis, and bro) homes, but swamped in inexpensive condos, small houses, and gated 55+ communities for retirees Are there any surveys correlating age (especially 55+ and 65+) with average domicile size and cost?