Miami vs Tallahassee: which should you move to?
Miami or Tallahassee? 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.
Tallahassee
Both cities are in Florida and price in US dollars, so neither takes income tax, a single filer on $100,000 pays the same $13,449 in federal tax in each, and the homestead rules are the same. Otherwise they are the state's two ends: the subtropical port city of half a million and the capital and college town of 205,000, 16.4 F colder in January. Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $4,404 a month on Miami's typical home and about $2,733 on the Tallahassee metro's single-family median, and the $1,671 gap would be about $1,862 with Miami's payment at Tallahassee's October rate of 7.28% rather than August's 6.67%. That is roughly 80% of the City of Miami's median household income against 58% of Tallahassee's, the lowest of the Florida cities here, $56,511 against $66,337. On the same Zillow index Miami's typical home was $582,621 and Zillow's index for the City of Tallahassee stood at $294,444, about half of it, and Tallahassee's insurance line is $220 a month against $505. Crime runs the other way: on the FBI's 2025 counts and its own agency populations Tallahassee had about 629 violent offenses per 100,000 against Miami's 358.6, and 20 homicides against 26 in a city less than half the size. Miami's metro unemployment is 3.7% against 5.1%. Choose Miami for a 20.3 C January, Metrorail and the Metromover, a job market built on trade, finance and tourism, MIA and lower violent crime. Choose Tallahassee for a house local pay can carry, the cheapest insurance and rent of the Florida cities here, a 19-minute commute and inland ground out of the surge, if you can take freezing nights, a capital's economy and a fire fee on the utility bill no one could price.
| Measure | Miami | Tallahassee | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| City population | 489,812 (2025) | 204,902 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Metro population | 6,391,072 (2025) | 397,442 (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. | 10.8% (2020-2025) | 4.4% (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 | Miami | Tallahassee | 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. | $582,621 (June 2026) | $364,950 (June 2026) | Tallahassee |
| Detached house benchmark Miami and Tallahassee publish a single house index rather than a composite, so the two rows repeat. | $582,621 | $364,950 | Tallahassee |
| Apartment or condominium benchmark | Not published | $179,610 | Not directly comparable |
| Two-bedroom rent | $3,004/mo (median, June 2026) | $1,309/mo (median, September 2026) | Tallahassee |
| One-bedroom rent | $2,583/mo | $1,100/mo | Tallahassee |
| 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. | 54.3% of a year's income | 27.8% of a year's income | Tallahassee |
| Mortgage payment on the benchmark, 20% down 30-year amortization on American monthly compounding, the convention in both. | $2,998/mo at 6.67% | $1,998/mo at 7.28% | Tallahassee |
| Price to household income Benchmark price divided by the median household income below. A ratio is comparable across currencies; the dollars are not. | 8.8× | 6.5× | Tallahassee |
| 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. | $10,808/yr (1.855%, 2025) | $6,182/yr (1.694%, 2025) | Tallahassee |
| 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. | $3,496 (seller pays) | $2,555 (seller pays) | Miami |
| 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 |
Miami: About 1.86% of what you pay for the house, which is lower than the 19.9878 mills charged here, 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 school district, which levies 6.4990 of the 19.9878. 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 $10,808 on the $582,621 typical home value here. Miami runs its own fire department, so it pays none of the county's 2.3965-mill Fire Rescue district levy. One of only five municipalities in Miami-Dade in that position, and worth more than most municipal rates on this table. The exemption is not automatic: you file for it with the Miami-Dade 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. Tallahassee: About 1.69% of the price for a homesteaded owner, worked out on the $364,950 single-family median for the four-county Tallahassee metro, which is lower than the 19.2060 mills a house in the City of Tallahassee is charged because of Florida's homestead exemption rather than any assessment lag. Nine levies make it, one of them at zero: Leon County 8.3144; the County's Emergency Medical Services levy 0.7500; the Children's Services Council of Leon County 0.3477; the County's voted debt 0.0000; the School Board 5.3660 (3.1180 required by the state, 0.7480 discretionary and 1.5000 for capital outlay); the Northwest Florida Water Management District 0.0207; and the City 4.4072, for 2025. Outside the city the same stack without the City's line is 14.7988, and inside the Downtown Improvement Authority's district it is 20.2060. The School Board's lines are charged on the price less $25,000, $339,950, and the rest on the price less a second slice as well, $314,950 on the base amounts, so a homesteaded buyer's first bill is about $6,183. Without a homestead, as a landlord or a buyer who never files, the same house owes $7,009. That second slice is indexed to inflation: the Department of Revenue published $25,722 for 2025, which brings the same bill to $6,173; this page uses the $25,000 base, like every Florida page on this site. For 2026 the County adopted 8.3144 and the EMS levy 0.7500 again, the City's 4.4072 and the School Board's 5.3430 were tentative when read, and the other two were not read, so no 2026 total is given. The exemption is not automatic: you file with the Leon County Property Appraiser by 1 March. There is no fire, stormwater or garbage line on a City tax bill: the City charges stormwater at $11.00 and garbage at $28.19 a month on the utility bill, $470 a year together, with a fire services fee beside them whose amount this site could not read. 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 | Miami | Tallahassee | 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 | 359 (2025) | 635 (2025) | Miami |
| Property crime per 100,000 | 2,241 (2025) | 2,405 (2025) | Miami |
| 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. | 26 (2025) | 20 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
FBI CDE counts for Miami PD show violent offenses falling from 2,245 in 2023 to 2,225 in 2024 and 1,787 in 2025 (a 20 percent one-year drop), property offenses from 13,928 to 11,178, and homicides from 61 in 2020 to 26 in 2025. Mid-2025 the department reported robberies down 17 percent and auto thefts down 37 percent against the first half of 2024.
What the rates cover: Miami Police Department (ORI FL0130600), FBI Crime Data Explorer NIBRS summarized data, 1,787 violent offenses in calendar 2025 against a CDE agency population of 498,792. 2024: 2,225 offenses, 483.1 per 100k. Miami PD moved to NIBRS mid 2022, so 2021 is blank and 2022 is a partial year in the CDE.
Homicides: Miami PD, FBI CDE: 26 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025, 5.2 per 100k. 2024: 29 (6.4 per 100k), 2023: 32 (7.1), 2020: 61 (12.8). Miami PD said in July 2025 the city might beat its record low of 24 set in 1946.
Down from a 2023 peak, though the rate is still high. On the FBI CDE's figures violent offenses were 1,587 in 2022, 1,732 in 2023, 1,383 in 2024 and 1,302 in 2025, about 785, 852, 678 and 635 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, so 2025 was 25% below 2023. Property offenses peaked later, at 5,804 in 2024, and fell 15% to 4,927 in 2025. FDLE's incident-based file shows the same direction, 1,806 violent offenses in 2023, 1,441 in 2024 and 1,363 in 2025, and for 2026 so far: January to August brought 783 violent offenses against 893 in the same months of 2025, down 12%, and 2,985 property offenses against 3,450, down 13%. The CDE has January to July 2026, 737 violent offenses against 769, down 4%. Tallahassee Reports, tabulating the police department's daily incident data, found total incidents down 22.6% in 2025, property crime down 28.3% and violent crime down 8.9%, but assaults in September to December up 55.8% on the same months of 2024, 299 against 192. The CDE counts were read on 2 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.
What the rates cover: Computed: 1,302 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Tallahassee Police Department (ORI FL0370300) in calendar 2025, divided by the 204,902 Vintage 2025 city population; on the CDE's own agency population of 206,918 the rate is 629. The rate is high, for Florida and for the country. It is the highest 2025 rate of the Florida cities this site compares, above Jacksonville's 514, St. Petersburg's 502, Tampa's 375.5 and Miami's 359 and about five times Port St. Lucie's 130; only Orlando's 835.8, which is for 2022, the last full year the FBI has for that city, is higher. The CDE's rate for all reporting Florida agencies in 2025 is 248 per 100,000 and for the nation 329, so Tallahassee's is about two and a half times the state's and nearly twice the national. On the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's incident-based (FIBRS) file, which counts somewhat more (its forcible sex offenses include fondling), the department recorded 1,363 violent offenses in 2025, 663 per 100,000 on FDLE's population, the second-highest of the 46 Florida agencies serving 100,000 or more people, behind the Fort Lauderdale Police Department (675) and ahead of Gainesville's (635), another college town; a few large agencies' 2025 rows in that file, Orlando's among them, are plainly incomplete. The Leon County Sheriff's Office, which polices the unincorporated county, recorded 500 per 100,000.
Homicides: 20 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 9.8 per 100,000 on the city population, against the CDE's 3.0 for Florida and 4.3 for the nation, and against St. Petersburg's 9 (3.4 per 100,000) and Tampa's 17 (4.1), in a city half Tampa's size; Jacksonville had 80. FDLE's file has 21. The CDE series is 15 in 2022, 21 in 2023, 16 in 2024 and 20 in 2025. Tallahassee Reports, tabulating the police department's daily incident data, counted 18 fatal shootings in 2025 against 26 in 2024. FDLE's file has 7 homicides in January to August 2026, against 17 in the same months of 2025.
Winters, summers and what the weather can do to a house
| Measure | Miami | Tallahassee | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| January mean | 20.3 °C | 11.2 °C | Not directly comparable |
| July mean | 28.9 °C | 28.1 °C | Not directly comparable |
| Precipitation a year | 1,712 mm | 1,494 mm | Not directly comparable |
| Snowfall a year | 0 cm | 0 cm | Not directly comparable |
| Sunshine a year | 3,154 hours | Not published | Not directly comparable |
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 monthly normals at Miami International Airport (USW00012839): January mean 68.6 F, July 84.1 F (August is warmest at 84.2 F), annual mean 77.4 F, annual precipitation 67.41 in, snow 0. Sunshine about 3,154 hours a year comes from NOAA Comparative Climatic Data (older period), not the 1991-2020 normals. Hazards: hurricanes and storm surge, seasonal king tide and rainfall flooding, heat and humidity from May to October, frequent thunderstorms (roughly 80 thunder days a year).
Hazards: Hurricanes and storm surge every June to November, with chronic tidal and rain flooding; windstorm and separate NFIP or private flood cover are a real carrying cost and coastal home premiums commonly run $4,000 to $7,000 a year or more.
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals for Tallahassee Regional Airport (station USW00093805), the city's airport about 6 miles southwest of the city's center point, which is the National Weather Service's station for the city and has full temperature and precipitation normals: January mean 52.2F, July mean 82.5F, annual mean 68.4F, 58.81 in of precipitation. The airport station's normals carry no snowfall, so the 0.0 in of snow stored here is the normal at Tallahassee AP (USC00088756), the cooperative station at the same airport. July is the warmest month by a tenth of a degree, ahead of August's 82.4F, with a mean high of 92.1F; January's mean low is 40.5F. June (7.76 in), August (7.60 in) and July (7.14 in) are the wettest months, and June through September bring 27.41 in, 47% of the year, so the rain is spread more evenly than in peninsular Florida; November (3.10 in) is the driest. The normals count 102.6 days a year at 90F or above, 2.9 at 100F or above, 27.0 nights at or below freezing and 1.4 at or below 20F. Converted here to 11.2 C, 28.1 C, 1,494 mm and 0 cm. The cooperative station's own temperatures run a little cooler in winter: 51.0F in January, 82.9F in July, 59.82 in a year and 128.3 days at 90F. Tallahassee has the coldest winter of the Florida cities this site compares, a degree below Jacksonville's 12.3 C and five and a half below St. Petersburg's 16.8 C, and its summer is as hot as any: its 102.6 days at 90F are fewer than Cape Coral's 120.3, but it averages 2.9 days at 100F, where Jacksonville averages under one, Hialeah 0.2 and St. Petersburg, Port St. Lucie and Cape Coral none. Its rain is third, after Hialeah's 1,852 mm and Miami's 1,712 mm. Sunshine is not stored: Current Results' US city table, the source and 1961-1990 basis of the other US profiles' sunshine hours, lists no Tallahassee station, and the 1991-2020 normals do not include sunshine.
Hazards: Wind, falling trees and the power cuts that follow them, more than water. Tallahassee is inland, which is why its airport serves as a staging area for hurricane relief (Wikipedia), so storm surge is not its hazard, but it is a city of big trees, and every recent storm has been measured in power outages. Hurricane Hermine struck directly in September 2016 and left about 80% of the city without power, including Florida State University; Hurricane Michael passed about 50 miles to the west in October 2018 after coming ashore as a category 5 and left 95% of Leon County without power (Wikipedia). The airport's highest gust since 2010 is 70.9 mph, on 10 October 2018 during Michael, followed by 67.1 mph on 26 September 2024, the day the airport closed for Hurricane Helene, which came ashore that night near Perry, to the southeast, the strongest hurricane on record to strike the Big Bend (Wikipedia), and 66 mph on 10 May 2024, the day two EF2 tornadoes crossed the city, one of them through downtown at 1,400 yards wide (Wikipedia). Heat is the everyday hazard: 102.6 days a year at 90F or above on the normals and 2.9 at 100F (37.8 C), a temperature the St. Petersburg, Port St. Lucie and Cape Coral normals never reach. The airport reached 105F on 15 June 2011, its highest reading since 2010 and Wikipedia's record for the city, and 104F on 24 June 2022; it counted 108 days at 90F in 2025 and 114 in 2026 through 29 September, three of them at 100F or above. Unlike the peninsula's cities it freezes: 27 nights a year on the normals, 27 in 2025 and 21 so far in 2026, with a low of 14F on 11 January 2010 and 18F on 2 February 2026. Snow is rare but not unknown: the airport measured 1.5 inches on 21 January 2025 and 0.4 more the next day, the city's largest snowfall since 1958 on Wikipedia's list of its measurable snows. Low-lying streets near downtown, notably along Franklin Boulevard, flood in very heavy rain (Wikipedia).
What people earn and what the government takes
| Measure | Miami | Tallahassee | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $66,337 USD (2024) | $56,511 USD (2024) | Miami |
| Unemployment rate | 3.0% (June 2026) | 5.1% (July 2026) | Miami |
| Sales tax | 7% | 7.5% | Miami |
| 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 Miami and Tallahassee sit under one province's or state's income tax, so the two cells describe the same tax and any difference between them is one of method rather than of tax. Florida levies no income tax, so both cells are the federal bill on $100,000 and they agree to the dollar. The Advantage column is Even for that reason, and the essay below says the same thing. | $13,449 USD | $13,449 USD | Even |
Nonfarm employment in the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall metropolitan division was 1,351,000 in June 2026, up 8,800 (0.7 percent) over the year, led by education and health services (+6,100) and professional and business services (+4,800); Broward shed 5,000 jobs over the same period. MIA handled nearly 3.5 million tons of cargo in 2025, the most of any US airport.
Main sectors: Trade, transportation and logistics (port and airport), Tourism and hospitality, Finance and professional services, Health care and education, Real estate and construction.
No state or local income tax. Property tax and insurance are the taxes and costs that bite in Miami: homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes 3 percent assessment cap favour long-time owners over new buyers.
BLS counted 200,500 nonfarm jobs in the Tallahassee MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 2,500 or 1.3% on the year. Professional and business services (+1,600, or 5.4%, to 31,100) and leisure and hospitality (+1,100, or 5.7%, to 20,300) added the most, and private education and health services 400 (to 27,600), while government lost 400 (-0.7%, to 60,500): local government 300, to 14,600, and federal government 200, to 2,000, with state government up 100, to 43,900. Government is 30.2% of all jobs in the metro, and it sets the rhythm of the year: state government jobs dropped from 47,300 in April 2026 to 43,300 in July as the universities' terms ended, and it averaged 46,200 of 202,000 jobs in 2025 (22.9%). The City's 2025 financial report lists eleven principal employers for the city, led by the State (26,831), FSU (16,207), Tallahassee Memorial (5,696), the school board (4,300) and the City (4,000), which together employ 67,609; the report's earlier lists counted Leon County rather than the city, so they are not compared here. Most residents work in the city: 88.1% of the city's 103,272 workers worked inside it in 2024 and only 6.1% outside Leon County, against 54% outside the city for Cape Coral. 11.4% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 19 minutes, six shorter than St. Petersburg's and 13 shorter than Cape Coral's, with 1.9% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08008, B08013, B08301 and B08303).
Main sectors: State government: the State of Florida employs 26,831 people in the city, the largest employer by far (City of Tallahassee), and state government, which in BLS's count includes the state universities, held 43,900 of the metro's 200,500 nonfarm jobs in August 2026, 21.9%, and 47,300 (23.0%) in April with classes in session, Higher education: Florida State University (16,207 employees in 2025-26, 7,723 of them full- or part-time faculty and staff and the rest graduate assistants, student assistants and temporary workers), Florida A&M University (1,794) and Tallahassee State College (1,468), with 65,657 students between them in fall 2024, Health care: Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, the region's nonprofit hospital system, is the third-largest employer (5,696), in a metro sector (private education and health services) of 27,600 jobs, Local government and schools: the Leon County School Board (4,300), the City of Tallahassee (4,000), which also runs the electric, gas and water utilities and the airport, and Leon County (1,957), in a local government sector of 14,600, Professional and business services, the law firms, lobbyists and associations that cluster around the Capitol (Wikipedia), with 31,100 metro jobs, up 1,600 or 5.4% on the year, the most of any sector; and retail and warehousing, with Amazon (2,256), Walmart (1,700) and Publix (1,400) among the city's eleven largest employers.
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 and qualifies it for the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A house in the City of Tallahassee (Leon County tax authority code 1) pays 19.2060 mills for 2025, the rates the Leon County Property Appraiser certified to the Department of Revenue: Leon County 8.3144, the county's EMS levy 0.7500, the Children's Services Council of Leon 0.3477, the school board 5.3660 (3.1180 required local effort, 0.7480 discretionary and 1.5000 capital outlay), the Northwest Florida Water Management District 0.0207 and the City 4.4072. The City lowered its rate from the 4.4200 it levied for 2024 and proposed again, but 4.4072 is still 4.7% above the rolled-back rate of 4.2080, and with taxable values up the City's levy rose 9.0% to $81.8 million; the County has held 8.3144 since 2012 (Leon County Property Appraiser). The 2024 total was 19.2379. Downtown Improvement Authority parcels pay one mill more (20.2060), and unincorporated Leon County, which has no city levy, pays 14.7988. That puts the city near Miami's 19.9878, Tampa's 19.8428 and St. Petersburg's 19.9197, a little above Hialeah's 18.6468 and above Cape Coral's 15.3806, as those cities' housing layers carry them. The school board voted in May 2026 to ask the county to put an additional operating mill for 2027 to 2031 on the November ballot to raise teacher pay (WCTV); whether the commission did was not confirmed. Zillow's typical home value for the city was $294,444 in August 2026, up 1.4% on the year and one of only two rises among the nine Florida cities this site compares (Miami's is the other), and its observed rent index $1,470 a month, up 1.5%, the lowest of the nine; only Jacksonville's typical home value ($285,103) is lower. The bills, exemptions, insurance and fees that follow from these figures belong to the housing layer.
Whether you need a car
| Measure | Miami | Tallahassee | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| System | Miami-Dade Transit (Metrorail, Metromover, Metrobus); Brightline and Tri-Rail regional rail | StarMetro, the City of Tallahassee's bus system, founded as TalTran in 1973 when the City bought the private bus company, and renamed in 2005 (Wikipedia). It runs 14 weekday fixed routes, two call-ahead FLEX zones and a peak-hour express, with fewer routes on Saturdays and a separate four-route network on Sundays and weekday evenings, nearly all of them meeting downtown at C.K. Steele Plaza, and Dial-A-Ride for riders with disabilities. It also runs Florida State University's campus routes under a contract with the university, free to the public and operated with battery-electric buses, and K-12 students ride free (Wikipedia). There is no rail transit or bus rapid transit, and no intercity passenger rail since Amtrak's Sunset Limited stopped east of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005; Greyhound, Megabus and RedCoach serve the city by coach, and Interstate 10 runs across its north side (Wikipedia). | Not directly comparable |
| Commute by public transit | 7.7% (2024) | 3.2% (2024) | Miami |
| Walk or cycle to work | 5.7% (2024) | 5.3% (2024) | Miami |
| Airport | Miami International Airport, MIA, 55.3 million passengers in 2025 (about 1 percent below 2024's record 55.9 million), per Miami-Dade Aviation Department release of May 4 2026 | Tallahassee International Airport (TLH), owned and run by the City and named Bobby Bowden-Tallahassee International Airport in April 2026 after the longtime FSU football coach, about 5 miles southwest of downtown (Wikipedia). It handled 936,448 airline passengers in the City's fiscal 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), slightly below fiscal 2024's 944,835 and above 2019's 851,689 (City of Tallahassee), with American and Delta the main carriers to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami and no scheduled international service (Wikipedia). Wikipedia counts it among the smaller commercial airports in Florida. | Not directly comparable |
Miami-Dade Transit carried 80,797,500 unlinked trips in 2025 (APTA ridership report, as cited on Wikipedia): Metrorail 14,971,300, Metromover 7,683,800, the rest on Metrobus. Q4 2025 weekday averages: Metrorail 50,300, Metromover 25,600, system 259,400.
StarMetro carried 1,762,062 unlinked trips in 2025 on the National Transit Database's monthly ridership file (Federal Transit Administration), 1,657,717 of them on its buses and the rest on demand-response service. That is about a third of its peak of 4,933,682 in 2010 and below the 3,624,805 of 2019; ridership fell to 1.5 million in 2020 and 2021 with FSU's campus routes suspended, recovered to 2.6 million in 2023, and has fallen since, to 2.25 million in 2024 and 1.76 million in 2025, and January to August 2026 ran 8.7% below the same months of 2025. The file does not separate the campus routes, and why ridership has fallen since 2023 was not found. For comparison, St. Petersburg's PSTA carried 10.4 million trips in 2025, Lee County's LeeTran 1,969,906 and Port St. Lucie's Area Regional Transit 825,588 (their profiles, from the same file).
Health care, schools and what each city is like
Health care
Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, and Florida has not expanded Medicaid, so the uninsured share runs above the national rate and emergency rooms carry the gap. Jackson Memorial, the public safety-net hospital with more than 1,500 licensed beds, is the teaching hospital of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; Baptist Health South Florida, Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Miami VA are the other large systems.
Education
Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the third largest district in the country but enrolled 313,220 students in 2025-26, down about 13,000 in a year as charters and vouchers grew, and the board approved school closures and consolidations in 2026. Florida International University enrolls roughly 50,000 students and the private University of Miami about 20,000; magnet programs such as Design and Architecture Senior High and the choice-heavy system mean school assignment is something families actively manage.
Living there
The city proper is dense, young and majority Hispanic, with Spanish as common as English in daily business, and it has grown almost 11 percent since 2020 on finance and tech arrivals who pushed rents and condo prices up fast. Summers are long, wet and hot, winters are the reason people stay, and every household budgets for hurricane season, windstorm insurance and flooded streets at king tide. Driving is the default outside the Metrorail and Metromover corridors, and traffic is the complaint residents raise most.
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, against 8.2% nationally, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates; the City of Tallahassee's was 8.5% (17,205 of 201,731) and Leon County's 8.1%, well below the state's. The city has two acute care hospitals. Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, a private nonprofit founded in 1948 that serves a 22-county region of North Florida and South Georgia, has a 772-bed acute care hospital, a psychiatric hospital and the region's only Level III neonatal intensive care unit, and is the city's third-largest employer with 5,696 staff (Wikipedia; City of Tallahassee). HCA Florida Capital Hospital, owned by HCA Healthcare and known until recently as Capital Regional Medical Center, has 266 beds (Wikipedia). The City's own count of hospital beds at the two is 1,060. Florida State University's College of Medicine trains its first- and second-year students in Tallahassee and places its third- and fourth-year students at regional campuses around the state (Wikipedia). This file did not verify wait times for primary or specialist care.
Education
Tallahassee is a college town, and the share of its residents in college is four times the national share. On the ACS 2024 1-year estimates 54,353 of the city's 199,776 residents aged 3 and over were enrolled in college (43,399 undergraduates) or graduate school (10,954), 27.2%, against 6.6% nationally and 6.2% in Florida; undergraduates alone are 21.7% of the city. Three public institutions account for most of them. Florida State University enrolled a record 46,184 students in fall 2025, 33,068 of them undergraduates and 11,022 graduate and professional students, of whom 43,936 took at least one class on the main campus in Tallahassee (FSU Office of Institutional Research). Florida A&M University, founded in 1887, the only public historically black university in Florida and the third-largest in the country by enrollment (Wikipedia), had 9,313 students in fall 2024 (7,890 undergraduates), and welcomed more than 1,900 first-time students in August 2026, its largest incoming class in a decade (FAMU). Tallahassee State College, called Tallahassee Community College from 1970 until it was renamed on July 1, 2024 (Wikipedia), had 12,455 students in fall 2024, all undergraduates, and acts largely as a feeder to the two universities. Together the three enrolled 65,657 in fall 2024 on the federal College Navigator's counts, and the City's 2025 financial report puts college-level students at 68,667. FAMU's fall 2025 headcount was not found in a source fetched here. Public schools are run by Leon County Schools, the countywide district, with 31,638 students in pre-kindergarten to grade 12 in 2025, down from 34,085 in 2019, in 51 schools (City of Tallahassee). The district is asking voters in November 2026 to renew its half-cent sales surtax, which expires in 2027 and has raised about $400 million since 2012, and warns of a $620 million gap in facility needs without it (WTXL; WCTV).
Living there
Tallahassee is Florida's capital, a college town and almost nothing else, and it shows in every figure here. It became the territorial capital in 1824 as a halfway point between Pensacola and St. Augustine, near the Apalachee town of Anhaica where Hernando de Soto's expedition wintered in 1539 (Wikipedia), and it sits at the southern end of the Red Hills, hilly by Florida standards, along nine officially designated canopy roads, with a winter unlike the peninsula's: it freezes about 27 nights a year and saw 1.9 inches of snow in January 2025. The State of Florida and Florida State University are its two largest employers, government holds 30% of the metro's jobs, and more than a quarter of residents are in college, which makes the city the youngest of the Florida cities this site compares (median age 28.5) and the one with the lowest household income ($56,511), the fourth-lowest share of homeowners, after Miami, Orlando and Hialeah (44.5%), short commutes and, after Miami, the most people who take the bus, walk or cycle to work. It also has the highest violent crime rate of the Florida cities here in 2025, 635 per 100,000 on the FBI's counts, two and a half times the state's, though falling since 2023. Its history includes the Tallahassee bus boycott of 1956, begun by two FAMU students, and the Frenchtown neighborhood, the oldest historically black neighborhood in the state (Wikipedia). It is growing slowly, 4.4% from 2020 to 2025, and its home values and rents are among the lowest of the Florida cities here, with a typical home at $294,444 and a typical rent of $1,470 on Zillow's indexes, against a property tax rate of 19.2060 mills, nearly as high as Miami's, Tampa's and St. Petersburg's.
Where each city wins, and where it loses
Both cities price in US dollars, so the figures net directly, though the two headlines are different instruments priced at different rates. Miami's is Zillow's typical home value for the city across all homes, $582,621 in June 2026, 0.7% below a year earlier. Tallahassee's is Florida Realtors' single-family median for the Tallahassee metro, Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon and Wakulla counties, $364,950 in June on 364 closed sales, 5.8% above June 2025, as Tallahassee Reports printed it, since Florida Realtors publishes it to members only; no median for the City or for Leon County alone was found, and Leon County is almost 90% of the metro's sales. On the same Zillow index, the like-for-like measure, Zillow's index for the City of Tallahassee stood at $294,444 in August, 1.4% higher on the year, so Miami's typical home is about 1.98 times it. Against local pay the headlines are 8.8 times the City of Miami's 2024 median household income of $66,337 and 6.5 times Tallahassee's $56,511, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares. At 20% down, Miami's $466,097 loan at 6.67%, Freddie Mac's August rate, costs $2,998 a month, and the $291,960 loan on the Tallahassee metro median at 7.28%, the rate for 1 October, $1,998. A homesteaded buyer's first-year property tax is about $10,808 in Miami, 1.86% of the price on 19.9878 mills, against $6,183 in Tallahassee, 1.69% on 19.2060, and insurance is budgeted at $505 and $220 a month, neither including flood. The three lines come to about $4,404, or $4,595 at October's rate, and $2,733, roughly 80% and 58% of local median income; on Zillow's value for the City of Tallahassee the carry would be about $2,234, under half of Miami's at the same rate. Zillow's observed rent index was $3,004 in Miami in June 2026 and $1,470 in Tallahassee in August, the lowest of the nine Florida cities here, about 54% and 31% of median income, and Apartment List put Tallahassee's two-bedroom median at $1,309 in September. More than a quarter of Tallahassee's residents are in college, so its rent index is partly a student market. Condominium fees are estimated at $850 a month in Miami and $300 in Tallahassee, neither of them a published average.
Both cities' figures are the FBI's Crime Data Explorer counts for 2025, and on them Tallahassee has much the higher violent crime and Miami the more homicides. Miami Police submitted 1,787 violent offenses, 358.6 per 100,000 on the FBI's agency population of 498,792, and 11,178 property offenses, 2,240.8. The Tallahassee Police Department submitted 1,302 violent offenses, 629 per 100,000 on the FBI's agency population of 206,918 and 635 on the Census estimate of 204,902, the highest 2025 rate of the Florida cities this site compares and about two and a half times Florida's 248, and 4,927 property offenses, 2,381 or 2,405. That property figure is understated: the FBI's copy carries 23 motor vehicle thefts for the department against 396 in the file of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the state's own property total works out to about 2,577 per 100,000 on the Census estimate, above Miami's. Homicide runs the other way in count and the same way in rate: 26 in Miami, 5.2 per 100,000 and down from 61 in 2020, against 20 in Tallahassee, about 9.8. Both are falling. Miami's violent offenses dropped 20% in 2025, from 2,225. Tallahassee's fell from 1,732 in 2023 to 1,302 in 2025, 25% lower, and on the state's file January to August 2026 brought 783 against 893 in the same months of 2025, with 7 homicides against 17, though assaults rose sharply late in 2025 on the police department's own daily data. Miami's series before 2023 is incomplete because its department moved to incident-based reporting in mid-2022. The Tallahassee counts were read on 2 October 2026, and both can still be revised.
Miami's winter is subtropical and Tallahassee's is the coldest of the Florida cities here, and the summers are within a degree on the mean. January averages 20.3 C at Miami International and 11.2 C at the Tallahassee airport, about 6 miles southwest of the city's center, 68.6F against 52.2F; July averages 28.9 C against 28.1 C, 84.1F against 82.5F. Miami's normals count 91.4 days a year at 90F or above and Tallahassee's 102.6, with 2.9 days at 100F or above, and Tallahassee has 27.0 nights a year at or below freezing and Miami none. Miami gets 1,712 mm of rain a year and Tallahassee 1,494 mm, where June through September bring 47% of it, and neither has snow in the normals, though Tallahassee measured 1.9 in on 21 and 22 January 2025, its largest snowfall since 1958. Miami's sunshine on the older series is about 3,154 hours; no Tallahassee station has a figure. The storms differ in kind. Miami's risks are hurricanes and storm surge from June to November, with chronic tidal and rain flooding between them and roughly 80 thunder days a year. Tallahassee is inland, which is why its airport serves as a staging area for hurricane relief, so surge is not its hazard; wind, falling trees and the outages that follow are. Hermine struck directly in September 2016 and left about 80% of the city without power, Michael left 95% of Leon County without power in 2018, two EF2 tornadoes crossed the city on 10 May 2024 and broke more than 400 utility poles, and Helene left about 53,000 City utility customers without power that September. Its flooding is rain on low streets near downtown, notably along Franklin Boulevard.
Miami's labor market is far larger and tighter, and its households earn more. On the same unadjusted basis BLS put July 2026 unemployment at 3.7% for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro, the lowest of the Florida metros this site compares, and 5.1% for Tallahassee's, whose rate moves with the academic year and was 4.4% a year earlier. Miami-Dade, the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall division, had 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in August, 6,200 or 0.5% more than a year earlier; the Tallahassee metro had 200,500, 2,500 or 1.3% more, with professional and business services adding 1,600. Miami's economy runs through the port, the airport, tourism, finance and health care, and MIA handled nearly 3.5 million tons of cargo in 2025, the most of any US airport. Tallahassee's runs on government: the State of Florida employs 26,831 people in the city and Florida State University 16,207, government holds 30.2% of the metro's jobs, and state government drops from 47,300 jobs in April to 43,300 in July as the universities' terms end; Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, with 5,696 staff, is third, and the law firms, lobbyists and associations around the Capitol fill much of the rest. 88.1% of Tallahassee's workers worked inside the city in 2024, and the mean commute was 19 minutes. Median household income was $66,337 in the City of Miami in 2024 and $56,511 in Tallahassee, $9,826 less, with a margin of error of $5,841, and $80,625 across greater Miami against $65,009 across the Tallahassee metro. Both are renter cities, with owners in 32.7% of Miami's homes and 44.5% of Tallahassee's, and Tallahassee is the younger by a decade, with a median age of 28.5 against 38.8. Florida takes no income tax in either, so $100,000 pays the same $13,449 in federal tax for 2025. Sales tax is 7% in Miami-Dade against 7.5% in Leon County, where the school half-cent expires in 2027 unless voters renew it in November. Property tax and insurance come to about $16,868 a year on Miami's typical home and $8,823 on the Tallahassee metro median.
These are the two Florida cities on this site with the most workers out of cars, and Miami has the rail. In 2024, 7.7% of City of Miami workers commuted by transit and 5.7% walked or cycled, against 3.2% and 5.3% in Tallahassee, the second-highest shares of the Florida cities here on both counts, though the Tallahassee survey's margin is wide and the five-year table puts its transit share at 2.2%; 67.6% of Tallahassee's workers drove alone and 11.4% worked from home. Miami-Dade Transit carried 80,797,500 trips in 2025, 14,971,300 of them on Metrorail and 7,683,800 on the fare-free Metromover, and Brightline and Tri-Rail run regional trains. StarMetro, the City of Tallahassee's buses, carried 1,762,062 trips in 2025, about a third of its 2010 peak, on 14 weekday routes that nearly all meet downtown at C.K. Steele Plaza and on Florida State's campus routes, free to the public; why its ridership has fallen since 2023 was not found. Tallahassee has no rail transit and has had no passenger rail since Amtrak's Sunset Limited stopped running east of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005; Greyhound, Megabus and RedCoach serve it by coach. The densities differ by almost seven times, about 13,600 residents per square mile of land in Miami against about 2,000 in Tallahassee, a city of hills and nine designated canopy roads. MIA handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025 and is the direct gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean. Tallahassee International, owned by the City about 5 miles southwest of downtown and named for Bobby Bowden in April 2026, handled 936,448 in the City's fiscal 2025, mostly on American and Delta to their hubs, with no scheduled international service.
Florida has not expanded Medicaid, so coverage in both runs through an employer or marketplace plan, Medicare or Medicaid. The state's uninsured rate was 10.9% in 2024, against 8.2% nationally; the City of Tallahassee's was 8.5%, and Miami's profile says only that the uninsured share there runs above the national rate. Miami's public safety-net hospital is Jackson Memorial, with more than 1,500 licensed beds, the teaching hospital of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Tallahassee's hospitals serve a region of their own: Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, a private nonprofit founded in 1948 that draws on 22 counties of North Florida and South Georgia, has a 772-bed acute care hospital and the region's only Level III neonatal intensive care unit, and HCA Florida Capital Hospital has 266 beds; Florida State's College of Medicine trains its first- and second-year students in the city. Neither profile verified a wait time. The districts differ tenfold in size, and both are shrinking. Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the third largest in the country, enrolled 313,220 in 2025-26, about 13,000 fewer as charters and vouchers grew, and approved closures in 2026. Leon County Schools had 31,638 students in 2025, down from 34,085 in 2019, in 51 schools, and is asking voters in November 2026 to renew its half-cent sales surtax. The universities are where Tallahassee leads: Florida State enrolled a record 46,184 in fall 2025, Florida A&M, the state's only public historically black university, 9,313 in fall 2024 and Tallahassee State College 12,455, and 27.2% of Tallahassee's residents aged three and over were in college or graduate school, four times the national share. Florida International University enrolls roughly 50,000 students and the University of Miami about 20,000, in a county of 2.8 million.
What people underestimate is that the two millages are within a mill of each other, so the gap is the price and the insurance, and that a Tallahassee bill leaves things off the tax bill. Both run on the same Florida rules: $25,000 of taxable value comes off every levy for a homestead and a second slice off all but the school district's, Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessment at 3% a year and resets it on a sale, and the exemption has to be filed with the property appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy. Without it Miami's typical home owes about $11,645 and the Tallahassee metro median about $7,009. A City of Miami address pays 19.9878 mills, the City's 7.1080 and 0.2536 for debt and the county library district's 0.2812 among them, and its own fire department means no county Fire Rescue levy. A City of Tallahassee address pays nine levies for 2025, one of them at zero, 19.2060 mills, of which the City's own is 4.4072 and Leon County's 8.3144, a rate the County has held since 2012, and there is no fire, stormwater or garbage line on it. The City is the utility, owning the electric, gas, water and sewer systems, and it charges stormwater at $11.00 and garbage at $28.19 a month on the utility bill, about $470 a year, with a fire services fee beside them that it raised 9.98% on 1 October 2025, about $2 a month for most residents, and that residents challenged in a lawsuit filed on 17 November 2025. This site could not read the fee's amount, so the Tallahassee carry leaves it out. Miami-Dade charges the seller a documentary stamp of 60 cents per $100 on a single-family house, about $3,496 on Miami's typical home, and Leon County the state's 70 cents, about $2,555 on the Tallahassee metro median; the buyer pays 0.55% of the loan in both, about $2,564 and $1,606. Insurance is the widest line: NerdWallet's averages are $8,345 a year in Miami and $2,640 in Tallahassee, where the state's average Leon County homeowners premium with wind cover was $2,538. Neither carry includes flood, and from 1 January 2027 most new and renewing Citizens Property Insurance policies with wind cover must carry it; Tallahassee's place in Class 5 of FEMA's Community Rating System takes 25% off a flood policy in its special flood hazard area. On a wooded Tallahassee lot, tree work is a cost no maintenance estimate here includes. And Miami is growing faster: 10.8% from 2020 to 2025, against Tallahassee's 4.4%, whose county has lost more residents to the rest of the country than it gained in each of the last three years.
Better here
- January averages 20.3 C with no freezing nights, against 11.2 C and 27.0 freezing nights a year in Tallahassee, 16.4 F colder.
- Violent crime was 358.6 per 100,000 on the FBI's 2025 counts and agency population, against about 629 in Tallahassee on the same basis.
- Metro unemployment was 3.7% in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 5.1% around Tallahassee.
- Miami-Dade Transit carried 80,797,500 trips in 2025 on Metrorail, the fare-free Metromover and buses, and 7.7% of city workers commuted by transit.
- MIA handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025 and is the direct gateway to Latin America, against 936,448 at Tallahassee International.
- City median household income was $66,337 in 2024, $9,826 more than Tallahassee's $56,511.
Worse here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $4,404 a month on the June 2026 typical home, roughly 80% of median household income, and about $4,595 at October's 7.28%, against $2,733 and 58% in Tallahassee.
- On the same Zillow index the typical home is about 1.98 times Zillow's value for the City of Tallahassee, and it is 8.8 times the city's median household income.
- Insurance is budgeted at $505 a month against $220, and NerdWallet's average is $8,345 a year against $2,640.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $3,004 in June 2026, about 54% of median income, against $1,470 and 31% in Tallahassee.
- A homesteaded buyer's property tax is about 1.86% of the price on 19.9878 mills, against 1.69% on 19.2060.
- Hurricanes, storm surge and chronic tidal and rain flooding are the city's named hazards, with roughly 80 thunder days a year.
Choose Miami if
- you want a January at 20.3 C and will pay windstorm and flood premiums to get it
- you can live along Metrorail or the Metromover and run the household on one car or none
- your work is in finance, trade with Latin America, the port, the airport or tourism
- you want a hub airport, a metro with unemployment under 4% and lower violent crime
The Miami guide · Neighborhoods · Miami rent vs buy · Miami mortgage calculator
Better here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,733 a month on the Tallahassee metro's June 2026 median, roughly 58% of median household income, against $4,595 and 80% in Miami at the same rate.
- Insurance is budgeted at $220 a month, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares, against $505.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $1,470 in August 2026, the lowest of the nine Florida cities here, against $3,004 in Miami.
- The city is inland, out of the reach of storm surge, and the mean commute was 19 minutes in 2024.
- The uninsured rate was 8.5% in 2024, below Florida's 10.9%, and Tallahassee Memorial has the region's only Level III neonatal intensive care unit.
- Florida State, Florida A&M and Tallahassee State College enrolled 65,657 students in fall 2024, and 27.2% of residents were in college.
Worse here
- Violent crime was about 629 per 100,000 on the FBI's 2025 counts and agency population, against 358.6 in Miami, and homicide about 9.8 per 100,000 against 5.2.
- City median household income was $56,511 in 2024, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares.
- Metro unemployment was 5.1% in July 2026 against 3.7%, and the metro has 200,500 nonfarm jobs, 30.2% of them in government.
- January averages 11.2 C with 27.0 freezing nights a year, and the normals count 102.6 days at 90F or above against Miami's 91.4.
- Sales tax is 7.5% against 7%, and the City's fire services fee on the utility bill could not be priced.
- Hermine left about 80% of the city without power in 2016, and two EF2 tornadoes broke more than 400 utility poles in 2024.
Choose Tallahassee if
- you work for the state, at Florida State, Florida A&M or Tallahassee Memorial, or in the law and lobbying around the Capitol
- you want to own for under $3,000 a month and insure for $220
- you want hills, canopy roads and a winter, and inland ground away from the surge
- you will ask the City for the fire fee at the address and read the seller's utility bill as closely as the tax bill
The Tallahassee guide · Neighborhoods · Tallahassee rent vs buy · Tallahassee mortgage calculator
Miami or Tallahassee, in short
Is Miami or Tallahassee cheaper to live in?
Tallahassee, on the house, the insurance and the rent, by a wide margin. Both cities are in Florida and price in US dollars, so the figures net directly, though the headlines are different measures priced at different rates: Miami's typical home on Zillow's index was $582,621 in June and the Tallahassee metro's single-family median $364,950 that month, and on the same Zillow index Zillow's index for the City of Tallahassee stood at $294,444. At 20% down the mortgage is $2,998 at August's 6.67% against $1,998 at October's 7.28%. Property tax is about $10,808 a year against $6,183 and insurance $505 a month against $220, so the three lines come to about $4,404 in Miami, or $4,595 at the same rate, and $2,733 in Tallahassee, roughly 80% and 58% of each city's median household income, $66,337 and $56,511. Zillow's observed rent index was $3,004 against $1,470. Neither city levies income tax, sales tax is 7% against 7.5%, and Tallahassee's fire services fee, on the utility bill, is not in its figure.
Is Miami or Tallahassee safer?
Miami, on violent crime. Both are the FBI's counts for 2025: 358.6 violent offenses per 100,000 in Miami on the FBI's agency population, against about 629 in Tallahassee on the same basis and 635 on the Census estimate, the highest 2025 rate of the Florida cities this site compares. Property crime was 2,240.8 per 100,000 in Miami and 2,381 in Tallahassee, a figure understated by missing car thefts; the state's own count for Tallahassee works out to about 2,577. Homicides were 26 in Miami, 5.2 per 100,000, and 20 in Tallahassee, about 9.8. Both are falling: Miami's violent offenses dropped 20% in 2025, and Tallahassee's were 25% below their 2023 peak, with January to August 2026 down 12% again on the state's file.
Which has the better job market, Miami or Tallahassee?
Miami's, on size, unemployment and pay. On the same unadjusted basis BLS put July 2026 unemployment at 3.7% for Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach and 5.1% for the Tallahassee metro, whose rate moves with the academic year. Miami-Dade had 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in August and the Tallahassee metro 200,500, which grew faster, 1.3% against 0.5%. Miami's economy runs through the port, the airport, tourism, finance and health care. Tallahassee's is the State of Florida, with 26,831 employees in the city, Florida State with 16,207 and Tallahassee Memorial with 5,696, and government is 30.2% of the metro's jobs. Median household income was $66,337 in Miami and $56,511 in Tallahassee, where many households are students.
Which is more exposed to hurricanes, Miami or Tallahassee?
Miami to surge and flood, Tallahassee to wind and trees. Miami's named hazards are hurricanes and storm surge every June to November, with chronic tidal and rain flooding, and its insurance line is $505 a month against Tallahassee's $220. Tallahassee is inland, out of surge's reach, but its storms are measured in power outages: Hermine left about 80% of the city without power in 2016, Michael 95% of Leon County in 2018, the tornadoes of 10 May 2024 broke more than 400 utility poles, and Helene left about 53,000 City utility customers without power. Neither carry includes flood insurance, which from 1 January 2027 most new and renewing Citizens policies with wind cover must carry.
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.
- Miami, FL Population (2025) · Every City in the USA (republishing Census Bureau PEP Vintage 2025) · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth
- U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Miami city, Florida · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: population.city (page returned 403 on fetch; figure confirmed via search snippet and secondary republisher)
- Largest U.S. Metro Areas by Population 2026 (Vintage 2025 estimates) · statranker.org · retrieved Supports: Metro population
- Florida MSA population estimates, April 1 2025 · Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research · retrieved Supports: population.metro (alternative state estimate)
- Miami, FL Metro Area and Miami city profiles, ACS 2024 1-year · Census Reporter · retrieved Supports: Median household income, population.metro (ACS)
- ACS 2024 1-year table B08301 Means of Transportation to Work · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau data) · retrieved Supports: Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, Miami Police Department (FL0130600) · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend
- Miami Police Report 20% Decrease in Homicides for 1st Half of 2025 · Officer.com · retrieved Supports: Crime trend, Homicides
- U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly and annual, station USW00012839 Miami International Airport · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Annual snowfall
- Comparative Climatic Data · NOAA NCEI · retrieved Supports: climate.sunshineHours (approximate; figure taken from search summaries of CCD, not the table itself)
- Climate of Miami · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: climate.hazards (thunderstorm days, hurricane exposure)
- Broward County June 2026 Unemployment Data · CareerSource Broward (FloridaCommerce data) · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate, Labour market
- Discretionary Sales Surtax Information (DR-15DSS) 2026 · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- IRS releases tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2025 · Internal Revenue Service · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, taxes.incomeTaxAt100k (brackets)
- FAQ: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act Tax Changes · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: taxes.incomeTaxAt100k ($15,750 standard deduction)
- Miami-Dade Transit · Wikipedia (citing APTA Ridership Report) · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- Soaring cargo growth lifts MIA to #1 in the U.S., #3 in the world · Miami International Airport · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers, Labour market
- Miami (MIA) Airport & Passenger Statistics · RoadGenius · retrieved Supports: transit.airport (2024 comparison)
- A Guide to Florida Flood Insurance (2026) · Insurify · retrieved Supports: climate.hazards (insurance costs)
- Enrollment in Miami-Dade schools is lower at the start of this year. Why? · WLRN · retrieved Supports: Education
- FIU enrollment approaches 50,000 as fall semester nears · Miami Today · retrieved Supports: Education
- Jackson Memorial Hospital · Jackson Health System · retrieved Supports: Health care
- 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, Metro population, Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character, Tallahassee city 196,182 (April 2020 base), 197,919 (2020), 200,283 (2021), 202,205 (2022), 203,267 (2023), 204,025 (2024) and 204,902 (2025); Leon County 299,048 (April 2020 base 292,205); national rank 122 and Florida rank 9; 37th of the 129 cities of 200,000 or more for growth since 2020
- 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, Character, Tallahassee MSA (CBSA 45220) 384,303 (April 2020 base) and 397,442 (2025), 143rd of 387 metros and 14th of 22 in Florida; Gadsden 44,298, Jefferson 16,007, Leon 299,048, Wakulla 38,089; births, deaths and domestic and international migration by county and year
- 2025 Gazetteer Files: Places, Florida · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: point, City population, Climate normals, Tallahassee city (1270600): 102.578 sq mi of land, 2.913 sq mi of water, internal point 30.453529, -84.252272
- Tallahassee, Florida (history, geography, climate, neighborhoods, transportation) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: City population, Climate hazards, Main sectors, Transit system, Character, Capital since 1824; only incorporated municipality in Leon County; Hermine (about 80% of the city without power), Michael (95% of Leon County without power), EF2 tornadoes on 10 May 2024; record 105F on 15 June 2011; measurable snows including 2.8 in on 13 February 1958 and 1.9 in on 21-22 January 2025; nine canopy roads; Frenchtown; the 1956 bus boycott; Greyhound, Megabus and RedCoach; Amtrak's Sunset Limited suspended east of New Orleans in 2005
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, Tallahassee Police Department (FL0370300): violent crime, property crime, homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson, 2021-2025, with Florida and national rates · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character, 2022: 1,587 violent, 4,430 property; 2023: 1,732 and 5,212; 2024: 1,383 and 5,804; 2025: 1,302 violent (20 + 149 + 214 + 919) and 4,927 property (745 + 4,148 + 23 + 11); homicides 15, 21, 16 and 20; agency population 206,918 for 2025; January to July 2026 737 violent against 769 in 2025; 2025 rates for reporting Florida agencies 248.3 violent, 1,076.6 property and 3.0 homicide, and for the US 329.3, 1,552.1 and 4.3
- FIBRS offense data by agency and month, 2021 to August 2026 · Florida Department of Law Enforcement · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Tallahassee Police Department: 1,681, 1,806, 1,441 and 1,363 violent and 5,444, 5,591, 6,371 and 5,280 property offenses in 2022 to 2025; motor vehicle thefts 628, 624, 559 and 396; homicides 16, 21, 16 and 21; January to August 2026 783 violent, 2,985 property and 7 homicides against 893, 3,450 and 17; FDLE population 205,623; the 46 agencies serving 100,000 or more in 2025, led by Fort Lauderdale PD (675 per 100,000), Tallahassee PD (663) and Gainesville PD (635); Leon County Sheriff's Office 500
- Total Crime Incidents Down in 2025, Violent Crime Spikes During Last Four Months · Tallahassee Reports · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend, From the Tallahassee Police Department's daily incident data: total incidents down 22.6% in 2025, property down 28.3%, violent down 8.9%; assaults in September to December 299 against 192; 18 fatal shootings in 2025 against 26 in 2024
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00093805 Tallahassee Regional Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Climate normals, Climate hazards, Character, January 52.2F, July 82.5F and August 82.4F and the monthly highs, lows and rain from the monthly series, which carries no snowfall normal for this station, and annual mean 68.4F, precipitation 58.81 in, 102.6 days at 90F, 2.9 at 100F, 27.0 nights at or below 32F and 1.4 at or below 20F from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USC00088756 Tallahassee AP (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 51.0F, July 82.9F, 59.82 in, 128.3 days at 90F
- NCEI data search, normals-monthly-1991-2020 stations within 30.7N to 30.2N and 84.6W to 84.0W, and stations with a snowfall normal within 31.3N to 29.7N and 85.3W to 83.4W · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, USW00093805 at 30.3975N, 84.3289W and USC00088756 at 30.3961N, 84.3556W, both at the airport; the other stations near the city are CoCoRaHS precipitation gauges
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Tallahassee Regional Airport (USW00093805), 2010-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character, 105F on 15 June 2011 and 104F on 24 June 2022; 108 days at or above 90F in 2025 and 114 in 2026 through 29 September, 3 of them at 100F or above; 27 nights at or below 32F in 2025 and 21 in 2026; 14F on 11 January 2010 and 18F on 2 February 2026; snowfall 1.5 in on 21 January 2025 and 0.4 in on 22 January; gusts of 70.9 mph on 10 October 2018, 67.1 mph on 26 September 2024 and 66.0 mph on 10 May 2024
- Average Annual Sunshine in US Cities · Current Results (NCDC Comparative Climatic Data, 1961-1990) · retrieved Supports: Sunshine hours, Climate normals, Jacksonville and Miami listed; no Tallahassee station
- Hurricane Hermine (2016) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, 57% of homes in Leon County without power, including about 80% of the city proper and Florida State University
- Hurricane Helene · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Tallahassee International Airport closed on 26 September 2024
- FY2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, Statistical Section (Demographic Statistics, Principal Employers and Miscellaneous Statistical Data) · City of Tallahassee (filed with the Florida Auditor General) · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Airport passengers, Health care, Education, Principal employers 2025: State of Florida 26,831, Florida State University 16,207, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital 5,696, Leon County School Board 4,300, City of Tallahassee 4,000, Amazon 2,256, Leon County 1,957, Florida A&M University 1,794, Walmart 1,700, Tallahassee State College 1,468, Publix 1,400, and the 2016 list; airline passengers 936,448 (fiscal 2025), 944,835 (2024) and 851,689 (2019); Leon County School enrollment 31,638 (2025) and 34,085 (2019); 51 public schools; 68,667 college-level students; 1,060 hospital beds at Tallahassee Memorial and Capital Regional
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B19013, B25003 and B01002 for Tallahassee city, Leon County, the Tallahassee MSA, Florida, the US and the other Florida cities this site compares · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08007 (place of work by county), B08008 (place of work by place), B08013 (aggregate travel time) and B08303 (travel time to work) for Tallahassee city and Leon County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Labour market, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B08301 (means of transportation to work) for Tallahassee city, Leon County, the Tallahassee MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Labour market, Character
- ACS 2020-2024 5-year table B08301 (means of transportation to work) for Tallahassee city and Leon County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B14001 and B14007 (school enrollment by level) for Tallahassee city, Leon County, the Tallahassee MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: City population, Education, Character, Tallahassee city: 199,776 aged 3 and over, 43,399 enrolled in college undergraduate years and 10,954 in graduate or professional school; US 17,005,362 and 4,797,493 of 329,362,620; Florida 1,094,685 and 311,297 of 22,719,284
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for Tallahassee city, Leon County, the Tallahassee MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Tallahassee, FL MSA (LAUMT124522000000003), Leon County (LAUCN120730000000003) and Tallahassee city (LAUCT127060000000003), not seasonally adjusted · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- Current Employment Statistics, Tallahassee, FL MSA: total nonfarm (SMU12452200000000001), supersectors (SMU1245220xx00000001), retail trade and federal, state and local government (SMU12452209091000001, SMU12452209092000001, SMU12452209093000001) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Character
- Florida State University 2025-2026 Pocket Fact Book · Florida State University Office of Institutional Research · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Education, Fall 2025 enrollment 46,184 (33,068 undergraduate, 11,022 graduate and professional, 2,094 unclassified), the highest in the enrollment history table; 43,603 at the Tallahassee location and 43,936 taking at least one class on the main campus; 16,207 employees in 2025-26, 7,605 full-time, 118 part-time and 8,484 OPS
- College Navigator: Florida State University, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and Tallahassee State College (fall 2024 enrollment) · US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Education, Fall 2024 total enrollment: FAMU 9,313 (7,890 undergraduate, 1,423 graduate; id 133650), FSU 43,889 (32,720 undergraduate; id 134097), Tallahassee State College 12,455, all undergraduate (id 137759)
- FAMU Welcomes Largest Incoming Class in a Decade at New Student Pinning Ceremony · Florida A&M University · retrieved Supports: Education, More than 1,900 first-time-in-college students in fall 2026, the largest incoming class in a decade, plus 400 online, 700 transfer and 1,200 graduate students
- Florida A&M University · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Education, Character
- Florida State University · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Education
- Tallahassee State College · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Education, Known as Tallahassee Community College from 1970 to 2024; renamed Tallahassee State College on July 1, 2024
- Leon County Schools approve increase in property tax rates, voters could decide in November · WCTV · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, Tax notes, Education, A one-mill operating levy for July 2027 to June 2031 sent to the county commission for the November ballot; the commission's 12 May motion to put the half-cent sales tax renewal on the November ballot; $400 million raised from 2012 to 2026
- Leon County school leaders push to renew half-cent sales tax before 2027 expiration · WTXL · retrieved Supports: Education, A $620 million gap in facility needs without renewal; more than $500 million over 15 years if renewed
- Tax Information Publication 14A01-17: Leon County Discretionary Sales Surtax Continues at 1.5% Rate · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, Combined rate 7.5%: 1% infrastructure surtax, 0.5% school capital outlay surtax and 6% state tax; the infrastructure surtax extended through December 31, 2039
- Florida Tax Rates & Rankings · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000, Tax notes
- 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: Homestead Exemption, Save Our Homes Assessment Limitation, and Portability Transfer · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- Leon County 2025 taxing authority millage rates by tax authority code (with 2010 to 2024), as certified by the Leon County Property Appraiser · Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight (Leon County Property Appraiser's filing) · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Character, 2025 code 1, City of Tallahassee: County 8.3144, EMS MSTU 0.7500, CSC of Leon 0.3477, School Board RLE 3.1180, discretionary 0.7480 and capital outlay 1.5000, NW Florida Water Management District 0.0207, City 4.4072, total 19.2060 ('City lowered from proposed rate of 4.4200'); code 3, Downtown Improvement, 20.2060; code 2, unincorporated, 14.7988; 2024 code 1 total 19.2379; County 8.3144 every year since 2012
- Table 1: Comparison of Taxes Levied, County and Municipal Governments, Fiscal Years 2024-25 and 2025-26 (Leon County) · Leon County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, City of Tallahassee 4.4200 in 2024-25, rolled-back rate 4.2080 and 4.4072 adopted for 2025-26, levy $81,772,259, up 9.0% and 4.7% above rolled-back; Leon County BCC 8.3144 and EMS 0.7500
- Zillow Home Value Index and Observed Rent Index, city files, August 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Character, Tallahassee (region 47945) all-homes value (City_zhvi_uc_sfrcondo_tier_0.33_0.67_sm_sa_month.csv) $294,444 in August 2026 against $290,281 a year earlier, up 1.4%, and observed rent (City_zori_uc_sfrcondomfr_sm_month.csv) $1,470 against $1,448, up 1.5%; the same month for Jacksonville $285,103 and $1,601, Orlando $371,120 and $1,896, Miami $580,866 and $3,008, Tampa $377,566 and $1,957, St. Petersburg $354,074 and $2,058, Port St. Lucie $384,593 and $2,396, Cape Coral $335,825 and $1,949, Hialeah $442,859 and $2,357
- Monthly Module Adjusted Data Release, complete monthly ridership with adjustments and estimates (City of Tallahassee, NTD 40036) · Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database (via data.transportation.gov) · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- StarMetro (bus service) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership
- Tallahassee International Airport (ownership, location, carriers, naming) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions · KFF · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Main sectors
- HCA Florida Capital Hospital · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Table 1: Comparison of Taxes Levied, county and municipal governments, fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26: Miami-Dade · Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight · retrieved Supports: The adopted 2025-26 millage rate for Miami-Dade County and every municipality in it, The county's own components: countywide 4.5740, Fire/Rescue 2.3965, Library 0.2812 and the Unincorporated Municipal Service Area at 1.9090, Municipal rates from Sunny Isles Beach's 1.7000 to Biscayne Park's 9.3000
- 2025 millage rates and taxing authorities, Miami-Dade County · Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: A published combined rate for unincorporated Miami-Dade of 16.9317 mills, Its components: school district 6.4990, countywide 5.7361, regional water districts 0.3911, Fire Rescue 2.3965 and UMSA 1.9090, which this layer's stack reproduces exactly, Millage code 0100, the City of Miami, at 19.9878 mills for 2025: 7.1080 of city operating levy and 0.2536 of city debt service on the countywide 12.6262, Opa-locka's municipal operating levy of 8.9797, and a 2025 total of 24.0024 for millage code 0800, A city debt service column, which nine of the twenty-four municipalities here carry: Miami 0.2536, Miami Beach 0.2779, North Bay Village 1.1666, Golden Beach 0.6000, Miami Shores 0.1331, North Miami Beach 0.2000, Miami Gardens 0.4331, Doral 0.4810 and Homestead 0.2446, A blank library district column for Hialeah, North Miami, North Miami Beach, Homestead, Miami Shores, Bal Harbour and Surfside, which are outside the county library district, A blank Fire Rescue column for Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah and Key Biscayne, which is the five this layer flags
- About Fire Rescue · Miami-Dade Fire Rescue · retrieved Supports: The Fire Rescue district covering the unincorporated county and twenty-nine municipalities, Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah and Key Biscayne operating their own fire departments and lying outside the district
- Documentary stamp tax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A Miami-Dade deed rate of 60 cents per $100 rather than the 70 cents charged in every other county, A Miami-Dade surtax of 45 cents per $100, not due on a document transferring only a single-family dwelling, 35 cents per $100 on a promissory note, statewide
- 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, Miami at 487,014 and Hialeah at 235,388; Golden Beach at 1,034
- Average cost of home insurance in Florida, 2026 · MoneyGeek · retrieved Supports: A Miami-Dade County average of about $6,045 a year: below Palm Beach County's $6,614, A Florida average of about $3,815 and a national average of about $2,543
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey · Freddie Mac · retrieved Supports: 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 6.67%
- 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
- 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
- Tallahassee home prices outpace state as sales slow in June · Tallahassee Reports · retrieved Supports: A median sale price for an existing single-family home in the Tallahassee MSA of $364,950 in June 2026, up 5.8% from June 2025, A year-to-date median of $340,000, up 1.5%, and 364 closed sales in June, down 6.2% from a year earlier, Florida Realtors' statistics compiled from local multiple listing services, June 2026 data released on 17 July 2026; the Tallahassee MSA is Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon and Wakulla counties, A statewide single-family median of $432,000 in June 2026
- Tallahassee MSA median single-family sales price up 4.4% in May · Tallahassee Reports · retrieved Supports: A Tallahassee MSA single-family median of $355,000 in May 2026 against $340,000 in May 2025, up 4.4%
- Tallahassee MSA residential sales prices trending down · Tallahassee Reports · retrieved Supports: Leon County accounting for almost 90% of the MSA's real estate transactions
- Florida market reports · Florida Realtors · retrieved Supports: Metropolitan Statistical Area reports, Tallahassee among them, published to members only
- FY26 budget, 1.4 millage rate · City of Tallahassee · retrieved Supports: A millage rate of 4.4072, a decrease of 0.0128 mills against the prior year; the budget proposed at 4.4200 and adopted at 4.4072
- Tallahassee's $1.2B budget advances, with final vote set for September · WTXL · retrieved Supports: The City Commission setting the millage rate at 4.4072 mills, with public hearings on 9 and 23 September 2026 before the final vote, The City projecting that a property tax amendment, if voters pass it in November, would cost it $11.2 million in fiscal 2028 and $17.8 million in fiscal 2029
- Leon Commission OKs $420M budget with property tax increase, raises · Tallahassee Democrat (via Yahoo News) · retrieved Supports: The County Commission voting 6-1 for a property tax rate of 8.3144 per $1,000 of assessed value, unchanged for the 15th consecutive year, and the EMS rate alongside it, at its final hearing on 22 September 2026, The unincorporated area's solid waste assessment going from $40 to $80 in the fiscal year starting 1 October
- Leon County School Board approves tentative 2026-27 budget in a 4-1 vote · WTXL · retrieved Supports: A tentative 5.343-mill tax rate, with the final public hearing on the millage and budget on 8 September 2026
- Additional homestead exemption adjustment, revised January 2025 · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A CPI change of 2.9% and a maximum additional exemption of $25,722 for 2025, against the $25,000 base year of 2024
- Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, single-family and condominium series, by city · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical home value of $294,444 for the City of Tallahassee (region 47945, Leon County) in August 2026, against $290,281 in August 2025, up 1.4%, A typical single-family value of $305,442 against $300,921, up 1.5%, and a typical condominium value of $179,610 against $181,439, down 1.0%, from the single-family and condominium files
- Zillow Observed Rent Index, by city and single-family by metro · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: An observed rent index of $1,470 for the City of Tallahassee in August 2026, against $1,448 a year earlier, up 1.5%, A single-family observed rent index of $1,650 for the Tallahassee metro area in August 2026, against $1,619 a year earlier, from the metro single-family file
- Rent estimates summary, September 2026 · Apartment List · retrieved Supports: For the City of Tallahassee (FIPS 1270600), September 2026: $1,296 overall, $1,100 for one bedroom and $1,309 for two, with rents down 0.31% on the month and 0.43% on the year, For Leon County: $1,290 overall, $1,106 for one bedroom and $1,288 for two
- Median household income, median home value, median gross rent and tenure, tables B19013, B25077, B25064 and B25003, 2024 American Community Survey 1-year estimates · United States Census Bureau, via the Census Reporter API · retrieved Supports: A median household income of $56,511 in Tallahassee city, against $63,548 in Leon County and $77,735 for Florida, A median owner-occupied home value of $294,500 in Tallahassee city, 39,706 of Tallahassee's 89,217 occupied homes owner-occupied, and a median gross rent of $1,369 against $1,812 for Florida
- Median gross rent by bedrooms, table B25031, 2024 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, Tallahassee city · United States Census Bureau, via the Census Reporter API · retrieved Supports: A median gross rent of $1,239 for one bedroom, $1,401 for two and $1,592 for three
- Monthly homeowners' association and condominium fee, tables B25142 and B25143, 2024 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, Tallahassee city · United States Census Bureau, via the Census Reporter API · retrieved Supports: 17,174 of 39,706 owner-occupied units paying a required homeowners' association or condominium fee, 6,936 of them less than $25 a month, A median monthly fee of $44 among them, and 1,906 paying $300 or more a month
- Utility rate pricing plans · City of Tallahassee Utilities · retrieved Supports: A stormwater charge of $11.00 per month; residential garbage at $28.19 per month for regular homes, $64.64 for premium service and $18.92 for an additional container, Residential electric: a customer charge of $10.29 single phase and an effective billing rate of $0.13583 per kWh (energy $0.09518 and fuel $0.04065), Residential gas: a customer charge of $12.93 per month and an effective billing rate of $1.42287 per CCF, Water: a minimum charge of $17.75 per month and a 50% surcharge outside the City; sewer: a customer charge of $26.09 per month and $0.83458 per cgal
- About your utility bill · City of Tallahassee Utilities · retrieved Supports: Stormwater and Fire Service lines on the City's utility bill
- Department: Electric and Gas Utility · City of Tallahassee (OpenGov) · retrieved Supports: The Electric Utility serving over 128,000 customers in a 221-square-mile service territory, Natural gas through 965 miles of underground mains serving over 34,000 customers in Leon, Gadsden and Wakulla counties
- Tallahassee sued over fire services fee charged through utility bills · Fire Law Blog · retrieved Supports: A Fire Services Fee imposed since 1999 as a flat monthly charge on City utility bills, at two monthly rates by geographic zone, the inner zone paying more, The City Commission's September 2025 decision to readopt the fee and approve a 9.98% increase, effective 1 October 2025
- Complaint, Inman-Johnson et al. v. City of Tallahassee, Second Judicial Circuit · Fire Law Blog (court filing) · retrieved Supports: Filed electronically on 17 November 2025, Resolution 25-R-45, adopted in September 2025, implementing a 9.98% increase in the Fire Services Fee charged monthly to each residential utility customer
- City commissioners move forward with revised fire service fee · WTXL · retrieved Supports: The increase costing approximately $2 extra per month for most residents
- Leon County residents now pay fire fee on property tax bill · WCTV · retrieved Supports: Residents outside the city limits paying the fire services fee on the property tax bill, about $230 depending on the zone, The City Commission raising the fee by 10% only on its own residents
- Property taxes: discounts for early payment · Leon County Tax Collector · retrieved Supports: A 4% discount if paid in November, 3% in December, 2% in January and 1% in February
- Property Insurance Stability Report, July 1, 2026 · Florida Office of Insurance Regulation · retrieved Supports: Average premiums for Leon County from data reported as of 31 March 2026: homeowners $2,538 with wind and $1,710 without; condominium unit owners $846 and $441, Actual charged premium varying by company, insured value, deductibles and policy terms
- Florida homeowners insurance · NerdWallet · retrieved Supports: An average Tallahassee premium of $2,640 a year, $220 a month, against $8,345 in Miami, updated 20 February 2026
- Renters insurance in Florida · NerdWallet · retrieved Supports: An average Tallahassee renters premium of $138 a year, $12 a month
- Flood prevention and preparedness information · City of Tallahassee, Stormwater Management · retrieved Supports: A substantially improved or damaged home, where the repairs or renovations equal or exceed 50% of the structure's market value, brought up to the NFIP and City flood ordinance requirements, elevated to at least 2 feet above the base flood elevation, Tallahassee citizens and businesses receiving up to a 25 percent discount on flood insurance
- CRS eligible communities, April 2025 · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: The City of Tallahassee (community 120144) in Class 5 from 1 October 2022, a 25% discount in the special flood hazard area; Leon County also Class 5
- National Flood Hazard Layer, FIRM panels · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: Leon County's countywide FIRM, DFIRM 12073C, with panels effective 18 August 2009
- Tropical cyclone report: Hurricane Hermine (AL092016) · National Hurricane Center · retrieved Supports: Landfall along the Florida Big Bend coast just east of St. Marks at 0530 UTC on 2 September 2016, About 65% of electric customers (75,000 in all) without power in the City of Tallahassee, the most significant damage to its system since Hurricane Kate in 1985
- Hurricane Hermine (2016) · National Weather Service Tallahassee · retrieved Supports: Approximately 80% of customers in Tallahassee losing power during the hurricane
- NWS Tallahassee newsletter, June 2024 · National Weather Service Tallahassee · retrieved Supports: Three tornadoes through Leon County on 10 May 2024, two of them EF-2 with maximum winds of 115 mph converging on Tallahassee, More than 400 broken utility poles, more than Hermine, Irma and Michael combined on the City's count, and two storm-related deaths
- Post tropical cyclone report, Hurricane Helene: impact narratives · National Weather Service Tallahassee · retrieved Supports: In Leon County at the peak, roughly 53,000 City of Tallahassee utility customers and 35,000 Talquin Electric customers without power, A mandatory evacuation of mobile and manufactured homes, and 3 homes destroyed and 27 with major damage
- Rule 69O-186.003, Florida Administrative Code: title insurance rates · Florida Department of State, Florida Administrative Code · retrieved Supports: An owner's title insurance premium of $5.75 per $1,000 of liability to $100,000 and $5.00 per $1,000 from $100,000 to $1 million
- Section 627.701, Florida Statutes: liability of insureds; hurricane deductibles · The Florida Legislature · retrieved Supports: An insurer offering hurricane deductibles of $500, 2%, 5% and 10% of the policy dwelling limits
- Flood: Citizens' flood insurance requirements · Citizens Property Insurance Corporation · retrieved Supports: Under section 627.715, Florida Statutes, most new and renewing Citizens personal residential policies with wind coverage required to carry flood insurance by 1 January 2027
- FloodSmart · Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Flood Insurance Program · retrieved Supports: Most homeowners insurance not covering flood damage
- SB 4-D (2022): Building Safety, chapter 2022-269, Laws of Florida · The Florida Senate · retrieved Supports: Milestone inspections required of condominium and cooperative associations, and a prohibition on waiving or reducing reserves for certain items after a specified date
- Florida Hometown Heroes Housing Program · Florida Housing Finance Corporation · retrieved Supports: Down payment and closing cost assistance for first-time, income-qualified buyers in eligible occupations employed full time by a Florida-based employer, Up to 5% of the first mortgage, a maximum of $35,000 and a minimum of $10,000, as a 0%, non-amortizing, 30-year deferred second mortgage that is not forgivable