Fort Worth vs St. Petersburg: which should you move to?
Fort Worth or St. Petersburg? Housing, rent, crime, climate, income, taxes and transit, side by side, from each city's own published figures. Written for someone deciding where to live, not for a ranking.
Fort Worth
St. Petersburg
The fastest-growing US city of more than a million, 1,028,117 people, and one of 264,033 across the bay from Tampa that lost residents in the year of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, both pricing in US dollars in states with no income tax, so the figures net directly. The prices are different instruments: Fort Worth's is the NTREIS median of single-family houses sold inside the city, $327,000 in August 2026, and St. Petersburg's is Zillow's typical home value for the city, $355,759 in June, its row in this site's Tampa Bay layer, as Tampa's is. On Zillow's index, the same measure in both, the City of Fort Worth stood at $295,800, so the order holds and widens. Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,516 a month in Fort Worth at Freddie Mac's 7.03% and $2,742 in St. Petersburg at August's 6.67%, or $2,810 at the same rate, roughly 37% of Fort Worth's median household income of $82,503 and 45% of St. Petersburg's $73,048. A homesteaded owner pays about 1.54% of the price in Fort Worth and 1.76% in St. Petersburg, and insurance is budgeted at $350 a month against $390, neither with flood cover, which after Helene's record surge is the line to price first in St. Petersburg. Crime splits on the same FBI counts: St. Petersburg has the higher violent rate, 502 offenses per 100,000 against 375, and the lower property rate and homicide, 2,059 against 2,226 and 9 homicides against 78. Choose Fort Worth to own for about $294 a month less at the same rate and to rent for less, for aerospace, airlines and freight rail, and DFW. Choose St. Petersburg for a far lower uninsured rate, a 16.8 C January, no 100F days, more buses and fewer homicides, and check the address's surge zone and a flood quote first.
| Measure | Fort Worth | St. Petersburg | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| City population | 1,028,117 (2025) | 264,033 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Metro population | 8,477,157 (2025) | 3,418,895 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Five-year growth Growth is pressure on rents and roads as much as it is opportunity, so it is reported without a winner. | 11.9% (2020-2025) | 2.2% (2020-2025) | Not directly comparable |
What a home costs in each
The figures the two cities' rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators run on, read from the same tables.
| Measure | Fort Worth | St. Petersburg | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benchmark home price MLS® HPI or equivalent benchmark. Lower is treated as the advantage, which is the buyer's view rather than the owner's. | $327,000 (August 2026) | $355,759 (June 2026) | Fort Worth |
| Detached house benchmark Fort Worth and St. Petersburg publish a single house index rather than a composite, so the two rows repeat. | $327,000 | $355,759 | Fort Worth |
| Apartment or condominium benchmark | $330,000 | Not published | Not directly comparable |
| Two-bedroom rent | $1,317/mo (median, September 2026) | $2,058/mo (median, June 2026) | Fort Worth |
| One-bedroom rent | $1,141/mo | $1,770/mo | Fort Worth |
| Two-bedroom rent against median income A year of two-bedroom rent as a share of the median household income below. A household paying the median rent out of the median income is a fiction, but it is the same fiction in both columns and it crosses currencies. | 19.2% of a year's income | 33.8% of a year's income | Fort Worth |
| Mortgage payment on the benchmark, 20% down 30-year amortization on American monthly compounding, the convention in both. | $1,746/mo at 7.03% | $1,831/mo at 6.67% | Fort Worth |
| Price to household income Benchmark price divided by the median household income below. A ratio is comparable across currencies; the dollars are not. | 4.0× | 4.9× | Fort Worth |
| Property tax on the benchmark home The effective rate on market value, which is what the two rates have in common and what the Advantage column is decided on; the bills are in each city's own dollars. | $5,046/yr (1.543%, 2025) | $6,248/yr (1.756%, 2025) | Fort Worth |
| Transfer tax on the benchmark home Compared as a share of the price. Where the seller pays it, it is a cost of leaving rather than arriving. | None | $2,490 (seller pays) | Fort Worth |
| Rent control A cap protects a sitting tenant and does nothing for the next lease, so neither column is simply better. | Forbidden by state law | Forbidden by state law | Not directly comparable |
Fort Worth: About 1.54% of value for a homesteaded owner, worked out on the $327,000 median single-family sale price. A house in the City of Fort Worth and Fort Worth ISD, the school district more of the city's residents live in than any other, is taxed by six units for 2025, which add to 2.18908 per $100 before any exemption. Each takes its own homestead exemption off the appraised value first, except one: Fort Worth ISD takes the state's $140,000 and nothing more, Tarrant County College 1% with the state's $5,000 floor, Tarrant County, the City and JPS Health Network 20% each, and the Tarrant Regional Water District, which pays for the Fort Worth Floodway, none at all. So Tarrant County levies 0.1862 per $100 on $261,600 after an exemption of $65,400, $487; City of Fort Worth levies 0.67 per $100 on $261,600 after an exemption of $65,400, $1,753; Fort Worth ISD levies 1.0291 per $100 on $187,000 after an exemption of $140,000, $1,924; Tarrant County College levies 0.11228 per $100 on $322,000 after an exemption of $5,000, $362; JPS Health Network levies 0.165 per $100 on $261,600 after an exemption of $65,400, $432; Tarrant Regional Water District levies 0.0265 per $100 on the full $327,000, with no homestead exemption, $87. The six come to $5,044 a year, 1.54% of the price. Without a homestead, as a landlord or a buyer who never files, the same house owes $7,158. In Keller ISD, the district the second most residents live in, the school line is 1.0852 per $100 after the same $140,000, and the same house comes to $5,149, 1.57%. On $295,800, Zillow's August 2026 value for a typical Fort Worth home, the Fort Worth ISD stack comes to $4,425, 1.50%, lower because the school district's flat exemption is a larger share of a cheaper house. These are the 2025 rates, the bills due by 31 January 2026. The City has since adopted 0.70565 for 2026, but when these figures were retrieved the Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector's table and the appraisal district's still ran to 2025, so the calculators stay on 2025 until all six units' 2026 rates are published. St. Petersburg: About 1.76% of what you pay for the house, which is lower than the 19.9197 mills St. Petersburg is charged, and the difference is Florida's homestead exemption rather than any assessment lag. The state assesses at full market value and a purchase resets the assessment to the price. What there is instead is an exemption: $25,000 of taxable value comes off for every taxing authority and a second slice comes off for all of them except the Pinellas County school board, which levies 6.2930 of the 19.9197. That second slice was $25,000 through the 2024 tax roll and has been adjusted for inflation every 1 January since, under the 2024 amendment to Article VII section 6 of the state constitution, so it is now somewhat more than $25,000. The figures here use the base amount, because the Department of Revenue sends the adjusted figure to the county property appraisers rather than publishing it. The difference is worth a few dollars a year on a bill, and the county property appraiser can tell you the amount in force. A homesteaded buyer's first-year bill is therefore about $6,248 on the $355,759 typical home value here. That 19.9197 is the figure Pinellas County publishes for this taxing district rather than a total assembled here, and St. Petersburg's own council sets 6.4525 of it. The exemption is not automatic: you file for it with the county property appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy. The seller's tax bill is not a guide to yours. Save Our Homes caps a homesteaded property's assessed value at 3% growth a year, and that cap resets to full market value the January after the sale, so a long-tenured owner can be taxed on a fraction of what you will be taxed on for the same house. Ask the property appraiser what the assessment would be at your purchase price, not what the current bill is.
How safe each city is, by the numbers it publishes
Police-reported figures for the most recent year each force or statistics agency has released. Rates describe a whole city or metro area, and the spread between neighbourhoods inside one city is usually wider than the gap between the two cities.
| Measure | Fort Worth | St. Petersburg | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crime Severity Index Statistics Canada's weighted index for the metropolitan area, where 100 is Canada in 2006. American cities have no equivalent series. | Not published | Not published | Not directly comparable |
| Violent crime per 100,000 | 375 (2025) | 502 (2025) | Fort Worth |
| Property crime per 100,000 | 2,226 (2025) | 2,059 (2025) | St. Petersburg |
| Homicides Counts, not rates, and a single year in a small city moves a long way on chance alone. What each figure covers is under the table. | 78 (2025) | 9 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in Fort Worth went from 5,428 in 2021 to 4,876 in 2022, 4,849 in 2023, 4,641 in 2024 and 3,859 in 2025, a 17% drop in the last year and 29% in four, and property offenses from 25,186 to 26,275, 26,098 and a peak of 27,290 in 2024, then 22,886, 16% below it. Motor vehicle theft rose from 3,687 in 2021 to 5,157 in 2024 and fell to 3,616 in 2025, down 30%. In 2025 the CDE shows aggravated assaults down 18% (3,230 to 2,656), rapes down 18% (613 to 505), robberies down 15% (726 to 620), burglaries down 16% and larcenies down 12%, while murders rose 8% (72 to 78), the one violent measure that went up. Eddie Garcia, Dallas's former police chief, took over the department in September 2025 after months without a permanent chief, and FWPD's own figures for January through August 2026 against the same months of 2025 show robberies down from 436 to 269 and aggravated assaults from 1,842 to 1,557 as well as the drop in murders (WFAA). The 2025 CDE counts were read on 30 September 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.
What the rates cover: Computed: 3,859 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Fort Worth Police Department (ORI TX2201200) in calendar 2025, divided by the 1,028,117 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 1,030,410 the rate is also 375. That is the lowest of the Texas cities this site compares, against 532 in San Antonio, 577 in Dallas and 890 in Houston. No FWPD total on this definition was found in anything fetched; the city's quarterly crime reports, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram described them, count crimes against persons, a broader group that includes assaults and sex offenses, and put them 12% lower in the first half of 2025 than a year earlier.
Homicides: 78 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, against 72 in 2024, about 7.6 per 100,000 on the city population. Spectrum News, reading city data in February 2026, also put the year's homicides 8% above 2024. Most of the rise came early: the city's quarterly reports counted 20 homicides in January through March 2025 against 9 a year earlier and 43 in the first half against 31 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram). The CDE series has fallen from 118 in 2021, and 2026 has turned the other way: FWPD counted 36 murders through 31 August against 54 in the same months of 2025 (WFAA).
Down, and clearly so in 2025. On the FBI CDE's annual totals violent offenses were 1,622 in 2022, 1,519 in 2023, 1,642 in 2024 and 1,325 in 2025, about 618, 573, 618 and 502 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, so 2025 was 19% below 2024 after three flat years. Property offenses fell from 7,052 in 2023 to 6,528 in 2024 and 5,437 in 2025, down 17% in the last year, with motor vehicle theft more than halved from 917 in 2023 to 407. The department's own figures agree in direction and nearly in count: it reported overall crime down 16% in 2025, 175 robberies against a five-year average of 224, and 406 auto thefts against an average of 735 (Patch). The CDE counts were read on 1 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.
What the rates cover: Computed: 1,325 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the St. Petersburg Police Department (ORI FL0521400) in calendar 2025, divided by the 264,033 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 269,098 the rate is 492. That is close to Boston's 507 and Jacksonville's 514, above Tampa's 375.5 (on the Tampa Police Department's own counts) and Miami's 359, and almost four times Port St. Lucie's 130. The department reports to the CDE as annual totals rather than month by month, and the CDE carries a full year for each of 2022 to 2025 and nothing for 2021.
Homicides: 9 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 3.4 per 100,000 on the city population, against Tampa's 17 (4.1), Orlando's 10 (3.0) and Port St. Lucie's 4 (1.5). The department's own count, announced in January 2026, is 10 homicides, which it called the fewest since 1967, when the city had six, and 44% fewer than the 18 of 2024 (Patch, reporting the St. Petersburg Police Department). The CDE series is 16 in 2022, 13 in 2023, 18 in 2024 and 9 in 2025.
Winters, summers and what the weather can do to a house
| Measure | Fort Worth | St. Petersburg | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| January mean | 7.7 °C | 16.8 °C | Not directly comparable |
| July mean | 29.5 °C | 28.8 °C | Not directly comparable |
| Precipitation a year | 898 mm | 1,185 mm | Not directly comparable |
| Snowfall a year | 4 cm | 0 cm | Not directly comparable |
| Sunshine a year | 2,850 hours | Not published | Not directly comparable |
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals for Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (station USW00013961), the city-owned general aviation field inside the city about 5 miles north-northwest of downtown: January mean 45.8F, July mean 85.1F, annual mean 65.9F, 35.34 in of precipitation. Meacham's normals carry no snowfall, so the 1.6 in of snow stored here is the normal at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (USW00003927), about 20 miles northeast of downtown, where the National Weather Service keeps the metro's official record. August is the warmest month by a tenth of a degree at 85.2F, with a mean high of 95.9F; July's mean high is 95.7F and January's mean low is 35.3F. October (4.46 in) is the wettest month, then May and June (4.02 in each), and January (2.05 in) the driest. The normals count 105.5 days a year at 90F or above, 24.1 at 100F or above and 32.8 nights at or below freezing. DFW Airport averages 46.3F in January and 85.7F in July with 37.01 in of rain, 20.3 days at 100F or above and 29.2 nights at or below freezing. Converted here to 7.7 C, 29.5 C, 898 mm and 4.1 cm. Those 24.1 days at 100F are more than Love Field's 22.4 for Dallas and fewer only than Austin's 28.7 among the Texas cities this site compares, although the July mean is 1.2 C below Dallas's. Sunshine hours are the older 1961-1990 NCDC means that Current Results lists for Dallas (2,850 hours, 61% of possible, and 135 clear days); it lists no separate Fort Worth figure, and the 1991-2020 normals do not include sunshine.
Hazards: Hail is the costly routine hazard. On the evening of 5 May 1995 a supercell dropped hail up to softball size on Mayfest, the outdoor festival on the bank of the Trinity River, where more than 10,000 people were caught in the open: more than 400 were hurt and 60 seriously enough to be hospitalized, though no one died at the festival. The storms went on to kill one driver in a swollen creek in western Tarrant County and 19 people in Dallas County, most of them in floodwater, and the National Weather Service puts the damage at about $2 billion, one of the costliest hailstorms in history. Cotality counted more than 235,000 Texas homes hit by damaging hail in 2025, far more than in any other state, with the risk concentrated in Dallas-Fort Worth and the other Texas Triangle metros. Tornadoes have hit the center of the city. At 6:18 pm on 28 March 2000 a tornado touched down near Castleberry High School, about 4 miles west of downtown, and tracked east along West 7th Street, nearly destroying the Cash America building and heavily damaging Mallick Tower before it weakened over downtown, where debris broke 80% of the windows in the Bank One building and 1,300 of the 5,000 in the Union Pacific Resources building. Two people died and about 80 were injured, 6 of them hospitalized; the Texas Tech damage survey rated it F2. A second tornado later that evening did F3 damage in Arlington and Grand Prairie without a death, and NOAA counts the storms of 28 and 29 March across the South at $690 million ($1.27 billion in 2024 dollars). Flooding shaped the city's form. In May 1949 a night of 6 to 12 in of rain overflowed the Trinity, killing 10 people and leaving more than 13,000 homeless, and the Army Corps of Engineers later built the 27 miles of levees of the Fort Worth Floodway, which the Tarrant Regional Water District maintains. The Corps' $1.16 billion Central City project, known locally as Panther Island, is to carry the river around downtown through new bypass channels and protect more than 2,400 acres; work on the northern half of the channel is due to begin late in 2026 and the project to be finished in 2032. Flash floods on the creeks are the more frequent danger: on 21 and 22 August 2022, 9.56 in (243 mm) fell at Meacham over the two days, 5.11 in (130 mm) of it on the 22nd, and the National Weather Service measured 8.41 in in Fort Worth, with flooding reported from Como and the John T. White neighborhood to West 7th Street; the city's 2016 floodplain plan counted more than $1 billion of stormwater improvements needed. Heat is the constant. The normals give Meacham 24.1 days a year at or above 100F (37.8 C). The summer of 2026 has been among its hottest: 55 days at 100F or above through 27 September, fourth in its record after 72 in 2011, 64 in 2023 and 62 in 1998, and 31 in a row from 3 August to 2 September, the longest run it has recorded; its highest reading is 112F (44.4 C), on 12 July 1998 and 4 September 2000. At DFW Airport the National Weather Service counts 52 days of 100F in 2026 through 22 September, tied for fifth, against the record of 71 in 2011. Cold is rare and badly handled. Winter Storm Uri took Meacham to -2F (-18.9 C) on 16 February 2021, tying 31 January 1949 for the lowest in its record, and DFW Airport also fell to -2F, the lowest there since 1953, with 5.0 in (12.7 cm) of snow over the storm. ERCOT cut power across the state grid from 15 to 18 February and about 4.5 million customers lost it at the worst; Texas counted 246 deaths from the storm, 11 of them in Tarrant County. In January 2026 Winter Storm Fern brought 2.4 in (6.1 cm) of snow and sleet to DFW Airport and a low of 11F (-11.7 C) at Meacham on the 25th.
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals for St. Petersburg Albert Whitted Airport (station USW00092806), the downtown waterfront airport about a mile east of the city's center, which is the station the brief names and has full temperature and precipitation normals: January mean 62.2F, July mean 83.8F, annual mean 74.7F, 46.65 in of precipitation. The airport's normals carry no snowfall, so the 0.0 in of snow stored here is the normal at the St. Petersburg cooperative station (USC00087886), at the same coordinates in NCEI's listing. August is the warmest month by two tenths of a degree at 84.0F, with a mean high of 89.8F; January's mean low is 55.3F. August (8.39 in) and July (7.49 in) are the wettest months, and June through September bring 29.33 in, 63% of the year; November (1.46 in) is the driest. The normals count 70.9 days a year at 90F or above, none at 100F and 0.1 nights at or below freezing. Converted here to 16.8 C, 28.8 C, 1,185 mm and 0 cm. The other stations bracket it: the cooperative station averages 62.1F in January and 83.9F in July with 52.48 in a year, and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (USW00012873), about 10 miles north and away from the bay, 61.6F and 83.1F with 53.62 in and 94.1 days at 90F. St. Petersburg's year is almost Tampa's (Tampa International's 62.0F and 83.8F); its January is level with Port St. Lucie's (62.3F), warmer than Orlando's (60.6F) and six degrees colder than Miami's (68.6F). Sunshine is not stored: Current Results' US city table, the source and 1961-1990 basis of the other US profiles' sunshine hours, lists Tampa (2,927 hours, at Tampa International) and no St. Petersburg station, and the 1991-2020 normals do not include sunshine; the city's nickname, the Sunshine City, rests on a Guinness record of 768 consecutive sunny days from 1967 to 1969 (Wikipedia), not on a measured annual total.
Hazards: Storm surge is the defining hazard, and 2024 showed how much of the city sits low. Hurricane Helene passed offshore on 26 September 2024 on its way to a Big Bend landfall, and the National Ocean Service tide gauge at St. Petersburg, the longest record in Tampa Bay, dating to 1947, measured 6.31 ft above mean higher high water, far above its previous record of 3.97 ft in Hurricane Elena in 1985 (National Hurricane Center). Twelve people drowned in the surge in Pinellas County, two of them in St. Petersburg and nine on the barrier islands from St. Pete Beach to Indian Rocks Beach, and Helene destroyed at least 419 homes in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and did major damage to at least 18,512 structures (NHC). Albert Whitted recorded a gust of 82 mph that day. Two weeks later, on 9 October, Hurricane Milton came ashore at Siesta Key, about 35 miles south, as a Category 3; its track spared the bay a surge but not the rain or the wind. Albert Whitted measured 18.54 in (471 mm) on 9 October, the wettest day in its record since 2010, and the NHC gives the airport 18.88 in for the storm and a gust of 88 kt (101 mph); a volunteer gauge near the city recorded 20.40 in, the highest storm total anywhere in Milton's path. Milton tore most of the fabric roof off Tropicana Field (NHC) and toppled a construction crane onto a downtown office building that housed the Tampa Bay Times (Bay News 9). The Rays played the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa and returned on 6 April 2026 after repairs (Wikipedia). Wikipedia notes that neither storm made landfall in the city and that the last hurricane to strike it directly was in 1921. Heat is long rather than extreme: 70.9 days a year at 90F or above on the normals and none at 100F (37.8 C); Albert Whitted recorded 128 such days in 2024, the most in its record since 2010, and 94 in 2026 through 28 September. Frost is almost unknown on the waterfront: one night at 32F (0 C), on 18 January 2018, since 2010, and a lowest reading of 36F in 2026 on 1 February.
What people earn and what the government takes
| Measure | Fort Worth | St. Petersburg | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $82,503 USD (2024) | $73,048 USD (2024) | Fort Worth |
| Unemployment rate | 4.6% (July 2026) | 4.8% (July 2026) | Fort Worth |
| Sales tax | 8.25% | 7% | St. Petersburg |
| Top marginal income tax Federal plus provincial or state. The American figure leaves out payroll taxes and the cost of health insurance, both of which a Canadian household covers through the tax it pays here. | 37% | 37% | Even |
| Income tax on $100,000, single filer Computed from each jurisdiction's brackets at a single filer's $100,000 and rounded to the dollar, so a gap of a dollar is rounding rather than tax. Two cities in one province or state are shown as Even, because there the two cells describe the same tax and whatever separates them is method. | $13,449 USD | $13,449 USD | Even |
BLS counted 1,222,100 nonfarm jobs in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine Metropolitan Division in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 17,800 or 1.5% on the year. Professional and business services grew fastest (+5.0%, to 159,300), then mining, logging and construction (+4.8%, to 92,100), leisure and hospitality (+4.4%, to 145,500) and transportation and warehousing (+2.1%, to 102,600), while financial activities (-2.0%), information (-1.8%) and government (-0.6%, to 136,000) shrank; federal employment fell 9.0%, from 16,700 to 15,200. Manufacturing held at 110,000, of which aerospace product and parts manufacturing was 23,600, up 1.3%. The seasonally adjusted series (SMS48231040000000001) was 1,223,400 in August 2026, 1.5% above August 2025. The Texas Comptroller credits Lockheed Martin with about 49,000 direct and indirect workers in Fort Worth and a $9 billion regional impact, and 25,579 direct employees across Texas, and counts 4,553 direct and 21,266 total jobs and $2.75 billion of state GDP for Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in 2025. Hillwood's annual report puts AllianceTexas's economic impact at $12.9 billion in 2025 and $142.9 billion since it opened in 1989, and Hillwood says the Comptroller has recognized it as the primary inland port for the southwestern United States. American Airlines, with 103,440 staff in 2024, and BNSF Railway, with about 36,000, are both headquartered in the city (Wikipedia).
Main sectors: Aerospace and defense (Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, which builds the F-35 at Air Force Plant 4; Bell Textron, headquartered in the city; Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, the former Carswell Air Force Base), Airlines and freight rail (American Airlines, headquartered in the city, with its largest hub at DFW Airport; BNSF Railway, headquartered in the city), Logistics and advanced manufacturing at AllianceTexas in far north Fort Worth, which Hillwood says holds 602 companies and 73,134 jobs, Trade, transportation and utilities, the division's largest sector by payroll jobs (289,300 in August 2026), Health care and education (JPS Health Network, Cook Children's Medical Center, Texas Christian University and its medical school).
Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Texas's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 1.40%, and school districts must exempt $140,000 of a homestead's value from their tax. On 15 September 2026 the City Council adopted a $3.33 billion operating budget for fiscal 2027 unanimously and raised the city's rate by 3.565 cents to 70.565 cents per $100 of taxable value on a 7 to 4 vote, to help close a $94 million shortfall. The city says the average homeowner's bill will still fall, by $8.19 to $1,643.64 on a home valued at $232,925, because the Tarrant Appraisal District has not reappraised residential property since 2024 and the average value dropped; the city's total taxable value rose only 0.89%, to $130.2 billion (Fort Worth Report, Community Impact, CBS Texas). The budget also raises stormwater, water, sewer, solid waste and environmental fees by about $7 a month for the average resident. The county, school district, JPS hospital district, Tarrant County College and other levies on the same bill belong to the housing layer.
BLS counted 1,559,600 nonfarm jobs in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 14,200 or 0.9% on the year. Private education and health services added the most (+9,700, or 3.8%, to 264,400), then professional and business services (+6,000, or 2.1%, to 288,800) and construction (+1,600, to 99,600), while information lost 1,700 (-5.6%, to 28,600) and federal employment 1,000 (to 30,900). The city's own employment picture is a headquarters town's: the ten principal private employers in its 2025 financial report, led by Raymond James (4,800), Johns Hopkins All Children's (2,800), Power Design and Jabil (1,700 each), employ 17,837, or 12.5% of the 147,705 people working in the city, against 20,300 for the 2016 list, which then included HSN, FIS and Bayfront Medical. Much of the commercial activity is in the Gateway area in the city's north, which it shares with Pinellas Park (Wikipedia). Unlike Port St. Lucie, most residents work in their own county: 14% of the city's workers (20,739 of 144,736) worked outside Pinellas County in 2024, 21.3% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 25 minutes, with 5% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08013, B08301 and B08303).
Main sectors: Finance and insurance: Raymond James, headquartered in the city and its largest private employer with 4,800 staff, Franklin Templeton (1,200) and the credit union service organization PSCU (800), in a metro with 142,400 financial activities jobs in August 2026, Health care: Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital (2,800 staff), BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital (1,437), HCA (1,350) and Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital, in a metro sector (private education and health services, 264,400 jobs) that added 9,700 jobs over the year, Manufacturing and engineering: Jabil, the electronics manufacturer headquartered in the city (1,700), Catalent Pharma Solutions (800) and Power Design, an electrical contractor (1,700), Utilities: Duke Energy Florida, headquartered in the city (1,250 staff), Tourism, arts and sports: the Dali Museum, the Pier, seven miles of public waterfront parks, the Rays at Tropicana Field and the IndyCar Grand Prix on downtown streets (leisure and hospitality, 167,300 metro jobs).
Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Florida's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 0.78%, and a homestead exemption takes as much as $50,000 off a permanent residence's taxable value, with the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A St. Petersburg home paid 19.9197 mills for 2025 on the Pinellas County Tax Collector's published total, of which the city's own rate is 6.4525; a little above Tampa's 19.8428 in the same layer. On 17 September 2026 the City Council voted 6 to 2 to keep the city rate at 6.4525 mills for fiscal 2027, the rate it has levied since fiscal 2025, which is above the 6.3854-mill rolled-back rate and so needed a two-thirds vote; rising taxable values, about $39.3 billion, bring the city about $14.8 million more (St Pete Catalyst). Zillow's typical home value for the city was $355,759 in June 2026, down 3.9% on the year, and its typical rent $2,058; the bills, insurance and flood exposure that follow from them belong to the housing layer.
Whether you need a car
| Measure | Fort Worth | St. Petersburg | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| System | Trinity Metro buses (147 fixed-route and 76 demand-response vehicles), the 27.2-mile TEXRail commuter line with 9 stations from T&P Station downtown through North Richland Hills and Grapevine to DFW Airport Terminal B (opened January 2019), the Trinity Railway Express to Dallas run with DART, ZIPZONE on-demand zones and the downtown Blue Line circulator; Fort Worth is the only full member, with Forest Hill, Grapevine, North Richland Hills and River Oaks partial members | Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA), the countywide agency formed in 1984 from the St. Petersburg Municipal Transit System and the Central Pinellas Transit Authority: more than 34 bus routes including two express routes to Tampa, the Central Avenue and Suncoast Beach trolleys, and the SunRunner, Tampa Bay's first bus rapid transit line, which opened on 21 October 2022 from downtown St. Petersburg along First Avenues North and South to St. Pete Beach every 15 minutes (Wikipedia). The Cross-Bay Ferry between downtown St. Petersburg and downtown Tampa ran seasonally for eight seasons until its operator's contract ended after 2025, and PSTA bought two vessels in June 2026 to restart it (Wikipedia). There is no passenger rail: CSX's freight branch ends at a small yard northwest of downtown, the line into downtown having been abandoned in 2008. | Not directly comparable |
| Commute by public transit | 0.7% (2024) | 2.1% (2024) | St. Petersburg |
| Walk or cycle to work | 1.1% (2024) | 2.9% (2024) | St. Petersburg |
| Airport | Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), about 20 miles northeast of downtown Fort Worth and midway between the two cities, handled 85,660,127 passengers in 2025, 2.5% fewer than 2024's 87,817,864, per the airport's December 2025 traffic report; American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, carried 82.6% of them, and TEXRail runs from downtown to Terminal B. Fort Worth Meacham International Airport, owned by the city about 5 miles north-northwest of downtown, has no scheduled airline service and serves general aviation; its 1933 American Airways hangar is on the National Register of Historic Places (Wikipedia). | St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE), owned by Pinellas County about 9 miles north of downtown, handled a record 2,794,067 passengers in 2025, 13.6% more than 2024's 2,458,674, almost all of them on Allegiant Air, which uses it as an operating base (Wikipedia). Most of the city's air travel goes through Tampa International Airport (TPA), about 16 miles to the northeast across the Howard Frankland Bridge, which handled 24,811,007 passengers in 2025 (TPA, as in Tampa's profile). Albert Whitted Airport on the downtown waterfront serves general aviation. | Not directly comparable |
Trinity Metro carried 6,180,600 unlinked trips in 2025, 4,554,400 of them by bus and 906,800 on TEXRail, and about 22,100 a weekday in the second quarter of 2026, 2,800 of them on TEXRail (APTA ridership reports, as cited by Wikipedia; APTA's PDFs refused the fetcher), against 30.7 million for VIA in San Antonio, 52.8 million for DART and 78.0 million for Houston's METRO. The Trinity Railway Express, which Trinity Metro runs with DART between downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas, carried 1,337,600 trips in 2025 (APTA, same source). The system is paid for by a half-cent sales tax Fort Worth has levied since 1984, half what DART's and METRO's cities pay. TEXRail runs every 30 minutes until 7 pm and hourly after, and a 2.1-mile extension to the Medical District on the Near Southside, estimated at about $167 million, is due to break ground by the end of 2026 and open in 2029 (Wikipedia).
PSTA carried 10,441,618 unlinked trips in 2025 on the National Transit Database's monthly ridership file (Federal Transit Administration), 8,888,290 of them on its buses and 769,551 on the SunRunner, with the rest on vanpools, demand-response service and a ferry. That is a little below the 11.94 million HART carried in Hillsborough (Tampa's profile, from APTA) for a county with less than two-thirds of Hillsborough's population, and well below PSTA's own peak of 14.6 million in 2014; ridership fell to 9.1 million in 2022 and has recovered to about 10.4 to 10.5 million in each of 2024 and 2025. The SunRunner carried 1,036,048 trips in 2023, its first full year, and 769,551 in 2025.
Health care, schools and what each city is like
Health care
Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Texas is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). It had the highest uninsured rate of any state in 2024: 16.7%, or 5,152,427 of 30,799,312 people, against 8.2% nationally and 12.0% in Georgia, the next highest, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates. The City of Fort Worth's rate was 18.9% (189,692 of 1,003,516), Tarrant County's 16.9% and the metro's 16.2%. JPS Health Network, the Tarrant County Hospital District, runs John Peter Smith Hospital, the county's public hospital, a Level I trauma center and the only psychiatric emergency site in the county; on 16 April 2026 it broke ground on a $1.5 billion replacement hospital at South Main and East Morphy streets, part of a $2.5 billion building plan backed by an $800 million bond from 2018, which will take it from 582 beds to more than 740 when it opens in 2030 (Fort Worth Report). Cook Children's Medical Center has 452 licensed beds and a Level II pediatric trauma center (Wikipedia). TCU's Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine took its first class in 2019. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.
Education
Fort Worth is served by Fort Worth ISD and, in parts, by fourteen other districts, among them Keller, Northwest, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Crowley and Arlington (the 2020 Census school district map, as cited by Wikipedia). Fort Worth ISD is now under state control: after a campus received a fifth straight failing rating, Education Commissioner Mike Morath decided in October 2025 to intervene, and on 24 March 2026 he replaced the elected trustees' authority with a nine-member board of managers led by Pete Geren and named Peter Licata, formerly of Broward County, superintendent. It is the second-largest takeover in Texas history, after Houston ISD's. The board opened by saying roughly 63% of students do not read at grade level and 29% are proficient in math (Fort Worth Report). The district, built for 90,000 students, had 67,315 in 2025-26 on Texas Education Agency data and projected about 66,500 for 2026-27; it has lost more than 12,000 in five years and in May 2025 approved closing 18 campuses by June 2029 (CBS Texas). Texas Christian University (12,980 students in fall 2025) is about 4 miles from downtown, and the city also holds Texas Wesleyan University, UNT Health Fort Worth and Texas A&M University's law school and downtown campus.
Living there
Fort Worth has grown faster than any other US city of a million people: 11.9% since 2020, and 19,512 residents in 2024-25, a gain second only to Charlotte's; it passed a million in 2024. It is the western half of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro and works differently from Dallas: its economy leans on aircraft, airlines and freight, from the F-35 line at Lockheed Martin's plant and Bell's helicopters to the headquarters of American Airlines and BNSF and the warehouses and factories of AllianceTexas, and household income, at $82,503, is higher than in Dallas, Houston or San Antonio. It is built for the car: 74.9% of workers drive alone and 0.7% take transit, the lowest share of any city this site compares, though TEXRail runs to DFW Airport. Violent crime, at 375 per 100,000 on the FBI's counts, is the lowest of the Texas cities here. Summer is long and hot, with 24 days a year at 100F or above and 31 in a row in 2026, and hail and tornadoes are the costly weather. Texas takes no income tax, and 18.9% of residents have no health insurance. The open questions are the costs of growth: the council raised its property tax rate in September 2026 to cover a $94 million gap as appraisals stalled, the state took over the shrinking Fort Worth ISD in March 2026, and the Panther Island flood channels around downtown are not due until 2032.
Health care
Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Florida is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). Florida's uninsured rate was 10.9% in 2024 (2,509,782 of 23,038,464), against 8.2% nationally, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates; the City of St. Petersburg's was 7.3% (19,374 of 263,881), below Port St. Lucie's 9.9%, Pinellas County's 9.0% and the metro's 10.0%. The city is the county's hospital center. Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital, the city's oldest, on the site of a five-room hospital of 1910, is Pinellas County's only Level II trauma center and has a Level III regional perinatal intensive care center and the Bayflite helicopter program (Wikipedia). Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, founded in 1926 and part of Johns Hopkins Medicine since 2011, has 259 beds and a Level I pediatric trauma center (Wikipedia). BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital and HCA's hospitals are also among the city's ten largest private employers (City of St. Petersburg). This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.
Education
Pinellas County Schools, the countywide district, is shrinking: it reported more than 3,000 fewer students in 2025-26 than a year earlier (Bay News 9), its schools were 68% full against 87% ten years before, and in February 2026 the board voted to close two schools, Cross Bayou Elementary in Pinellas Park and Disston Academy in Gulfport, at the end of the 2025-26 year and to merge others (FOX 13). In higher education the city has the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, a downtown campus of about 6,500 students; Eckerd College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1958; St. Petersburg College, founded in 1927, a state college with four of its eleven campuses and centers in the city; and the Poynter Institute, the journalism school that owns the Tampa Bay Times (Wikipedia). Stetson University's law school is next door in Gulfport.
Living there
St. Petersburg is the smaller and older half of Tampa Bay's urban core: a city of 264,033 on the southern tip of the Pinellas peninsula, with more water than land inside its limits, connected to Tampa by the Gandy and Howard Frankland bridges and to Bradenton by the Sunshine Skyway. It was a railroad town before it was a resort (the Orange Belt Railway arrived in 1888 and the town was incorporated in 1892) and a retirement town for most of the twentieth century; its median age is still 43.0, the second-oldest of the Florida cities here after Port St. Lucie, though Wikipedia notes a younger turn since the Great Recession. Downtown is the draw, with the Dali Museum, the rebuilt Pier, seven miles of public waterfront parks, more than 600 murals and the Rays at Tropicana Field, who returned in April 2026 after Hurricane Milton tore off the roof but will leave: Hillsborough County voted 5 to 2 on 28 August 2026 to put $796 million toward a $2.3 billion stadium in Tampa for 2029 (WUSF). Its economy is a set of headquarters (Raymond James, Jabil, Duke Energy Florida) and hospitals (Johns Hopkins All Children's, Bayfront). The numbers set it apart from its Florida neighbors. It grew only 2.2% from 2020 to 2025 and lost residents in the year of the 2024 storms, in a county that is now losing people. Its median household income, $73,048, is $11,066 below Tampa's; its violent crime rate, 502 per 100,000 in 2025, is higher than Tampa's but falling, and its nine homicides were the fewest the police department has counted since 1967. It has the highest transit share of the Florida cities here outside Miami, at 2.1%. And it learned in 2024 what living in Tampa Bay costs: a record surge from Helene, which drowned twelve people in the county, and 18 inches of rain from Milton two weeks later.
Where each city wins, and where it loses
Both cities price in US dollars, so the figures net directly, though the headlines are different instruments priced at different rates. Fort Worth's is the North Texas Real Estate Information System's median of single-family houses sold inside the city, $327,000 in August 2026 on 805 sales, 0.9% below a year earlier. St. Petersburg's is Zillow's typical home value for the city across all homes, $355,759 in June 2026, 3.9% below a year earlier; it is the City's row in this site's Tampa Bay layer, which measures Tampa, St. Petersburg and twenty-two other municipalities around the bay on the same series, and no sale median is used beside it. On Zillow's index, the like-for-like measure, the City of Fort Worth stood at $295,800 in August, 1.8% lower on the year, so the order holds and the gap widens, to about $60,000 from $28,759. At 20% down, Fort Worth's $261,600 loan at 7.03%, Freddie Mac's rate for 24 September, costs about $1,746 a month, and St. Petersburg's $284,607 loan at 6.67%, the layer's August rate, about $1,831, or $1,899 at 7.03%. Property tax is $5,044 a year in Fort Worth and about $6,248 in St. Petersburg with a homestead, 1.54% and 1.76% of the price, and insurance is budgeted at $350 and $390 a month, the Fort Worth figure raised by North Texas hail and the St. Petersburg one the layer's band for a coastal Tampa Bay address, inside the $3,900 to $5,500 a year its source gives for a single-family house in the city with wind cover, and neither with a flood policy in it. The three lines come to about $2,516 and $2,742, roughly 37% and 45% of each city's 2024 median household income; at 7.03% St. Petersburg's would be about $2,810. Of the $226 gap about $85 is the mortgage, which would be $153 at the same rate, $100 the property tax and $40 the insurance. Renting runs the same way and further. Zillow's observed rent index, the same measure in both, was $2,058 in St. Petersburg in June 2026 and $1,615 in Fort Worth in August, about 34% and 23% of median income, and Apartment List's September medians for the City of Fort Worth, a one-bedroom at $1,141 and a two-bedroom at $1,317, sit far below this site's modeled split of St. Petersburg's index, $1,770 and $2,058.
The definitions match: both cities' figures are the FBI's summarized counts for 2025, divided by Census Vintage 2025 populations and read on 30 September and 1 October 2026. They split by line. St. Petersburg's 1,325 violent offenses come to 502 per 100,000 against Fort Worth's 375 on 3,859, but its 5,437 property offenses come to 2,059 against 2,226 on 22,886. Homicide was 9 in St. Petersburg, about 3.4 per 100,000, against 78 in Fort Worth, about 7.6; the St. Petersburg Police Department's own count is 10, which it called the fewest since 1967. One caution sits on St. Petersburg's figures: the department reports to the FBI as annual totals rather than month by month, and the FBI carries nothing for it for 2021, so its record runs from 2022. Both are mostly improving. St. Petersburg's violent offenses were 19% below 2024 after three flat years, its property offenses fell 17%, and its motor vehicle thefts more than halved, from 917 in 2023 to 407. Fort Worth's violent offenses dropped 17% in 2025 and 29% in four years, and motor vehicle theft fell from 5,157 in 2024 to 3,616, though murders rose from 72 to 78, and FWPD then counted 36 from January through August 2026 against 54 in the same months of 2025. Both sets of counts come from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.
St. Petersburg has the far milder winter and the gentler summer. January averages 16.8 C at Albert Whitted Airport, on St. Petersburg's downtown waterfront about a mile east of the city's center, against 7.7 C at Meacham, inside Fort Worth, with 0.1 nights a year at or below freezing against 32.8, and July 28.8 C against 29.5 C. Fort Worth's normals count 105.5 days a year at 90F or above against 70.9, and 24.1 at or above 37.8 C (100F) against none. The summer of 2026 showed the difference: Meacham had 55 days of 100F through 27 September, 31 of them in a row, and Albert Whitted 94 days at 90F or above through 28 September and none at 100F. St. Petersburg gets 1,185 mm of rain a year, 63% of it from June through September, against 898 mm, and no snow on the normals against 4.1 cm, the DFW Airport figure; no sunshine figure for St. Petersburg is on the 1961-1990 series behind Fort Worth's 2,850 hours. The costly weather differs in kind. Fort Worth's is hail: the Mayfest storm of 5 May 1995 dropped hail up to softball size on more than 10,000 people at a festival by the Trinity, hurting more than 400, and did about $2 billion of damage across Tarrant and Dallas counties, and on 28 March 2000 a tornado tracked along West 7th Street into downtown and killed two. St. Petersburg's is the water in the bay. Hurricane Helene passed offshore on 26 September 2024, and the tide gauge at St. Petersburg, with a record back to 1947, measured 6.31 ft above mean higher high water, against a previous record of 3.97 ft in Hurricane Elena in 1985; twelve people drowned in the surge in Pinellas County, two of them in St. Petersburg, and the City assessed 13,494 parcels afterward, recording 5,189 with major damage and 146 destroyed. Two weeks later Milton came ashore at Siesta Key, about 35 miles south, as a Category 3; Albert Whitted measured 18.54 in (471 mm) of rain on 9 October and a gust of 101 mph, and the storm tore most of the fabric roof off Tropicana Field. Neither storm made landfall in the city, and the last hurricane to strike it directly was in 1921. Cold is the larger difference. Winter Storm Uri took Meacham to -2F (-18.9 C) in February 2021 while ERCOT cut power across the state grid, and Texas counted 11 of the storm's 246 deaths in Tarrant County. On St. Petersburg's waterfront frost is almost unknown: one night at 32F (0 C), on 18 January 2018, since 2010.
Fort Worth's half of Dallas-Fort Worth has about four-fifths of Tampa Bay's jobs and is adding them faster. BLS counted 1,222,100 nonfarm jobs in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine division in August 2026, 1.5% more than a year earlier, and 1,559,600 in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro, 14,200 more, a gain of 0.9%; St. Petersburg holds 7.7% of that metro's people and shares it with Tampa across the bay. On the same unadjusted basis unemployment in July was 4.6% in the Fort Worth division and 4.8% in Tampa Bay, against 4.4% nationally. Fort Worth's economy is industrial and logistical: Lockheed Martin builds the F-35 at Air Force Plant 4, with about 49,000 direct and indirect workers in the city on the Texas Comptroller's count, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth has 4,553 direct employees, BNSF and American Airlines are headquartered in the city, and AllianceTexas in the far north counts 73,134 jobs by its developer's figures. St. Petersburg is a headquarters town of a different kind: Raymond James, its largest private employer with 4,800 staff, Jabil and Duke Energy Florida have their headquarters in the city, Franklin Templeton employs 1,200, and Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital 2,800. Private education and health services added the most jobs in its metro in the year, 9,700, while information lost 1,700. Most St. Petersburg residents work close to home: 14% of the city's workers worked outside Pinellas County in 2024. Neither profile carries a wage figure. City median household income was $82,503 in Fort Worth and $73,048 in St. Petersburg in 2024, the latter with a margin of error of $4,441 either way, and the metros' $92,733 and $78,275. Neither state taxes income, so $100,000 pays $13,449 in federal tax in both for 2025, and sales tax is 8.25% in Fort Worth, with half a cent for transit and half for the crime control district, against 7% in Pinellas County, whose last cent is the Penny for Pinellas, renewed to 2029. The property tax stacks are close in nominal rate and apart in exemptions. Fort Worth's six units add to 2.18908 per $100; Fort Worth ISD grants the state's $140,000 and nothing more, and Tarrant County, the City and JPS Health Network take 20% off a homestead. A City of St. Petersburg address pays 19.9197 mills, about 1.99 per $100: the City's 6.4525, the school board's 6.293, the county's general fund 4.5423, emergency medical services 0.805 and the transit district 0.73, with the health department, the planning council, the Juvenile Welfare Board and the Southwest Florida Water Management District making up the rest, and Florida takes $25,000 off every levy and a second slice, $25,000 before the inflation adjustment it has carried since 2025, off all but the schools. So on the same $355,759 house Fort Worth's six units would charge about $5,615 against $6,248, and on $327,000 the St. Petersburg stack would charge about $5,675 against Fort Worth's $5,044.
St. Petersburg has the busier buses, and Fort Worth the rail and the airport. In 2024, 0.7% of Fort Worth workers took transit, the second-lowest share of any city this site compares, and 1.1% walked or cycled, against 2.1% and 2.9% in St. Petersburg, the highest transit share of the Florida cities here outside Miami; 74.9% of Fort Worth's workers drove alone against 65.6%, and 10.5% and 21.3% worked from home. Trinity Metro carried 6,180,600 trips in 2025, 906,800 of them on TEXRail, the 27.2-mile commuter line from downtown to DFW Airport, and runs the Trinity Railway Express to Dallas with DART; its next step is a 2.1-mile TEXRail extension to the Medical District, estimated at about $167 million and due to open in 2029. The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority carried 10,441,618 trips across the county in 2025, about 1.7 times Trinity Metro's, 769,551 of them on the SunRunner, Tampa Bay's first bus rapid transit line, which has run every 15 minutes from downtown St. Petersburg to St. Pete Beach since October 2022. PSTA bought two vessels in June 2026 to restart the Cross-Bay Ferry to downtown Tampa, and there is no passenger rail. The airports are far apart. DFW, American's largest hub, about 20 miles northeast of downtown Fort Worth, handled 85,660,127 passengers in 2025. St. Pete-Clearwater International, about 9 miles north of downtown St. Petersburg, handled a record 2,794,067, almost all of them on Allegiant, and most of the city flies from Tampa International, about 16 miles northeast across the Howard Frankland Bridge, which handled 24,811,007.
Coverage is where the two states part most. Neither Texas nor Florida has expanded Medicaid, but Texas had the highest uninsured rate of any state in 2024, 16.7%, and the City of Fort Worth's was 18.9%, while Florida's was 10.9% and the City of St. Petersburg's 7.3%, against 8.2% nationally. The hospitals are of a similar kind. JPS Health Network's John Peter Smith Hospital, Fort Worth's Level I trauma center, broke ground on 16 April 2026 on a $1.5 billion replacement that will take it from 582 beds to more than 740 in 2030, and Cook Children's Medical Center has 452 licensed beds. St. Petersburg is Pinellas County's hospital center: Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital is the county's only Level II trauma center and runs the Bayflite helicopter program, and Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital has 259 beds and a Level I pediatric trauma center. Neither profile verified a wait time. The schools are shrinking in both. Fort Worth ISD, built for 90,000 students, had 67,315 in 2025-26, has approved closing 18 campuses by June 2029, and since 24 March 2026 has been governed by a board of managers the Education Commissioner appointed; it covers about half the city. Pinellas County Schools, the countywide district, reported more than 3,000 fewer students in 2025-26 than a year earlier, its schools were 68% full against 87% ten years before, and its board voted in February 2026 to close two schools at the end of that year. TCU has 12,980 students. St. Petersburg has the University of South Florida's downtown campus, with about 6,500 students, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg College and the Poynter Institute.
What people underestimate is how differently the two are growing, and how much of the bill neither rate shows. Fort Worth added 19,512 residents in 2024-25, the second-largest gain of any US city, and has grown 11.9% since 2020, the fastest of the twelve US cities of more than a million, though Tarrant County lost 6,978 more residents to the rest of the country than it gained. St. Petersburg lost 1,822 in the year of the two storms, the third-steepest percentage loss of the 92 US cities of 250,000 or more, and has grown 2.2% since 2020, in a county that lost 11,834 people in 2024-25 and where deaths have outnumbered births every year since 2020. Fort Worth builds outward on districts the rate does not show: newer subdivisions on the northern and western edges often sit in a public improvement district, where each lot in Walsh Ranch's first phase owes $482 to $1,559 a year, and in Keller ISD the same $327,000 house pays $5,149. St. Petersburg's hidden cost is water. Homeowners insurance does not cover flood, and the City's own Helene assessments found water in thousands of homes along the bay and almost none in the neighborhoods inland, so the exposure varies far more than the price, and the elevation certificate is the document that prices the policy. FEMA's substantial improvement rule covers any repair or improvement whose cost equals or exceeds 50% of the structure's market value before the work, and any house that has been substantially damaged, and the Tampa Bay layer notes it can force a full elevation on what looks like an ordinary repair. The two councils took different routes in September 2026: Fort Worth's, on 15 September by 7 to 4, took the City's rate from 67 cents to 70.565 to help close a $94 million shortfall, and the City says the average homeowner's bill will still fall a little because the appraisal district has not reappraised houses since 2024; St. Petersburg's, on 17 September by 6 to 2, kept the City's at 6.4525 mills, above the rolled-back rate. Both bills reset on a sale: Save Our Homes caps a homesteaded Florida assessment at 3% a year and resets it to market value the January after a sale, the Texas 10% cap lapses on one, and in both the exemption has to be filed, in Florida with the county property appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy; without one the two would owe almost the same, $7,158 in Fort Worth and $7,087 in St. Petersburg. At closing Texas has no transfer tax and no tax on the loan, and the seller customarily buys the buyer's owner's title policy, $1,901 on Fort Worth's median; Florida charges documentary stamp tax on the deed at 70 cents per $100, about $2,490 on St. Petersburg's typical value and the seller's by convention, and the buyer pays 0.55% of the loan in stamp and intangible tax, about $1,565 at 20% down. A condominium is a different budget again: this site estimates St. Petersburg's association fee at $700 a month against $300 in Fort Worth, because no authority publishes a St. Petersburg average and its waterfront buildings span every vintage since the 1960s.
Better here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,516 a month on the August 2026 median, roughly 37% of the city's median household income, against $2,742 and 45% in St. Petersburg, or $2,810 there at the same 7.03% rate.
- Violent crime ran 375 per 100,000 in 2025 against 502 in St. Petersburg, on the same FBI counts.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $1,615 in August, about 23% of median income, against $2,058 and 34% in St. Petersburg.
- The Fort Worth division's 1,222,100 nonfarm jobs grew 1.5% in the year to August 2026 against 0.9% in Tampa Bay, and unemployment was 4.6% against 4.8%.
- Lockheed Martin's F-35 line, American Airlines, BNSF Railway and AllianceTexas's 73,134 jobs give the economy anchors in aerospace, airlines and freight.
- DFW, American's largest hub, handled 85,660,127 passengers in 2025, and TEXRail runs to it from downtown.
Worse here
- There were 78 homicides in 2025, about 7.6 per 100,000, against 9 and about 3.4 in St. Petersburg, and property crime ran 2,226 per 100,000 against 2,059.
- January averages 7.7 C at Meacham against 16.8 C, and the normals count 24.1 days a year at or above 37.8 C (100F) against none in St. Petersburg.
- The City of Fort Worth's uninsured rate was 18.9% in 2024 against 7.3% in the City of St. Petersburg.
- Only 0.7% of workers took transit in 2024, the second-lowest share of any city this site compares, against 2.1% in St. Petersburg.
- Fort Worth ISD has been run by a state-appointed board of managers since 24 March 2026 and has approved closing 18 campuses by June 2029.
- Uri took Meacham to -2F (-18.9 C) in February 2021 while ERCOT cut power, and Texas counted 11 deaths in Tarrant County.
Choose Fort Worth if
- you work in aerospace, defense manufacturing, airlines, freight rail or logistics
- you want to own at about $2,516 a month rather than $2,742 on a higher household income
- you fly often and want a hub airport with a train from downtown
- you will take hail, hard freezes and 100F summers over a bay that floods
The Fort Worth guide · Neighborhoods · Fort Worth rent vs buy · Fort Worth mortgage calculator
Better here
- There were 9 homicides in 2025, about 3.4 per 100,000, against 78 in Fort Worth, and property crime ran 2,059 per 100,000 against 2,226, on the same FBI counts.
- The City of St. Petersburg's uninsured rate was 7.3% in 2024 against 18.9% in the City of Fort Worth.
- January averages 16.8 C with 0.1 freezing nights a year, against 7.7 C and 32.8 at Meacham, and the normals count no days at 100F against 24.1.
- PSTA carried 10,441,618 trips in 2025, about 1.7 times Trinity Metro's, and 2.1% of workers took transit against 0.7%.
- Sales tax is 7% against 8.25%, and the City kept its own property tax rate unchanged for fiscal 2027 where Fort Worth raised its own.
- Raymond James, Jabil and Duke Energy Florida have their headquarters in the city, and Johns Hopkins All Children's runs a Level I pediatric trauma center.
Worse here
- Violent crime ran 502 per 100,000 in 2025 against 375 in Fort Worth, on the same FBI counts.
- A homesteaded owner pays about 1.76% of the price in property tax against 1.54%, and insurance is budgeted at $390 a month with no flood cover in it.
- Helene put 6.31 ft of surge above mean higher high water at the St. Petersburg tide gauge in 2024, against a previous record of 3.97 ft, and the City assessed 13,494 parcels afterward, 5,189 of them with major damage.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $2,058 in June 2026, about 34% of median income, against $1,615 and 23% in Fort Worth.
- The city lost 1,822 residents in 2024-25, the third-steepest percentage loss of the 92 US cities of 250,000 or more, while Fort Worth added 19,512.
- The seller pays documentary stamp tax of about $2,490 on the typical value and the buyer about $1,565 in stamp and intangible tax on the loan, where Texas taxes neither the deed nor the loan.
Choose St. Petersburg if
- you want far fewer homicides and a much lower uninsured rate
- you want a mild winter and no 100F days, and will buy on elevation and flood zone first
- you work in finance, insurance, health care or engineering at one of the city's headquarters or hospitals, or work from home, as 21.3% of its workers do
- you would rather ride a bus rapid transit line than drive, and would pay about $226 a month more to own for it
The St. Petersburg guide · Neighborhoods · St. Petersburg rent vs buy · St. Petersburg mortgage calculator
Fort Worth or St. Petersburg, in short
Is Fort Worth or St. Petersburg cheaper to live in?
Fort Worth, to own by a little and to rent by more. Both cities price in US dollars, though the headlines are different instruments: the NTREIS median of single-family houses sold inside Fort Worth, $327,000 in August 2026, and Zillow's typical home value for St. Petersburg, $355,759 in June, the City's row in this site's Tampa Bay layer. On Zillow's index, the same measure in both, the City of Fort Worth stood at $295,800. The mortgage at 20% down is about $1,746 against $1,831, though Fort Worth's uses September's 7.03% rate and St. Petersburg's August's 6.67%. Property tax is $5,044 a year against about $6,248 with a homestead and insurance $350 a month against $390, so the three lines come to about $2,516 in Fort Worth and $2,742 in St. Petersburg, or $2,810 at the same 7.03%, roughly 37% and 45% of each city's median household income, $82,503 and $73,048. Neither includes flood cover. Zillow's observed rent index was $1,615 in Fort Worth in August and $2,058 in St. Petersburg in June. Neither state taxes income, and sales tax is 8.25% in Fort Worth against 7% in Pinellas County.
Is Fort Worth or St. Petersburg safer?
It depends on the line, on figures built the same way. Both are the FBI's summarized counts for 2025 divided by Census estimates, read on 30 September and 1 October 2026. Violent offenses ran 375 per 100,000 in Fort Worth against 502 in St. Petersburg, but property offenses 2,226 against 2,059, and homicide was 78 in Fort Worth, about 7.6 per 100,000, against 9 in St. Petersburg, about 3.4. Fort Worth's violent offenses dropped 17% in 2025, and FWPD counted 36 murders from January through August 2026 against 54 a year earlier; St. Petersburg's violent offenses were 19% below 2024, and its police counted 10 homicides, the fewest since 1967. St. Petersburg reports to the FBI as annual totals, so its record starts in 2022. Every rate here is a count divided by a Census estimate rather than a published rate, and the counts can still be revised.
Which has the better job market, Fort Worth or St. Petersburg?
Fort Worth's is growing faster with slightly lower unemployment, and sits inside a far larger metro. BLS counted 1,222,100 nonfarm jobs in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine division in August 2026, 1.5% more than a year earlier, and 1,559,600 in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro, 0.9% more. On the same unadjusted basis unemployment was 4.6% in the Fort Worth division and 4.8% in Tampa Bay in July. Fort Worth's work leans on Lockheed Martin's F-35 line, American Airlines, BNSF and AllianceTexas. St. Petersburg's leans on finance and insurance, with Raymond James and Franklin Templeton, on its hospitals and on Jabil's engineering, and 86% of its workers stay in Pinellas County. City median household income was $82,503 in Fort Worth in 2024 against $73,048 in St. Petersburg.
What does buying cost beyond the price in Fort Worth and in St. Petersburg?
District levies on Fort Worth's new edges, closing taxes and flood rules in St. Petersburg, and a reset in both. Texas has no transfer tax and no tax on the loan, and the seller customarily buys the buyer's owner's title policy, $1,901 on Fort Worth's median. Florida charges documentary stamp tax on the deed at 70 cents per $100, about $2,490 on St. Petersburg's typical value and the seller's by convention, and the buyer pays 0.55% of the loan in stamp and intangible tax, about $1,565 at 20% down. In both states the seller's tax bill is no guide: Save Our Homes resets a Florida assessment to market value the January after a sale, the Texas 10% homestead cap lapses on a sale, and each exemption has to be filed; without one the two would owe $7,158 in Fort Worth and $7,087 in St. Petersburg. Newer Fort Worth subdivisions often sit in a public improvement district, at $482 to $1,559 a year a lot in Walsh Ranch's first phase. Neither carry here includes flood insurance, and in St. Petersburg the elevation certificate prices it and FEMA's substantial improvement rule, which applies when work costs 50% or more of the structure's value, can force a full elevation on a repair.
Where the figures come from
Housing figures are the ones behind each city's calculators, dated on those pages. The rest are listed here with the date they were retrieved. See the methodology for how facts, estimates and opinion are kept apart.
- Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places in Texas: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (SUB-EST2025) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth, Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Character
- Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places of 50,000 or More (all states, SUB-EST2025) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth, Character
- Annual Resident Population Estimates and Components of Change for Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and Their Counties: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (CBSA-EST2025-ALLDATA) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: Metro population, Five-year growth
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, Fort Worth Police Department (TX2201200): violent crime, property crime, homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson, 2021-2025 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character
- Dallas sees drop in violent crime while Fort Worth sees increase in homicides · Spectrum News · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend
- After 'puzzling' spike in homicides, Fort Worth leaders look to new police chief · Fort Worth Star-Telegram (via Yahoo News) · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Homicides
- Eddie Garcia marks one year as Fort Worth police chief, shares reasons behind city's drop in violent crime · WFAA (via Yahoo News) · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00013961 Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Climate normals, Climate hazards, Character, January 45.8F, July 85.1F and August 85.2F from the monthly series, which carries no snowfall normal for this station, and annual mean 65.9F, precipitation 35.34 in and the counts of days at 90F and 100F and nights at freezing from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00003927 Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Annual snowfall, Climate normals, 1.6 in of snow, January 46.3F, July 85.7F, 37.01 in of precipitation, 20.3 days at 100F and 29.2 nights at freezing, the last three from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (USW00013961), 1946-1953 and 1992-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character, 55 days at or above 100F in 2026 through 27 September, 72 in 2011, 64 in 2023 and 62 in 1998, 31 in a row from 3 August to 2 September 2026, 112F on 12 July 1998 and 4 September 2000, -2F on 16 February 2021 and 31 January 1949, 4.45 in on 21 August 2022 and 5.11 in on 22 August 2022, 11F on 25 January 2026
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (USW00003927), 1953-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, -2F on 16 February 2021, 5.0 in of snow on 14 and 17 February 2021, 2.4 in of snow and sleet on 24 and 25 January 2026
- Dallas/Fort Worth: Annual and Consecutive 100 Degree Days (last updated 22 September 2026) · National Weather Service, Fort Worth/Dallas · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Average Annual Sunshine in US Cities · Current Results (NCDC Comparative Climatic Data, 1961-1990) · retrieved Supports: Sunshine hours, Climate normals
- Mayfest Hailstorm, May 5, 1995 · National Weather Service, Fort Worth/Dallas · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Cotality 2026 Report: Hail risk now rivals major hurricanes (2026 Severe Convective Storm Risk Report) · Cotality · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- March 28, 2000: 10th Anniversary, a review of the March 28, 2000 tornadoes affecting Fort Worth and Arlington (from NWS Storm Data) · National Weather Service, Fort Worth/Dallas · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Damage Survey and Assessment of Fort Worth Tornado, 28 March 2000 · Texas Tech University Wind Science and Engineering Research Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- 2000 Fort Worth tornado outbreak · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Weather and Climate Billion-Dollar Disasters to affect the U.S. from 1980-2024 (events list) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Flood Protection · Tarrant Regional Water District · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Panther Island bypass project moves forward after Trinity River dams, flood storage delays · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character
- 'Boom, here we're hit with it again.' How historic rains flooded homes and neighborhoods across Tarrant County · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- February 2021 Winter Storm-Related Deaths, Texas (mortality surveillance report) · Texas Department of State Health Services · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- The Timeline and Events of the February 2021 Texas Electric Grid Blackouts · The University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08301 and B19013 for Fort Worth city, Tarrant County and the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for the 50 states, DC, the US, Tarrant County, Fort Worth city and the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care, Character
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine, TX Metropolitan Division (LAUDV482310400000003), the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA (LAUMT481910000000003), Fort Worth city (LAUCT482700000000003), Tarrant County (LAUCN484390000000003) and the US rate (LNU04000000), not seasonally adjusted · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- Current Employment Statistics, Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine, TX Metropolitan Division: total nonfarm (SMU48231040000000001, SMS48231040000000001), supersectors (SMU4823104xx00000001) and aerospace product and parts manufacturing (SMU48231043133640001) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth (Texas military installations economic impact, 2025) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Character
- AllianceTexas Drives $142.9 Billion in Economic Impact for North Texas · Hillwood · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Character
- United States Air Force Plant 4 (Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, F-35 production) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors
- American Airlines (headquarters, DFW hub, employees) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Airport passengers
- BNSF Railway (headquarters, employees) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- Bell Textron (headquarters) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors
- City Sales and Use Tax (city rate table) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- Transit Sales and Use Tax (Fort Worth MTA, effective April 1, 1984) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, Transit ridership
- Special Purpose District Sales and Use Tax (Fort Worth Crime Control District, effective October 1, 1995) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- Texas Tax Rates & Rankings · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000, Tax notes, Character
- 2025 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- 2026 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- Property Tax Exemptions · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- Fort Worth passes $4.35B budget and property tax rate increase · Community Impact · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Character
- Slightly lower property tax bills part of Fort Worth's $3.33B budget for 2027, leaders say · CBS Texas · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- Fort Worth proposes property tax rate bump, cost cuts to close $94M shortfall for 2027 · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Character
- Trinity Metro (service area, members, services, fleet, citing the APTA Transit Ridership Reports, Q4 2025 and Q2 2026) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership
- TEXRail (length, stations, opening, frequency, ridership, Medical District extension) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership, Airport passengers
- Template:American transit ridership (APTA Transit Ridership Reports, Q4 2025 and Q2 2026) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- DFW Total Passengers, December 2025 (calendar year 2025 vs 2024) · Dallas Fort Worth International Airport · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (ownership, general aviation, history) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers, Climate normals
- Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions · KFF · retrieved Supports: Health care
- A new era: JPS breaks ground on $1.5B hospital · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Health care
- JPS Health Network (Tarrant County Hospital District, John Peter Smith Hospital) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Cook Children's Medical Center · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Texas Education Agency Appoints Board of Managers and Names New Superintendent to Lead Fort Worth ISD · Texas Education Agency · retrieved Supports: Education
- 'We failed our kids': New Fort Worth ISD board signals urgency as state takeover begins · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Education, Character
- As enrollment drops, FWISD to shift bilingual, special ed services closer to campuses · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Education, Character
- Fort Worth ISD board gives final approval to close 18 schools amid budget woes, enrollment decline · CBS Texas · retrieved Supports: Education
- Fort Worth, Texas (school districts serving the city, citing the 2020 Census school district reference map for Tarrant County; colleges and universities) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Education
- Texas Christian University (fall 2025 enrollment, location, School of Medicine) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Education, Health care
- 2024 Gazetteer Files: Places (national) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: point, City population, Climate normals, Airport passengers, Character, St. Petersburg city: 61.804 sq mi of land, 73.661 sq mi of water, internal point 27.762727, -82.644131
- St. Petersburg, Florida (history, geography, economy, arts, education, transportation) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, Climate hazards, Main sectors, Labour market, Transit system, Education, Character
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, St. Petersburg Police Department (FL0521400): violent crime, property crime, homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson, 2021-2025 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character
- St. Pete Crime Rates Declined In 2025: Police · Patch · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend, Character, 10 homicides in 2025 against 18 in 2024, the fewest since 1967; overall crime down 16%; 175 robberies and 406 auto thefts against five-year averages of 224 and 735
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00092806 St. Petersburg Albert Whitted Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Climate normals, Climate hazards, January 62.2F, July 83.8F and August 84.0F and the monthly highs, lows and rain from the monthly series, which carries no snowfall normal for this station, and annual mean 74.7F, precipitation 46.65 in, 70.9 days at 90F, 0.0 at 100F and 0.1 nights at freezing from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USC00087886 St. Petersburg (cooperative station) (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Annual snowfall, Climate normals, 0.0 in of snow (monthly and annual), January 62.1F, July 83.9F, 52.48 in of precipitation
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012873 St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, January 61.6F, July 83.1F, 53.62 in of precipitation, 94.1 days at 90F
- NCEI data search, normals-monthly-1991-2020 stations within 28.0N to 27.6N and 82.85W to 82.45W · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, the stations with 1991-2020 normals in and around the city, including USW00092806 and USC00087886 at 27.7628N, 82.6261W
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, St. Petersburg Albert Whitted Airport (USW00092806), 2010-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, 18.54 in on 9 October 2024 and a 101.1 mph gust; an 82.1 mph gust on 26 September 2024; 128 days at or above 90F in 2024 and 94 in 2026 through 28 September; 32F on 18 January 2018, the only reading at or below freezing since 2010; 36F on 1 February 2026
- Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Helene (AL092024) · NOAA National Hurricane Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character, 6.31 ft above MHHW at the St. Petersburg tide gauge (record since 1947; previous record 3.97 ft in Elena, 1985); 12 drowned in Pinellas County, 2 in St. Petersburg; at least 419 homes destroyed and 18,512 structures with major damage in Pinellas and Hillsborough
- Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Milton (AL142024) · NOAA National Hurricane Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character, Landfall at Siesta Key as a Category 3; Albert Whitted storm total 18.88 in and gust 88 kt; maximum storm total 20.40 in at a CoCoRaHS site near St. Petersburg; Tropicana Field's fabric roof ripped off
- Tropicana Field roof damaged by Hurricane Milton, downtown St. Pete crane snapped · Bay News 9 · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Tropicana Field (Milton damage, 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field, return on 6 April 2026) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character
- A new Rays stadium in Tampa gets clinching Hillsborough County approval · WUSF · retrieved Supports: Character
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B19013, B25003 and B08301 for St. Petersburg, Tampa and Port St. Lucie cities, Pinellas County, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08007 (place of work), B08013 (aggregate travel time) and B08303 (travel time to work) for St. Petersburg city and Pinellas County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Labour market
- ACS 2024 1-year table B01002 (median age) for St. Petersburg, Tampa, Port St. Lucie, Jacksonville, Miami and Orlando cities, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for St. Petersburg city, Pinellas County, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL MSA (LAUMT124530000000003), St. Petersburg city (LAUCT126300000000003) and Pinellas County (LAUCN121030000000003), not seasonally adjusted · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- Current Employment Statistics, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL MSA: total nonfarm (SMU12453000000000001), construction (SMU12453002000000001), supersectors (SMU1245300xx00000001), retail trade and federal government (SMU12453009091000001) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- FY2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, Statistical Section: Principal Employers · City of St. Petersburg (filed with the Florida Auditor General) · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Health care, Character, Raymond James & Associates 4,800, All Children's Health 2,800, Power Design 1,700, Jabil Circuit 1,700, St. Anthony's Hospital 1,437, HCA Hospital 1,350, Duke Energy 1,250, Franklin Templeton 1,200, Catalent 800, PSCU 800; 17,837 or 12.45% of 147,705; the 2016 list of 20,300
- Discretionary Sales Surtax Information for Calendar Year 2026 (DR-15DSS) · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, Pinellas 1%, February 1, 1990 to December 31, 2029
- Penny for Pinellas: frequently asked questions · Penny for Pinellas (Pinellas County) · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, first approved in 1989 and in effect from 1990; renewed on November 7, 2017 for 2020-2029 with 83% support; tourists and seasonal visitors estimated to pay a third
- Florida Tax Rates & Rankings · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000, Tax notes
- Millage rates levied for 2025 taxes · Pinellas County Tax Collector · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, St Petersburg real estate total 19.9197 mills, of which the city 6.4525 (as carried in lib/metro-tampa/market.ts)
- St. Pete keeps property tax rate unchanged · St Pete Catalyst · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, 6.4525 mills for fiscal 2027 adopted 6-2 on 17 September 2026, above the 6.3854 rolled-back rate
- St. Pete holds property tax rate steady · St Pete Catalyst · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, taxable values of about $39.3 billion; ad valorem revenue up about $14.8 million; 6.4525 mills since fiscal 2025
- Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) and Observed Rent Index (ZORI), city files, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, St. Petersburg $355,759, down 3.9% year over year, and rent $2,058, as carried in lib/metro-tampa/market.ts
- Monthly Module Adjusted Data Release, complete monthly ridership with adjustments and estimates (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, NTD 40027) · Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database (via data.transportation.gov) · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership, Transit system
- Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (history, routes, SunRunner, Cross-Bay Ferry) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system
- St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (location, owner, airlines, annual passenger traffic 2024 and 2025) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Main sectors
- Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Main sectors
- Pinellas County School Board considers closing schools due to low enrollment · Bay News 9 · retrieved Supports: Education
- Pinellas County Schools move forward with closures, consolidations as enrollment declines district wide · FOX 13 · retrieved Supports: Education
- NTREIS monthly MLS summary report, August 2026 · North Texas Real Estate Information System and the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, via the MetroTex Association of REALTORS · retrieved Supports: A median single-family sale price of $327,000 in the City of Fort Worth in August 2026 on 805 sales, against $330,000 on 884 sales in August 2025, and an average of $377,572, A median townhouse sale price of $365,000 on 20 sales, against $319,990 on 21, and a median condominium sale price of $330,000 on 16 sales, against $260,000 on 11, 3,086 active single-family listings and 3.6 months of inventory in the City of Fort Worth, A median single-family lease of $2,195 a month on 470 leases, against $2,150 on 453 a year earlier, A median single-family sale price of $343,000 in Tarrant County on 1,736 sales, and $352,250 in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine metropolitan division, City figures by property type only, with no all-types median; report produced 7 September 2026
- Housing market reports · MetroTex Association of REALTORS · retrieved Supports: Monthly reports featuring data from the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center, based on listings of properties physically located within the specified geographic areas
- Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, middle tier, smoothed and seasonally adjusted, by city · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical home value of $295,800 for the city of Fort Worth (region 18172) in August 2026, $301,195 in August 2025, so a fall of 1.8% over the year
- Zillow Home Value Index, single-family and condominium series, by city · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical single-family value of $296,280 in the city of Fort Worth in August 2026, against $301,707 a year earlier, down 1.8%, A typical condominium value of $243,575 in the same month, against $248,614, down 2.0%, from the condominium file at https://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public_csvs/zhvi/City_zhvi_uc_condo_tier_0.33_0.67_sm_sa_month.csv
- Fort Worth Rent Report, October 2026 · Apartment List · retrieved Supports: A median rent of $1,141 for a one-bedroom and $1,317 for a two-bedroom in the city of Fort Worth, and $1,336 across all bedroom sizes, Rents down 0.2% over September and down 1.7% over the past 12 months, against -2.1% for the state
- Apartments for rent in Fort Worth, TX: average rent · Apartment List · retrieved Supports: Average listed rents of $1,279 and up for a studio, $1,352 and up for one bedroom, $1,661 and up for two, and $2,066 and up for three or more
- FY 2026 fair market rents, Fort Worth-Arlington, TX HUD Metro FMR Area · United States Department of Housing and Urban Development · retrieved Supports: FY 2026 fair market rents of $1,473 for one bedroom, $1,723 for two and $2,273 for three, as gross rents including utilities, The FMR area as Johnson, Parker and Tarrant counties
- Zillow Observed Rent Index, all homes plus multifamily, smoothed, by city · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: An observed rent index of $1,615 for the city of Fort Worth in August 2026, against $1,606 a year earlier, up 0.54%
- Rates and exemptions: 2025 tax rates per $100 valuation, and detail · Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector · retrieved Supports: 2025 rates per $100: Tarrant County 0.186200, City of Fort Worth 0.670000, Fort Worth ISD 1.029100, Keller ISD 1.085200, Tarrant County College 0.112280, JPS Health Network 0.165000, Tarrant Regional Water District 0.026500, Maintenance and debt splits: Tarrant County 0.173000 and 0.013200, City of Fort Worth 0.522500 and 0.147500, Fort Worth ISD 0.786900 and 0.242200, Keller ISD 0.755200 and 0.330000, Tarrant County College 0.096280 and 0.016000, JPS 0.155100 and 0.009900, water district 0.026500 and none, from https://entityportal.tarrantcountytx.gov/ratesExemptions.asp, Homestead exemptions of 20% (minimum $5,000) for Tarrant County, the City of Fort Worth and JPS Health Network, 1% (minimum $5,000) for Tarrant County College, none for the Tarrant Regional Water District, and $140,000 for Fort Worth ISD and Keller ISD, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD at 1.245700, Crowley ISD at 1.255200 with a 10% local option, Emergency Service District 1 at 0.074348, Far North Fort Worth MUD at 1.000000 and Live Oak Creek MUD at 0.942000, Fort Worth public improvement district assessments per $100: PID 1 Downtown 0.125, PID 6 Park Glen 0.155 residential, PID 7 Heritage 0.145 residential, PID 11 Stockyards 0.12, PID 12 Chapel Hill 0.14, PID 14 Trinity Bluff 0.10, PID 15 Sun Valley 0.24, PID 19 Historic Camp Bowie 0.10, PID 20 East Lancaster Avenue 0.266, PID 21 Las Vegas Trail 0.10
- 2025 tax rates per $100 valuation for Tarrant County, last updated 8 October 2025 · Tarrant Appraisal District · retrieved Supports: The same 2025 rates and homestead exemptions for the county, the City, the hospital district, the college, the water district and every school district in the county, Northwest ISD at 1.0841 per $100 for 2025, No 2026 table yet: https://www.tad.org/content/rates/2026TaxRates.pdf returned not found, from https://www.tad.org/resources/rates
- Residential property data, 2026 appraisal roll · Tarrant Appraisal District · retrieved Supports: 255,731 single-family accounts inside the City of Fort Worth in Tarrant County, 121,356 of them in Fort Worth ISD, 33,569 in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD and 32,861 in Keller ISD, 120,071 of the 121,356 City of Fort Worth and Fort Worth ISD single-family accounts carrying the Tarrant Regional Water District
- Tarrant water district lowers property tax rate, but cities will pay more for water use · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: The water district's taxing district, established in 1949, is primarily in Fort Worth and funds operation and maintenance of the 27-mile Fort Worth Floodway
- Valuing property: limitation on residence homestead value increases · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: A residence homestead's appraised value may not rise more than 10% a year once the owner has qualified in the preceding and current year
- 2020 block assignment files, Texas: unified school districts and places · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: Read with the 2020 redistricting file's block populations, at https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/01-Redistricting_File--PL_94-171/Texas/tx2020.pl.zip, and the district names in https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/maps-data/data/gazetteer/2025_Gazetteer/2025_Gaz_unsd_national.zip, Of the City of Fort Worth's 918,915 residents in 2020: 473,224 in Fort Worth ISD, 119,281 in Keller ISD, 83,129 in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD, 81,929 in Crowley ISD, 67,070 in Northwest ISD, 27,617 in Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD, 17,470 in White Settlement ISD and 16,049 in Everman ISD, 473,224 of Fort Worth ISD's 519,747 residents inside the city
- 2025 Gazetteer files: places, Texas · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: A land area of 352.011 square miles and a water area of 8.183 square miles for Fort Worth city
- Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) · City of Fort Worth Development Services · retrieved Supports: The ETJ as the unincorporated land within five miles of the city limits, where the City can regulate some activities, Water control and improvement districts, fresh water supply districts and municipal utility districts in the ETJ, under the City's MUD policy of 2005
- Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) layer, City of Fort Worth open data boundaries · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: The ETJ's polygons summing to 164,965 acres, about 258 square miles, with the latest edit dated 1 September 2026
- Public Improvement Districts (PIDs) · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: Fifteen districts listed: 1 Downtown, 6 Park Glen, 7 Heritage, 11 Stockyards, 12 Chapel Hill, 14 Trinity Bluff, 15 Sun Valley, 16 Walsh Ranch/Quail Valley, 17 Rock Creek Ranch, 18 Tourism, 19 Historic Camp Bowie, 20 East Lancaster Avenue, 21 Las Vegas Trail, 22 Veale Ranch and 23 Panther Island, PIDs 16 and 17, formed in 2016, supporting streets, drainage, water, sewer and other infrastructure; PID 22 Veale Ranch established in 2023 for a 60-year term; PID 23 established in 2026
- Fort Worth Public Improvement District No. 16 (Walsh Ranch/Quail Valley): annual service plan update, fiscal year 2027, 25 August 2026 · City of Fort Worth and MuniCap · retrieved Supports: Fiscal 2027 annual installments per lot in Improvement Area 1 of $482.14 for a 35-foot lot, $597.93 for 50 feet, $737.46 for 60 feet, $940.24 for 70 feet and $1,558.83 for a custom lot, Assessments bearing interest at the rate on the district's bonds, 4.63%, repaid over twenty annual installments, eighteen of them outstanding
- Central City · Tarrant Regional Water District · retrieved Supports: The rerouting of a section of the Trinity River due north of downtown, with flood water storage at Gateway Park, The Army Corps of Engineers building the bypass channel, three isolation gates, a dam, a pump station and ten flood water storage areas; the water district, the City and the state building the rest
- Army Corps awards contract for first half of major $1.2B Fort Worth flood control, development project · Tarrant Regional Water District, republishing WFAA of 24 September 2026 · retrieved Supports: A $169,431,703 contract with Walsh Construction Company for the north bypass channel, An 800-acre island, and 2,400 acres of land protected from flooding
- $403M coming to Panther Island · Tarrant Regional Water District, republishing the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of 19 January 2022 · retrieved Supports: A 1.5-mile bypass channel connecting the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River north of downtown Fort Worth
- Gas Wells and Gas Compressor/Well Pad Sites layers, planning and development map service · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: 2,351 gas wells, 1,955 of them producing, 287 abandoned, 84 water disposal, 13 permitted and 12 applying, in a layer last edited in December 2025, 529 gas compressor and well pad sites, from layer 9
- Gas well drilling · City of Fort Worth Development Services · retrieved Supports: The Barnett Shale as a natural gas reserve under a 15-county area, about 1.5 miles below the surface, No well drilled closer than 600 feet to a residence, religious institution, public building, hospital, school or public park without a waiver from the protected use owners or City Council approval
- Garbage service · City of Fort Worth Environmental Services · retrieved Supports: Monthly rates of $13.75, $19.50 and $25.75 for the 32-, 64- and 96-gallon garbage cart, shown as effective 1 January 2024, Solid waste fees billed on the Fort Worth water bill as a sanitation fee, with recycling and yard waste collected at no additional charge
- Stormwater utility fee · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: Residential rates from 1 January 2026 of $3.65 a month up to 1,300 square feet of hard surface, $7.29 to 2,475, $10.94 to 3,394 and $14.58 above it, on the monthly water bill
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 24 September 2026 · Freddie Mac · retrieved Supports: A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 7.03%, up from 6.95% the week before and 6.30% a year earlier
- Texas homeowners insurance market overview · Texas Department of Insurance · retrieved Supports: A statewide average homeowners premium of $3,489 a year for 2025, Hail as the largest cause of paid homeowners losses, $4.93 billion in 2024 against $2.21 billion for wind
- How much is homeowners insurance in Fort Worth, TX? · Insure.com · retrieved Supports: An average Fort Worth premium of $4,290 a year for $300,000 of dwelling cover, $100,000 of liability and a $1,000 deductible, updated 27 May 2026, An average of $3,342 a year for $200,000 of dwelling cover
- Texas homeowners insurance · NerdWallet · retrieved Supports: An average Fort Worth premium of $5,600 a year for $500,000 of dwelling cover, $300,000 of liability and a $1,000 deductible, updated 20 February 2026
- Renters insurance in Texas · NerdWallet · retrieved Supports: An average Fort Worth renters premium of $167 a year, $14 a month, for $30,000 of personal property, updated 23 September 2026
- Monthly homeowners' association and condominium fee, tables B25142 and B25143, 2024 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, Fort Worth city · United States Census Bureau, via the Census Reporter API · retrieved Supports: A median monthly association fee of $55 among Fort Worth owner-occupied units that pay one, 85,299 of 210,450 owner-occupied units, or 40.5%, paying such a fee, and 7,153 paying $500 or more a month
- Homebuyer Assistance Program (HAP) · City of Fort Worth Neighborhood Services · retrieved Supports: Up to $25,000 of interest-free assistance toward the down payment and closing costs, as a forgivable loan: forgiven after ten years in the home, or after five on $14,999 or less, Income limits updated July 2026 of $61,800 for one person to $88,250 for four, First-time buyers, or anyone who has not owned a home in three years; an eight-hour homebuyer class; a contribution of $1,000 or 2% of the price, whichever is less; a home inside the city limits; a sales price no more than 95% of the area median, under the HOME rules
- Final 2025 millage rates by taxing district · Hillsborough County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Published totals of 19.8428 for Tampa, 19.5319 for Temple Terrace, 18.2926 for Plant City and 18.2515 for the unincorporated county, Every component behind them, including the 0.5583 library services levy Temple Terrace and Plant City are outside and the 0.5000 transit authority levy Plant City is outside, A county General Purpose MSTU of 4.6163 paid in the unincorporated area in place of a municipal rate
- Table 1: Comparison of Taxes Levied, county and municipal governments, fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26 · Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight · retrieved Supports: Independent confirmation of each municipality's own adopted 2025-26 levy in both counties
- Annual estimates of the resident population for incorporated places, 2020 to 2024 · United States Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program · retrieved Supports: 2020 census counts and 2024 estimates for each municipality, Tampa at 414,547 and St. Petersburg at 267,102; Indian Shores at 1,190
- Hurricane Helene storm surge and Pinellas County flooding, September 2024 · Latent Insurance, on National Weather Service and Pinellas County data · retrieved Supports: The largest storm surge on record for St. Petersburg, over six feet in the city and more than seven on the barrier islands, Thousands of Pinellas homes flooded, many of which had never flooded before, St. Petersburg single-family homeowners insurance of roughly $3,900 to $5,500 a year with wind coverage, and higher on the barrier islands
- Home insurance in Tampa, Florida: 2026 rates · InsuranceQuotes · retrieved Supports: Tampa homeowners insurance averaging about $2,400 a year in 2026, A Tampa Bay range of roughly $3,285 to $5,100 across Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco
- Documentary stamp tax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: 70 cents per $100 on a deed, in every county except Miami-Dade, which charges 60 cents plus a 45-cent surtax, 35 cents per $100 on a promissory note or other written obligation to pay money
- Governmental leasehold intangible personal property tax and the non-recurring intangible tax on mortgages · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A non-recurring intangible tax of 2 mills: 0.2%, on the obligation secured by a mortgage on Florida real property
- Property tax exemptions and additional benefits · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A $25,000 homestead exemption applying to all taxing authorities and a second slice, $25,000 in the 2024 base year and adjusted for inflation each 1 January since, applying to all but the school district, The Save Our Homes assessment limitation of 3% or the change in CPI, whichever is lower, Portability of up to $500,000 of accrued Save Our Homes benefit to a new homestead, The 1 March filing deadline
- Chapter 2023-17, Laws of Florida: preemption of rent control · The Florida Senate · retrieved Supports: The repeal of the referendum exception that had allowed a local rent control ordinance in a declared housing emergency
- 2025 Gazetteer files: places, Florida · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: A land area of 61.806 square miles and a water area of 73.659 square miles for St. Petersburg city
- Helene_Damage_Assessment_Data, one point per parcel assessed after Hurricane Helene · City of St. Petersburg, ArcGIS Online · retrieved Supports: 13,494 parcels assessed after Hurricane Helene, 5,189 of them recorded as major damage and 146 as destroyed, A record per parcel rather than per home, with no description published for the layer
- Substantial improvement · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: Substantial improvement is any reconstruction, rehabilitation, addition or other improvement whose cost equals or exceeds 50 percent of the market value of the structure before the start of construction, The category also covers structures that have sustained substantial damage, whatever repair work is actually carried out