Orlando vs Hialeah: which should you move to?
Orlando or Hialeah? 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.
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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. Both houses are Zillow's typical home value for June 2026 at the same 6.67% rate, so the figures net directly: Orlando's typical home was $375,175 and Hialeah's $445,331, and mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,745 a month against $3,425. That is roughly 42% of Orlando's median household income of $77,597 and 72% of Hialeah's $57,151, and rent runs the same way, $1,904 against $2,374. Of the $680 gap, $361 is the mortgage, $195 the insurance, budgeted at $505 a month for a Miami-Dade house against $310 inland, and $124 the tax, on millages only half a mill apart, 18.6468 and 18.0878. On the FBI's 2022 file, the last that covers both, violent crime ran about 210 per 100,000 in Hialeah against 835.8 in Orlando, and in 2025 Hialeah counted 3 homicides against 10. Both are inland cities that flood from rain rather than surge, Hialeah on lower ground. Hialeah's January is 6.8 F warmer and its metro unemployment 3.7% against 4.7%. Choose Orlando for household pay that carries a house, work in tourism, defense or its two hospital systems, SunRail and Brightline, MCO and a 6.5% sales tax. Choose Hialeah for low crime, a tight labor market, Metrorail into Miami and a 19.7 C January, if your income can carry a house at 7.8 times the local median and you will check the flood map first.
| Measure | Orlando | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| City population | 333,888 (2025) | 230,968 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Metro population | 2,957,672 (2025) | 6,391,072 (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. | 8.3% (2020-2025) | 3.5% (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 | Orlando | Hialeah | 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. | $375,175 (June 2026) | $445,331 (June 2026) | Orlando |
| Detached house benchmark Orlando and Hialeah publish a single house index rather than a composite, so the two rows repeat. | $375,175 | $445,331 | Orlando |
| Apartment or condominium benchmark | Not published | Not published | Not directly comparable |
| Two-bedroom rent | $1,904/mo (median, June 2026) | $2,374/mo (median, June 2026) | Orlando |
| One-bedroom rent | $1,637/mo | $2,042/mo | Orlando |
| 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. | 29.4% of a year's income | 49.8% of a year's income | Orlando |
| Mortgage payment on the benchmark, 20% down 30-year amortization on American monthly compounding, the convention in both. | $1,931/mo at 6.67% | $2,292/mo at 6.67% | Orlando |
| Price to household income Benchmark price divided by the median household income below. A ratio is comparable across currencies; the dollars are not. | 4.8× | 7.8× | Orlando |
| 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. | $6,043/yr (1.611%, 2025) | $7,534/yr (1.692%, 2025) | Orlando |
| 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. | $2,626 (seller pays) | $2,672 (seller pays) | Hialeah |
| 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 |
Orlando: About 1.61% of what you pay for the house, which is lower than the 18.0878 mills Orlando is taxed at, and the difference is the homestead exemption rather than any assessment lag. Florida assesses at full market value and a purchase resets the assessment to the price, so there is no gap to correct for. 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 Orange County school district, which levies 6.4490 of the 18.0878. 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. So a homesteaded buyer's first-year bill is the school millage on the price less $25,000 plus everything else on the price less $50,000, about $6,043 a year on the $375,175 typical home value here. The exemption is not automatic: you file for it with the county property appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy, and until you do the rate is the full 1.81%. 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. Hialeah: About 1.69% of what you pay for the house, which is lower than the 18.6468 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 18.6468. 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 $7,534 on the $445,331 typical home value here. Hialeah 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.
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 | Orlando | Hialeah | 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 | 836 (2022) | 178 (2025) | Hialeah |
| Property crime per 100,000 | 4,036 (2022) | 1,417 (2025) | Hialeah |
| 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. | 10 (2025) | 3 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
Orlando PD reports overall crime down 18% in 2024 and another 19% in 2025, violent crime down 10% in 2024 and 9% in 2025, and shootings with victims down 41% from 2023 to 2025. Homicides fell from 31 in 2023 to 10 in 2025. The FBI's public feed has no usable Orlando data after 2022, so these are the department's own figures.
What the rates cover: FBI Crime Data Explorer, Orlando Police Department (ORI FL0480400), 2022: 2,597 violent offenses, 835.8 per 100k. 2022 is the last year with twelve complete months in the FBI feed; 2023 through 2025 show zeros for this agency, so no FBI rate exists for those years. Orlando PD's own count of violent crime incidents (a broader in-house definition) was 6,754 in 2023 and 5,928 in 2025, which would be about 1,775 per 100k on the 2025 population.
Homicides: Orlando Police Department: 10 homicides in 2025, the lowest since 1971, down from 23 in 2024 and 31 in 2023 (OPD's 2023 figure was reported as 38 in a January 2025 release and 31 in the February 2026 release). About 3.0 per 100k on the 2025 city population. FBI CDE 2022: 32 homicides, 10.3 per 100k.
Down for violent crime, and down for property crime by less than the FBI's totals suggest. On the FBI CDE's counts violent offenses went from 474 in 2022 to 431 in 2023, 415 in 2024 and 412 in 2025, about 210, 187, 178 and 178 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, and January to July 2026 brought 192 against 246 in the same months of 2025, a fall of 22%, mostly in aggravated assaults (165 against 214). Robberies halved, from 66 in 2022 to 31 in 2025. The CDE's property totals fell from 4,329 in 2022 to 3,273 in 2025, but about 500 of that fall is motor vehicle thefts the FBI's series stopped carrying in October 2023; without them property offenses went from 3,801 in 2022 to 3,621 in 2023, 3,610 in 2024 and 3,266 in 2025, a fall of 14% over three years, with larceny down from 3,565 to 3,018. FDLE's file, which kept counting car thefts, has them falling too, from 541 in 2022 and 566 in 2023 to 488 in 2024 and 337 in 2025. January to July 2026 property offenses (1,969) were level with 2025 (1,962). The CDE counts were read on 2 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September 2026, whose August 2026 property count (139, about half a normal month) and September figures (none) are incomplete and are not used.
What the rates cover: Computed: 412 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Hialeah Police Department (ORI FL0130400) in calendar 2025, divided by the 230,968 Vintage 2025 estimate for July 2025; on the CDE's own agency population of 238,769 the rate is 173. The department has reported to the FBI through the incident-based system since January 2021 and the CDE has every month from then to August 2026. 2025 is the year the Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Port St. Lucie and St. Petersburg profiles use. That is half Miami's 359, below Tampa's 376, St. Petersburg's 502 and Jacksonville's 514, and above Port St. Lucie's 130 and Cape Coral's 122 for 2023. Aggravated assault is 356 of the 412. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's incident-based (FIBRS) file, which feeds the FBI and counts somewhat more broadly (its forcible sex offenses include fondling), has 432 violent offenses for the department in 2025, about 187 per 100,000.
Homicides: 3 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 1.3 per 100,000 on the city population; FDLE's file also has 3. The CDE series is 12 in 2021, 6 in 2022, 6 in 2023, 2 in 2024, 3 in 2025 and 2 in January to August 2026. Miami had 26 in 2025, Tampa 17, St. Petersburg 9 and Port St. Lucie 4.
Winters, summers and what the weather can do to a house
| Measure | Orlando | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| January mean | 15.9 °C | 19.7 °C | Not directly comparable |
| July mean | 28.1 °C | 28.5 °C | Not directly comparable |
| Precipitation a year | 1,307 mm | 1,852 mm | Not directly comparable |
| Snowfall a year | 0 cm | 0 cm | Not directly comparable |
| Sunshine a year | Not published | 3,154 hours | Not directly comparable |
NOAA 1991-2020 normals at Orlando International Airport (USW00012815): January mean 60.6F, July mean 82.6F, annual precipitation 51.45 in, annual snowfall 0.0 in, annual mean 73.0F. June through September each average 6.4 to 8.1 in of rain. Sunshine hours are not part of the NOAA normals product and were not verified.
Hazards: Hurricanes are the main hazard: Charley (2004), Irma (2017), Ian (2022, 14 in of rain and 74 mph gusts at MCO) and Milton (2024, over 15 in of rain in parts of Central Florida plus a record one-day tornado outbreak) all damaged the area. The city sits about 100 ft above sea level and 42 mi inland, so storm surge is not a concern but inland flooding, wind damage and long power outages are. Summer heat and daily thunderstorms with lightning are routine.
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals for the Hialeah cooperative station (USC00083909), about 3.8 miles south-southeast of the city's center and about half a mile outside its southern limit. It is used rather than Miami International Airport (USW00012839), 5.5 miles south, because it is closer and has a complete set of 1991-2020 monthly and annual normals for temperature, precipitation and snowfall. Its temperature normals rest on 27 to 29 years of the 30 and meet NCEI's standard completeness in every month; five months of its precipitation normals (April and July to October) are flagged representative, from 21 to 23 years, while the airport's precipitation rests on all 30. The nearer Opa-locka airport (USW00012882, 2.9 miles) has no snowfall normal and only 18 to 23 years in any element. January mean 67.4F, July mean 83.3F, annual mean 76.6F, 72.93 in of precipitation and 0.0 in of snow. August is the warmest month at 83.5F, with a mean high of 90.1F; January's mean low is 59.1F. September (11.53 in) and June (11.45 in) are the wettest months, June through September bring 40.88 in, 56% of the year, and May through October 76%; January (2.03 in) is the driest. The normals count 91.0 days a year at 90F or above, 0.2 at 100F and none at or below freezing. Converted here to 19.7 C, 28.5 C, 1,852 mm and 0 cm. Miami International, whose normals the Miami profile stores, is a little warmer and drier: 68.6F in January, 84.1F in July and 67.41 in a year, with 91.4 days at 90F. Hialeah's January is the second warmest of the Florida cities this site compares after Miami's, and its rain is the most of any of them. Sunshine is Miami's: the normals carry none, and the 3,154 hours stored here, 70% of possible with 74 clear days, are Current Results' figure for Miami from NCDC's 1961-1990 Comparative Climatic Data, the source of the other US profiles' sunshine hours; Current Results lists no Hialeah station.
Hazards: Hurricanes, rain flooding and heat. The last hurricane to bring hurricane-force gusts was Irma, which came ashore at Cudjoe Key and then Marco Island on 10 September 2017, well to the southwest: nearly every inland station in the Miami-Dade and Broward metro area reported sustained winds just below hurricane force, Opa-locka Airport, 2.9 miles north of the city's center, recorded 56 kt (64 mph) sustained with a gust of 74 kt (85 mph), Miami International a gust of 63 kt (72 mph), and about 1,000 homes in Miami-Dade had major damage (National Hurricane Center). That 72 mph gust is the airport's strongest since 2010, and it had 5.18 in of rain that day. Rain is the more frequent problem in a flat, low city: the airport's wettest day since 2010 was 9.70 in on 22 May 2012, and it had 7.53 in on 15 November 2023 and 6.25 in on 12 June 2024. FEMA's flood map puts City Hall in zone AH, a special flood hazard area for shallow ponding, with a base flood elevation of 8 ft (panel 12086C0284L, effective 11 September 2009), so flood insurance can be a lender's requirement well inland from the coast. Heat: 91.0 days a year at 90F or above on the Hialeah normals; the airport recorded 139 such days in 2023, the most since 2010, and 115 in 2026 through 29 September, and reached 100F (37.8 C) on 18 August 2026, its only reading that high since 2010. Cold is brief: the airport's lowest reading since 2010 is 35F, on 10 January 2010 and again on 1 February 2026, and the normals count no nights at or below freezing.
What people earn and what the government takes
| Measure | Orlando | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $77,597 USD (2024) | $57,151 USD (2024) | Orlando |
| Unemployment rate | 4.6% (June 2026) | 3.7% (July 2026) | Hialeah |
| Sales tax | 6.5% | 7% | Orlando |
| 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 Orlando and Hialeah 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 |
Leisure and hospitality employed 305,500 of 1,506,600 nonfarm jobs in the MSA in June 2026 (BLS CES, not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), about 20%, roughly double the national share, and those jobs pay below the private-sector average, which is why household income trails the US median despite fast job growth. Disney is the largest employer at about 77,000 in the region; AdventHealth employs about 37,700 and Lockheed Martin more than 14,000.
Main sectors: Tourism and hospitality (Disney, Universal, convention centre), Health care (AdventHealth, Orlando Health), Aerospace, defence and simulation (Lockheed Martin, Central Florida Research Park), Construction and real estate, Professional and business services.
No state or city income tax. Property tax runs around 1% of assessed value with a homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes 3% cap for owner-occupiers; not verified here.
BLS counted 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall metropolitan division, which is Miami-Dade County, in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 6,200 or 0.5% on the year. Professional and business services (+5,300, or 2.5%, to 221,300), private education and health services (+4,600, or 2.0%, to 229,600), leisure and hospitality (+2,900, or 1.9%, to 153,400) and wholesale trade (+1,500, or 1.8%, to 82,800) added the most, while financial activities lost 5,100 (-5.0%, to 96,700), government 1,100 and transportation, warehousing and utilities 1,000. Trade, transportation and utilities is the largest supersector at 324,900, 24% of the county's jobs. The City's 2025 financial report lists its ten principal employers, led by Palmetto General Hospital (1,635), the City (1,492), UPS (1,119) and Hialeah Hospital (1,032), at 8,995 jobs, 7.8% of employment in the city on the City's count; six of the ten carry exactly the headcount they had in 2016, so the list has not been recounted for most of them. Most residents work elsewhere in the county: 61.8% of the city's workers (74,100 of 119,984) worked outside Hialeah in 2024, but only 9.8% (11,754) outside Miami-Dade. 13.2% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 30 minutes, with 11.4% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08008, B08013, B08101 and B08303).
Main sectors: Health care: Palmetto General Hospital (1,635 staff) is the city's largest employer, and Hialeah Hospital (1,032), Larkin Community Hospital's Palm Springs campus (683) and La Colonia Medical Centers (527) are also among its ten largest, in a county sector (private education and health services, 229,600 jobs) that added 4,600 jobs over the year, Shipping, wholesale and warehousing: United Parcel Service (1,119) is the third-largest employer, in a city beside Miami International Airport; Miami-Dade's wholesale trade employs 82,800 and its transportation, warehousing and utilities 98,400, Groceries and retail: Publix (771), Fresco y Más (741) and Sedano's (545) among the ten largest employers, the many independent shops and supermarkets on the main streets that Wikipedia describes, and Westland Mall, in a county with 143,700 retail jobs, City government: the City of Hialeah (1,492, down from 1,755 in 2016), which runs its own police, fire department, library and free bus service, Light industry: the garment and manufacturing plants that made Hialeah an industrial city in the 1970s and 1980s have mostly gone, replaced in part by electronics and technology businesses (Wikipedia); Miami-Dade's manufacturing employs 46,800, 3.5% of its 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 and brings the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A property in the City of Hialeah (Miami-Dade millage code 0400) paid 18.6468 mills for 2025 on the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's adopted chart, down from 18.6638 in 2024: the City's own 6.3018 plus the 12.3450 of school, county and regional levies every municipality in the county pays. Hialeah runs its own fire department and its own library, so it pays neither the county Fire Rescue district's 2.3965 mills nor the library district's 0.2812. The City has held its rate at 6.3018 for at least ten years while taxable value rose 11.0% in fiscal 2025 to $22.2 billion (City of Hialeah financial report), and the appraiser's proposed 2026 table keeps it there, for a total of 18.6134. Miami-Dade is also the one Florida county with its own deed tax: 60 cents per $100 rather than the statewide 70, plus a 45-cent surtax that is not due on a transfer of a single-family dwelling only (Florida Department of Revenue), so a house at Hialeah's typical value of $445,331 carries about $2,672 and a condominium or duplex at the same price about $4,676, the seller's by convention. Zillow's typical home value for the city was $445,331 in June 2026, down 1.5% on the year, and its observed rent $2,374; the bills, insurance and flood exposure that follow belong to the housing layer.
Whether you need a car
| Measure | Orlando | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| System | LYNX (bus, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties), SunRail (commuter rail, 16 stations DeLand to Poinciana), Brightline (intercity rail from MCO to South Florida) | Miami-Dade County's Department of Transportation and Public Works runs Metrobus across the city and Metrorail's Green Line, which stops at Okeechobee and Hialeah stations inside the city and at the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer Station on its southern edge; Tri-Rail, the commuter railroad to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, stops at the transfer station and at Hialeah Market (Wikipedia). The City runs its own free bus service, Hialeah Transit, which in 2023 ran two routes, Flamingo and Marlin, with a free on-demand service through the Freebee app from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends, most of its cost covered by a county half-penny tax (NBC 6 South Florida). By road the city is bounded or crossed by Interstate 75, the Palmetto Expressway (State Road 826), the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike, Okeechobee Road (US 27) and the Gratigny Parkway (Wikipedia). | Not directly comparable |
| Commute by public transit | 1.5% (2024) | 1.4% (2024) | Orlando |
| Walk or cycle to work | 1.7% (2024) | 2.3% (2024) | Hialeah |
| Airport | Orlando International Airport (MCO), 57,675,573 passengers in 2025, up 0.8% on 2024, seventh busiest in the US (GOAA press release, July 28, 2026). | Miami International Airport (MIA), about 5.4 miles south of the city's center, handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025, 1.1% below 2024's record 55,926,566 (Wikipedia, from the airport's traffic reports). Tri-Rail, from the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer Station on the city's southern edge, connects the city to it and north to West Palm Beach (Wikipedia). | Not directly comparable |
LYNX carried 21,476,203 passenger trips in FY2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), more than 67,000 per weekday, on 62 routes (LYNX Facts at a Glance). SunRail passed 1.2 million riders in calendar 2024, up 12% on 2023 (SunRail press release, January 2025); APTA puts 2025 at about 1.32 million. SunRail runs weekdays only.
Miami-Dade's transit system carried 81,459,917 unlinked trips in 2025 on the National Transit Database's monthly ridership file (Federal Transit Administration): 55.6 million on Metrobus, 15.0 million on Metrorail, 7.8 million on the Metromover downtown, 290,161 on its new bus rapid transit and the rest on demand-response, vanpool and commuter bus service. That is 20% below the 102.1 million of 2019 and 4.3% below 2024's 85.2 million, and January to August 2026 ran 1.3% below the same months of 2025. The Miami profile's 80.8 million is APTA's count for the same year. Tri-Rail carried 4,552,250 commuter rail trips in 2025, level with 2024 and above 2019's 4,495,039 (same file). The City's own buses do not report monthly to the NTD; in October 2023 its transit manager put them at almost 30,000 riders a month, 11,000 of them on the on-demand service (NBC 6 South Florida).
Health care, schools and what each city is like
Health care
Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid; Florida did not expand Medicaid under the ACA, so a larger share of working adults is uninsured than in most states, and hospitality jobs often come with thin coverage. Two large non-profit systems dominate: AdventHealth Orlando (one of the biggest hospitals in the country) and Orlando Health with Orlando Regional Medical Center, the region's Level I trauma centre, plus Nemours Children's Hospital at Lake Nona and the UCF Lake Nona Hospital.
Education
The University of Central Florida enrols about 70,000 students, among the largest campuses in the US, and anchors the Central Florida Research Park; Rollins College in Winter Park and Valencia College (a two-year college with a national Aspen Prize) are the other main institutions. Orange County Public Schools is the eighth largest district in the US with roughly 200,000 students, and Florida's universal school-choice vouchers, charter schools and magnet programmes mean many families do not attend their zoned school.
Living there
Orlando is a sprawling, car-first region of master-planned subdivisions, toll roads and strip centres, with a small walkable core around Lake Eola, Thornton Park, Mills 50 and College Park, and the theme parks 15 miles southwest in a separate world of their own. Summers are long, humid and stormy, winters mild, and the population skews young and Latino, with the largest Puerto Rican community in Florida. Housing and insurance costs have risen faster than the tourism-weighted wages, and hurricane season shapes the calendar every year.
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). The City of Hialeah's uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024 (35,490 of 234,398, ACS 2024 1-year), above Miami-Dade's 12.4%, Florida's 10.9% and the national 8.2%. The city has two acute care hospitals, Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General Hospital, which Steward Health Care bought from Tenet in August 2021 and lost in its bankruptcy: a court approved their sale to Healthcare Systems of America on 25 October 2024, and Hialeah Hospital is now owned by Medical Properties Trust and operated by that company (Wikipedia). Palmetto General is the city's largest employer (1,635 staff) and Hialeah Hospital its fourth (1,032), with Larkin Community Hospital's Palm Springs campus (683) and La Colonia Medical Centers (527) also among the ten largest (City of Hialeah). Wikipedia gives Hialeah Hospital 378 beds from the hospital's own site of 2015; this file did not verify a current bed count for either hospital, or a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.
Education
Miami-Dade County Public Schools runs the city's public schools. The district counted 18,910 fewer students on the first days of 2026-27 than at the end of 2025-26, a first-day snapshot it says the October count will refine, with private school vouchers, the cost of living and immigration enforcement among the reasons given; it had already closed or consolidated nine schools, and the 27 more it has put under review or reassessment do not include any named in Hialeah (WLRN; CBS News Miami). Wikipedia's list of the schools serving the city includes Hialeah Senior High, Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High and Westland Hialeah Senior High, with the José Martí MAST 6-12 magnet academy and the City of Hialeah Educational Academy, a charter school (Wikipedia). Miami Dade College has had a Hialeah campus since 1980. The City runs its own public library system, founded in 1924, a year before the city was incorporated, and outside the county's library district, which is why the county library levy does not appear on Hialeah tax bills (Wikipedia; Miami-Dade Property Appraiser).
Living there
Hialeah is the most Cuban city in the United States. It was laid out in 1921 by the aviator Glenn Curtiss and the cattleman James Bright on a prairie between Biscayne Bay and the Everglades, incorporated in 1925, the year Hialeah Park's racetrack opened, and became a working-class city after 1959 as successive waves of Cuban exiles settled there (Wikipedia). On the ACS 2024 1-year estimates 95.3% of its people are Hispanic, 72.7% are of Cuban origin and 77.1% were born outside the United States, against 55.3% for Miami-Dade; 91.9% speak Spanish at home and 59.5% speak English less than very well (2020-2024 5-year). It is dense, about 10,700 people per square mile of land, and one of the few places in the county with a street grid numbered separately from Miami's. It has the second-lowest household income of the Florida cities this site compares ($57,151, above only Tallahassee's) and, after Miami and Orlando, the lowest share of owners (42.8%), but its unemployment is low (2.3% in July 2026) and most of its workers have jobs inside Miami-Dade. It is also older than its reputation, with a median age of 46.0. It barely grew from 2020 to 2025 (3.5%) and lost people in the last year, as Miami-Dade did. Violent crime in 2025 was 178 per 100,000, half Miami's, with three homicides. Its own government does more than most: it runs its fire department, its library and free buses, and its property tax rate has not moved from 6.3018 mills in a decade.
Where each city wins, and where it loses
Both cities price in US dollars and both headlines are Zillow's typical home value for the city across all homes in June 2026, financed at Freddie Mac's August rate of 6.67%, so the figures net directly with neither a measure gap nor a rate gap. Orlando's typical home was $375,175, 2.4% below a year earlier, and Hialeah's $445,331, 1.5% below, its row in the Miami-Dade layer; Hialeah's is about 1.19 times Orlando's. Against local pay the gap widens: the headlines are 4.8 times the City of Orlando's 2024 median household income of $77,597 and 7.8 times Hialeah's $57,151, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares. At 20% down, Orlando's $300,140 loan costs $1,931 a month and Hialeah's $356,265 loan $2,292. A homesteaded buyer's first-year property tax is about $6,043 in Orlando, 1.61% of the price on 18.0878 mills, against $7,534 in Hialeah, 1.69% on 18.6468, and insurance is budgeted at $310 and $505 a month, an inland Central Florida figure against the Miami-Dade layer's mainland one, neither including flood. The three lines come to about $2,745 and $3,425, roughly 42% and 72% of local median income, and of the $680 gap $361 is the mortgage, $124 the tax and $195 the insurance. Renters see the same order: Zillow's observed rent index was $1,904 in Orlando and $2,374 in Hialeah in June 2026, about 29% and 50% of median income. Condominium fees are estimated at $450 a month against $850, neither of them a published average.
Orlando has no current federal figures, so the comparison runs through 2022 and through homicide, and both say the same thing: Hialeah has far less violent crime. The FBI's feed carries no complete Orlando Police data after 2022, when it published 835.8 violent and 4,035.6 property offenses per 100,000 and 32 homicides, 10.3 per 100,000. Hialeah's 2022 figures are in the same FBI data: 474 violent offenses, about 210 per 100,000 on that year's estimate, 4,329 property offenses, about 1,922, and 6 homicides, about 2.7. Its latest are the FBI's counts for 2025, 412 violent offenses, about 178 per 100,000 on the Census estimate of 230,968, and 3,273 property offenses, 1,417, a figure that is understated because the FBI's copy carries 7 motor vehicle thefts for the department against 337 in the file of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; with the state's count it would be about 1,560. Orlando's own 2025 tally of violent incidents, 5,928 on a broader definition, works out near 1,775 per 100,000 and cannot stand beside that. Homicide is the clean count: in 2025 Orlando recorded 10, about 3.0 per 100,000 and its fewest since 1971, and Hialeah 3, about 1.3. Both are falling. Orlando's department puts overall crime 19% lower in 2025 after an 18% drop in 2024, with homicides down from 31 in 2023. Hialeah's violent offenses have fallen every year since 2022, from 474 to 412, and January to July 2026 brought 192 against 246 in the same months of 2025. The Hialeah counts were read on 2 October 2026 and can still be revised.
Hialeah has much the warmer winter and the wetter year, and both cities are inland, so their water is rain rather than surge. January averages 15.9 C at Orlando International and 19.7 C at the Hialeah cooperative station, about half a mile outside the city's southern limit, 60.6F against 67.4F, 6.8 F warmer in Hialeah; July averages 28.1 C against 28.5 C, 82.6F against 83.3F. Orlando gets 1,307 mm of rain a year and Hialeah 1,852 mm, the most of any Florida city this site compares, 40.88 in of it from June through September, and neither has snow in the normals. Hialeah's normals count 91.0 days a year at 90F or above and no freezing nights. Hialeah's sunshine figure, 3,154 hours, is Miami's on the older series; Orlando's was not verified. Orlando sits about 100 ft above sea level and 42 mi inland, so its risks are wind, inland flooding and long power outages, from Charley in 2004, Irma in 2017, Ian in 2022, with 14 in of rain and 74 mph gusts at the airport, and Milton in 2024, which brought a record one-day tornado outbreak. Hialeah is inland too but flat and low: FEMA's map puts its City Hall in zone AH, a special flood hazard area for shallow ponding with a base flood elevation of 8 ft, and on the City's own flood layer 90,311 of its 223,109 residents at the 2020 census, about two in five, lived in a mapped flood zone, 77,666 of them in AH and 12,645 in AE. Miami International, 5.4 miles south, had 9.70 in of rain on 22 May 2012, its wettest day since 2010, and Irma in 2017 brought a gust of 85 mph to Opa-locka Airport, 2.9 miles north of Hialeah's center, the last hurricane-force gusts there.
Hialeah's metro has the lower unemployment, and Orlando's 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 and 4.7% for Orlando, with the City of Hialeah itself at 2.3%. Greater Orlando had 1,506,600 nonfarm jobs in June, 305,500 of them in leisure and hospitality, about one in five and roughly double the national share, at pay below the private-sector average; Disney alone employs about 77,000 in the region, AdventHealth about 37,700 and Lockheed Martin more than 14,000. Miami-Dade, the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall division, had 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in August, 0.5% more than a year earlier. Hialeah's largest employers are its hospitals, Palmetto General with 1,635 staff and Hialeah Hospital, the City itself, UPS beside the airport, and the grocers, Publix, Fresco y Más and Sedano's; 61.8% of its workers worked outside the city in 2024 but only 9.8% outside Miami-Dade. Median household income was $77,597 in the City of Orlando in 2024 and $57,151 in Hialeah, $20,446 less, and $81,044 across greater Orlando against $80,625 across greater Miami. Both are renter cities, with owners in 37.2% of Orlando's homes and 42.8% of Hialeah's, and both are Latino: Orlando has the largest Puerto Rican community in Florida, and Hialeah is the most Cuban city in the country, 72.7% of Cuban origin, with 91.9% of its residents speaking Spanish at home and a median age of 46.0. Florida takes no income tax in either, so $100,000 pays the same $13,449 in federal tax for 2025. Sales tax is 6.5% in Orange County against 7% in Miami-Dade. Property tax and insurance come to about $9,763 a year on Orlando's typical home and $13,594 on Hialeah's.
A car is assumed in both, and the two have almost the same share of workers on transit. In 2024, 1.5% of City of Orlando workers took transit and 1.7% walked or cycled, against 1.4% and 2.3% in Hialeah, and 13.2% worked from home in each. LYNX carried 21,476,203 trips in fiscal 2025 on 62 routes across three counties, SunRail runs commuter trains through 16 stations from DeLand to Poinciana on weekdays only, and Brightline runs from the airport to South Florida. Hialeah is served by Miami-Dade's system, which carried 81,459,917 trips in 2025 on the National Transit Database's count: Metrobus across the city and Metrorail's Green Line, with Okeechobee and Hialeah stations inside it and the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer Station on its southern edge, where Tri-Rail runs north to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The City also runs its own free buses, two routes and an on-demand service that carried almost 30,000 riders a month in 2023. The two are built differently: Orlando is a sprawling region of master-planned subdivisions, toll roads and strip centers around a small walkable core, and Hialeah a dense grid of about 10,700 residents per square mile of land. The airports are of a size. Orlando International handled 57,675,573 passengers in 2025, seventh busiest in the country, and Miami International, about 5.4 miles south of Hialeah's center, handled 55,314,661.
Florida has not expanded Medicaid, so coverage in both runs through an employer or marketplace plan, Medicare or Medicaid, and hospitality jobs in Orlando often carry thin coverage. Hialeah's uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024, against Miami-Dade's 12.4%, Florida's 10.9% and the national 8.2%; Orlando's profile gives no city rate. Orlando has two large nonprofit systems: AdventHealth Orlando, one of the biggest hospitals in the country, and Orlando Health, whose Orlando Regional Medical Center is the region's Level I trauma center, with Nemours Children's Hospital and the UCF Lake Nona Hospital besides. Hialeah has two acute care hospitals, Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General, which Steward Health Care bought from Tenet in August 2021 and lost in its bankruptcy; a court approved their sale to Healthcare Systems of America on 25 October 2024. Neither profile verified a wait time. Both districts are county-wide. Orange County Public Schools is the eighth largest in the country at roughly 200,000 students, and Florida's universal vouchers, charters and magnets mean many families never use their zoned school. Miami-Dade County Public Schools counted 18,910 fewer students on the first days of 2026-27 than at the end of 2025-26, a snapshot the October count will refine, and has closed or consolidated nine schools and put 27 more under review, none of them named in Hialeah. UCF enrolls about 70,000 students, and Valencia College and Rollins College are nearby; Hialeah has a Miami Dade College campus, open since 1980, the José Martí MAST 6-12 magnet academy and a public library system the City has run since 1924.
What people underestimate is how little of the gap is the tax rate and how much is the insurance line, and what neither carry includes. The millages are close, 18.0878 in Orlando and 18.6468 in Hialeah, where the City's own 6.3018 is a rate it has held for at least ten years and the address pays neither the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue district's 2.3965 nor the county library district's 0.2812, because the City runs its own fire department and library. The rules are the state's in both. $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; until it is, the full rate applies, 1.81% in Orlando and 1.86% in Hialeah, about $6,786 and $8,304. Much of the Orlando metro's newer housing, Lake Nona inside the city among it, adds a community development district assessment of roughly $1,200 to $3,000 a year that no millage shows. Hialeah's addition is the deed and the water. Orange County charges the seller the state's documentary stamp of 70 cents per $100, about $2,626 on Orlando's typical home, and Miami-Dade 60 cents on a single-family house, about $2,672 on Hialeah's, with a 45-cent surtax on a condominium or duplex that brings it to about $4,676; the buyer pays 0.55% of the loan in both, about $1,651 and $1,959. Hialeah's insurance line is the Miami-Dade layer's mainland figure, $505 a month against Orlando's $310, beside a county average of about $6,045 a year, and it excludes flood in a city where the share of residents in a mapped flood zone runs from under a tenth in some parts to all of the newest ground west of Interstate 75, and where unpermitted additions are common enough that a permit search is a standard step. The shapes differ too. Orlando is a city of 333,888 that grew 8.3% from 2020 to 2025 at the center of a metro of 2,957,672. Hialeah is 230,968, grew 3.5% and lost 2,210 residents in 2024-25, the second city of a county of 2,802,029.
Better here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,745 a month on the June 2026 typical home, roughly 42% of median household income, against $3,425 and 72% in Hialeah at the same 6.67% rate.
- City median household income was $77,597 in 2024, $20,446 more than Hialeah's $57,151.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $1,904 in June 2026, about 29% of median income, against $2,374 and 50% in Hialeah.
- Insurance is budgeted at $310 a month against $505, and sales tax is 6.5% against 7%.
- SunRail, Brightline from the airport and LYNX's 21,476,203 trips in fiscal 2025 serve the region, and Orlando International handled 57,675,573 passengers in 2025.
- Orlando Regional Medical Center is a Level I trauma center, and AdventHealth Orlando is one of the biggest hospitals in the country.
Worse here
- On the FBI's 2022 file, the last for the city, violent crime ran 835.8 per 100,000 and property crime 4,035.6, against about 210 and 1,922 in Hialeah that year.
- There were 10 homicides in 2025, about 3.0 per 100,000, against 3 and about 1.3 in Hialeah.
- Metro unemployment was 4.7% in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 3.7% around Miami.
- January averages 15.9 C, 6.8 F cooler than Hialeah's 19.7 C.
- About one job in five in the metro is in leisure and hospitality, at pay below the private-sector average.
- Newer housing, Lake Nona's among it, often adds a community development district assessment of roughly $1,200 to $3,000 a year.
Choose Orlando if
- you work in tourism, defense and simulation, or at AdventHealth or Orlando Health
- you want household pay that carries the typical home at about 42% of median income
- you want SunRail, Brightline and a hub airport at the edge of the city
- you want an inland address 100 ft above sea level
The Orlando guide · Neighborhoods · Orlando rent vs buy · Orlando mortgage calculator
Better here
- Violent crime was about 210 per 100,000 on the FBI's 2022 file, against Orlando's 835.8, and about 178 on the 2025 counts.
- There were 3 homicides in 2025, about 1.3 per 100,000, against 10 and about 3.0 in Orlando.
- Metro unemployment was 3.7% in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 4.7% around Orlando, and the city's own rate 2.3%.
- January averages 19.7 C with no freezing nights on the normals, against 15.9 C in Orlando.
- Two Metrorail stations are inside the city, Tri-Rail stops on its southern edge, and the City runs its own free buses.
- Miami International, which handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025, is about 5.4 miles south of the city's center.
Worse here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $3,425 a month on the June 2026 typical home, roughly 72% of median household income, against $2,745 and 42% in Orlando at the same rate.
- City median household income was $57,151 in 2024, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares and $20,446 below Orlando's.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $2,374 in June 2026, about half of median income, against $1,904 in Orlando.
- Insurance is budgeted at $505 a month against $310, and sales tax is 7% against 6.5%.
- About two in five residents at the 2020 census lived in a mapped flood zone on the City's layer, and the rain normal, 1,852 mm, is the most of any Florida city here.
- The uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024, against Florida's 10.9%, and both of the city's hospitals went through Steward Health Care's bankruptcy.
Choose Hialeah if
- you want a fraction of Orlando's violent crime and a metro with unemployment under 4%
- you work in Miami-Dade's hospitals, shipping, warehouses or groceries, or near the airport
- you want a 19.7 C January and Metrorail into Miami
- you want to live in Spanish, and will check the flood zone and the permits before the price
The Hialeah guide · Neighborhoods · Hialeah rent vs buy · Hialeah mortgage calculator
Orlando or Hialeah, in short
Is Orlando or Hialeah cheaper to live in?
Orlando, on the house, the insurance, the rent and against local pay. Both headlines are Zillow's typical home value for June 2026, priced at the same 6.67% rate, so the figures net directly: $375,175 in Orlando and $445,331 in Hialeah. The mortgage at 20% down is $1,931 against $2,292, property tax about $6,043 a year against $7,534, and insurance $310 a month against $505, so the three lines come to about $2,745 and $3,425, roughly 42% and 72% of each city's median household income, $77,597 and $57,151. Neither includes flood cover. Zillow's observed rent index was $1,904 in Orlando and $2,374 in Hialeah. Neither city levies income tax, and sales tax is 6.5% in Orange County against 7% in Miami-Dade.
Is Orlando or Hialeah safer?
Hialeah, on every figure that can be set side by side. The FBI's 2022 file, the last with Orlando Police data, has Orlando at 835.8 violent and 4,035.6 property offenses per 100,000 and Hialeah at about 210 and 1,922. Hialeah's 2025 FBI counts give about 178 violent and 1,417 property offenses, the second understated because the FBI's copy carries 7 car thefts against the state's 337. Homicides in 2025 were 10 in Orlando, about 3.0 per 100,000 and its fewest since 1971, and 3 in Hialeah, about 1.3. Both are falling: Orlando's department puts overall crime 19% lower in 2025, and Hialeah's violent offenses for January to July 2026 were 22% below the same months of 2025.
Which has the better job market, Orlando or Hialeah?
Hialeah's metro has the lower unemployment and Orlando's households the higher pay. On the same unadjusted basis BLS put July 2026 unemployment at 3.7% for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro and 4.7% for Orlando; the City of Hialeah was 2.3%. Orlando's work leans on tourism, with about one job in five in leisure and hospitality, and on AdventHealth, Orlando Health and Lockheed Martin; Hialeah's largest employers are Palmetto General, the City, UPS and Hialeah Hospital, and most of its workers commute elsewhere in Miami-Dade. Median household income was $77,597 in Orlando and $57,151 in Hialeah in 2024.
Do Orlando and Hialeah flood?
Both can, from rain rather than surge, and neither figure here includes flood. Orlando sits about 100 ft above sea level and 42 mi inland, so surge is not its concern, but Ian brought 14 in of rain in 2022 and inland flooding, wind and long power outages follow its storms. Hialeah is inland but flat and low: FEMA puts City Hall in zone AH, a shallow ponding zone with a base flood elevation of 8 ft, and about two in five of its residents at the 2020 census lived in a mapped flood zone on the City's layer, a share that runs from under a tenth in some parts of the city to all of the newest ground west of Interstate 75. In both, the elevation certificate prices the flood policy.
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 Florida: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (SUB-EST2025) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth, crime.homicides rate
- Annual Resident Population Estimates for Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (CBSA-EST2025-ALLDATA) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: Metro population, Five-year growth
- Crime Data Explorer, Orlando Police Department summarized offenses (violent crime, property crime, homicide), 2021-2025 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, crime.homicides 2022
- Proactive policing in Orlando yields significant crime reductions · WFTV · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend, crime notes
- Police say crimes, including homicides, declining in Orlando · Spectrum News 13 · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend
- Orlando Police: 2025 violent crime down 9 percent in the City Beautiful · Headline Surfer · retrieved Supports: Crime trend, crime.homicides 2024
- Orlando Police Department releases 2024 crime statistics · WFTV via Yahoo News · retrieved Supports: Crime trend
- U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012815 (Orlando International Airport), monthly and annual · NOAA NCEI · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Annual snowfall
- Orlando, Florida (climate and hurricane history) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, character
- Hurricane Milton · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- ACS 2024 1-year, tables B19013 and B08301, Orlando city and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford MSA · US Census Bureau via Census Reporter API · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, series LAUMT123674000000003 (Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford MSA unemployment rate) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- Current Employment Statistics, series SMU12367400000000001 and SMU12367407000000001 (Orlando MSA total nonfarm and leisure and hospitality) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Labour market
- Top employers and talent report search results (Disney, AdventHealth, Lockheed Martin employment) · Orlando Economic Partnership · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- Orange County, Florida sales tax rate 2026 · Avalara · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- 2025 Tax Brackets · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- Facts at a Glance · LYNX (Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority) · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership
- SunRail Ridership Grows to 1.2 Million Riders in 2024 · SunRail · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- Orlando International Moves Up In 2025 National Rankings for Busiest Airport · Greater Orlando Aviation Authority · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- 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, Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character, Hialeah city 223,143 (April 2020 base), 222,417 (2020), 220,961 (2021), 225,281 (2022), 230,169 (2023), 233,178 (2024) and 230,968 (2025); Miami city 489,812; Hialeah Gardens 22,777; Miami-Dade County 2,802,029; national and Florida ranks and the 129 cities of 200,000 or more
- 2025 Gazetteer Files: Places, Florida · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: point, City population, Character, Climate normals, Airport passengers, Hialeah city: 21.592 sq mi of land, 1.224 sq mi of water, internal point 25.869941, -80.302865; Miami city 35.997 sq mi of land
- Hialeah, Florida (history, demographics, economy, education, library, transportation) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: City population, Main sectors, Transit system, Education, Character
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, Hialeah Police Department (FL0130400): violent crime, property crime, homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson, January 2021 to September 2026 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character, 2025: 412 violent (3 + 22 + 31 + 356), 3,273 property (236 + 3,018 + 7 + 12); 2022 to 2024 violent 474, 431 and 415, property 4,329, 4,017 and 3,632; motor vehicle thefts 528, 396, 22 and 7 for 2022 to 2025; agency population 238,769 for 2025; data refreshed 15 September 2026
- 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, Hialeah Police Department, every month of 2021 to 2025 and January to August 2026: 432 violent and 3,667 property offenses in 2025; motor vehicle thefts 541, 566, 488 and 337 for 2022 to 2025; homicides 3 in 2025
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USC00083909 Hialeah (cooperative station) (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Annual snowfall, Climate normals, Climate hazards, January 67.4F, July 83.3F and August 83.5F, the monthly highs, lows, rain and snow with their completeness flags and years, and annual mean 76.6F, 72.93 in of precipitation, 0.0 in of snow, 91.0 days at 90F, 0.2 at 100F and none at freezing from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012839 Miami International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, January 68.6F, July 84.1F, 67.41 in of precipitation from 30 years, 91.4 days at 90F
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012882 Miami Opa Locka Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, No snowfall normal; temperature and precipitation normals flagged representative, from 18 to 23 years
- NCEI data search, normals-monthly-1991-2020 stations within 26.0N to 25.7N and 80.45W to 80.15W · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, USC00083909 Hialeah at 25.8175N, 80.2858W, USW00012839 at 25.7906N, 80.3164W and USW00012882 at 25.9069N, 80.2803W among ten stations, the rest farther or precipitation only
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Miami International Airport (USW00012839), 2010-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, 72.0 mph gust and 5.18 in of rain on 10 September 2017; 9.70 in on 22 May 2012, 7.53 in on 15 November 2023, 6.25 in on 12 June 2024; 139 days at or above 90F in 2023 and 115 in 2026 through 29 September; 100F on 18 August 2026; 35F on 10 January 2010 and 1 February 2026
- Average Annual Sunshine in US Cities · Current Results (NCDC Comparative Climatic Data, 1961-1990) · retrieved Supports: Sunshine hours, Climate normals, Miami, Florida: 3,154 hours, 70% of possible, 74 clear days; no Hialeah station
- Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Irma (AL112017) · NOAA National Hurricane Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Landfalls near Cudjoe Key at 1300 UTC and Marco Island at 1930 UTC 10 September 2017; inland Miami-Dade and Broward stations just below hurricane force; Opa Locka Airport 56 kt sustained and 74 kt gust at 1903 UTC; Miami International gust 63 kt; about 1,000 Miami-Dade homes with major damage
- National Flood Hazard Layer: flood hazard zones and FIRM panels at Hialeah City Hall · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Zone AH with a static base flood elevation of 8 ft; panel 12086C0284L, effective 11 September 2009 (layer 3)
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B19013, B25003 and B01002 for Hialeah and the other Florida cities this site compares, Miami-Dade County, the Miami MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B08301 (means of transportation) for Hialeah city, and the 2020-2024 5-year table for Hialeah city and Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Labour market
- ACS 2024 1-year table B08301 (means of transportation) for Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08007 (place of work by county), B08008 (place of work by place), B08013 (aggregate travel time), B08101 (means of transportation by age) and B08303 (travel time to work) for Hialeah city and Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Labour market, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for Hialeah city, Miami-Dade County, the Miami MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B03001 (Hispanic or Latino origin by specific origin) and B05002 (place of birth by nativity) for Hialeah, Miami, Miami-Dade County and Florida · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Character, Hialeah: 95.3% Hispanic or Latino, 72.7% Cuban, 77.1% foreign-born
- ACS 2020-2024 5-year table C16001 (language spoken at home) for Hialeah, Miami and Miami-Dade County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Character, Hialeah: 91.9% speak Spanish at home, 59.5% speak English less than very well; the 1-year release has no language table for the city
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL MSA (LAUMT123310000000003), Miami-Dade County (LAUCN120860000000003) and Hialeah city (LAUCT123000000000003), not seasonally adjusted · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate, Character
- Current Employment Statistics, Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL Metropolitan Division: total nonfarm (SMU12331240000000001), construction, manufacturing, supersectors (SMU1233124xx00000001), wholesale, retail, transportation and local government · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- FY2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, including Principal Employers (Current Year and Nine Years Ago), Property Tax Rates (Direct and Overlapping) and Assessed Values · City of Hialeah (filed with the Florida Auditor General) · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Tax notes, Health care, Character, Principal employers 2025: Palmetto General Hospital 1,635, City of Hialeah 1,492, United Parcel Service 1,119, Hialeah Hospital 1,032, Publix 771, Fresco y Mas 741, Larkin Community Hospital Palm Springs Campus 683, Sedano's 545, La Colonia Medical Centers 527, Bullet Line 450 (7.79% of city employment together); the 2016 list; a City operating rate of 6.3018 in every year from 2016 to 2025; taxable value $22.18 billion in 2025, up 11.0%
- Discretionary Sales Surtax Information for Calendar Year 2026 (DR-15DSS) · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, Miami-Dade 1%: 0.5% from January 1, 1992 and 0.5% from January 1, 2003, no expiration
- Discretionary Sales Surtax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, The surtax applies to the first $5,000 of the sales amount of an item of tangible personal property
- Florida Tax Rates & Rankings · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000, Tax notes
- 2026 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- Property Tax Exemptions and Additional Benefits · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- 2025 adopted millage rates and 2026 proposed millage rate table · Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Education, Millage code 0400 Hialeah: 18.6468 for 2025 and 18.6638 for 2024, with a City rate of 6.3018 and blank Fire Rescue and Library columns (as carried in lib/metro-miami/market.ts); 18.6134 proposed for 2026 at the same City rate
- Documentary Stamp Tax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, 60 cents per $100 in Miami-Dade against 70 cents elsewhere, plus a 45-cent surtax not due on a document that transfers only a single-family dwelling
- Zillow Home Value Index and Observed Rent Index, city files, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Hialeah all-homes value $445,331, down 1.5% on the year, and observed rent $2,374 (as carried in lib/metro-miami/market.ts)
- Monthly Module Adjusted Data Release, complete monthly ridership with adjustments and estimates (County of Miami-Dade, NTD 40034, and South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, NTD 40077) · Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database (via data.transportation.gov) · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- Getting around Hialeah? The city offers free public transportation options · NBC 6 South Florida · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership
- Miami International Airport (annual passenger traffic, 2000 to 2025) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions · KFF · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Steward Health Care (Florida hospitals and their 2024 sale) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General Hospital bought from Tenet in August 2021; sale to Healthcare Systems of America approved on October 25, 2024
- Hialeah Hospital · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, 378 beds (from the hospital's site, 2015); owned by Medical Properties Trust and operated by Healthcare Systems of America
- Miami-Dade County School Board to review future of 27 schools amid sharp enrollment decline · WLRN · retrieved Supports: Education
- Miami-Dade schools report nearly 19,000-student enrollment drop on first day, district says count is not final · CBS News Miami · retrieved Supports: Education
- 2025 Final Millage Rates · Orange County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Orange County general at 4.4347 mills, the library district at 0.3748 and the St Johns River Water Management District at 0.1793, School state and local levies totalling 6.449 mills, Municipal rates from Windermere's 3.7425 to Eatonville's 7.2938, A published total against every mill code, including Winter Park's 15.3615 on codes 2, 4 and 6, Maitland's 16.3055 on code 6, and Windermere's 15.2311 on code 35 and 15.4839 on code 75, A blank library column on every Winter Park and Maitland code, which is what puts both municipalities outside the district
- Special taxing district information: the Orange County Library District's boundary · Orange County Library System · retrieved Supports: The district's boundary is Orange County exclusive of Winter Park and Maitland, each of which operates its own library, Laws of Florida chapter 99-486 as the enabling act behind it
- Final 2025 Millage Rates, fiscal year 2025-26 · Seminole County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Total millage by taxing authority for every Seminole municipality, from Lake Mary's 14.3929 to Casselberry's 18.1808, School required local and discretionary levies totalling 5.2490 mills, The county fire and road MSTUs, which apply in the unincorporated area and in some cities but not others
- 2025 Final Millage Rates · Osceola County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Kissimmee at 17.4114 mills and Saint Cloud at 17.8989, School levies totalling 5.3060 mills across required local, discretionary and capital, Dozens of separate municipal service taxing units in the unincorporated county, from 0.13 to 12.42 mills, which is why an unincorporated Osceola address cannot be given one rate
- 2025 Final Millage Rates by district, and the 2025 Final Millage Rates and Values Comparison Sheet · Lake County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Total millage for every Lake municipality, from Leesburg's 15.9477 to Eustis's 19.8623, Leesburg's own adopted rate of 3.4752 mills, on the district sheet and again as the 2025 adopted rate on the comparison sheet, School board state and local levies totalling 6.0850 mills, The county fire, ambulance and stormwater MSTUs and which municipalities are subject to them, including that an incorporated city pays neither the fire nor the stormwater MSTU
- 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 population estimates for each municipality, Leesburg's growth from 27,011 to 37,815, the fastest in the metro in percentage terms, Orlando at 334,854, which is twelve percent of its own metropolitan area
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey · Freddie Mac · retrieved Supports: 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 6.67%
- Average cost of homeowners insurance in Florida, 2026 · MoneyGeek · retrieved Supports: A Florida average of about $3,815 a year against a national average of about $2,543, Orange County premiums in the $3,200 to $4,500 range, at the cheaper end of the state because the metro is inland
- Conforming loan limit values for 2026 · Federal Housing Finance Agency · retrieved Supports: A baseline one-unit conforming loan limit of $832,750 for 2026, which applies in every county in this metro
- 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
- 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
- TIGERweb, Census 2020: census blocks, with the 2020 population and housing unit counts · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: A 2020 census count of 223,109 residents and 77,475 housing units in Hialeah city, the sum of the blocks in the 2020 place, The resident counts by area and by flood zone on these pages, from the blocks whose internal point falls inside each line
- City Boundary layer (BaseMaps/Parcels_Map, layer 2) · City of Hialeah, ArcGIS Server · retrieved Supports: One feature, NAME HIALEAH, of 14,634 acres, taking in the same census blocks as the 2020 place
- Flood Zones layer (Environmental/Flood, layer 3) · City of Hialeah, ArcGIS Server · retrieved Supports: 90,311 of the city's 2020 residents in a special flood hazard area: 77,666 in zone AH and 12,645 in zone AE, Zone AH with a base flood elevation of 8 feet at City Hall, 501 Palm Avenue
- National Flood Hazard Layer · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: The effective flood map for Hialeah, panel 12086C0284L, effective 11 September 2009, The same zone and base flood elevation as the City's layer at each point checked, including City Hall
- Hialeah 2050 Master Plan: District Master Plan Recommendations · Plusurbia for the City of Hialeah · retrieved Supports: Six areas and 29 numbered districts covering the whole city, drawn on street lines (Map 01, City of Hialeah Neighborhoods and Districts), Adoption by the City Council in June 2025