St. Petersburg vs Hialeah: which should you move to?
St. Petersburg 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, sales tax is 7% in both counties, 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: St. Petersburg's typical home was $355,759 and Hialeah's $445,331, and mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,742 a month against $3,425. That is roughly 45% of St. Petersburg's median household income of $73,048 and 72% of Hialeah's $57,151, and rent runs the same way, $2,058 against $2,374. Hialeah's millage is the lower, 18.6468 against 19.9197, so its higher bill is the price and an insurance line of $505 a month against $390. Crime favors Hialeah on every line of the FBI's 2025 counts for both: about 178 violent offenses per 100,000 against 502, and 3 homicides against 9. Hialeah's January is 5.2 F warmer, its metro unemployment 3.7% against 4.8%, and both cities lost residents in 2024-25. Choose St. Petersburg for a house local pay can carry, a waterfront downtown, a lower uninsured rate and more of its workers on transit, if you will buy on elevation. Choose Hialeah for a third of the violent crime, a tight labor market, Metrorail into Miami and Miami International 5.4 miles away, if you will check the flood map for rain rather than surge.
| Measure | St. Petersburg | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| City population | 264,033 (2025) | 230,968 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Metro population | 3,418,895 (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. | 2.2% (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 | St. Petersburg | 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. | $355,759 (June 2026) | $445,331 (June 2026) | St. Petersburg |
| Detached house benchmark St. Petersburg and Hialeah publish a single house index rather than a composite, so the two rows repeat. | $355,759 | $445,331 | St. Petersburg |
| Apartment or condominium benchmark | Not published | Not published | Not directly comparable |
| Two-bedroom rent | $2,058/mo (median, June 2026) | $2,374/mo (median, June 2026) | St. Petersburg |
| One-bedroom rent | $1,770/mo | $2,042/mo | St. Petersburg |
| 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. | 33.8% of a year's income | 49.8% of a year's income | St. Petersburg |
| Mortgage payment on the benchmark, 20% down 30-year amortization on American monthly compounding, the convention in both. | $1,831/mo at 6.67% | $2,292/mo at 6.67% | St. Petersburg |
| Price to household income Benchmark price divided by the median household income below. A ratio is comparable across currencies; the dollars are not. | 4.9× | 7.8× | St. Petersburg |
| 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. | $6,248/yr (1.756%, 2025) | $7,534/yr (1.692%, 2025) | Hialeah |
| 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. | $2,490 (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 |
St. Petersburg: About 1.76% of what you pay for the house, which is lower than the 19.9197 mills St. Petersburg is charged, and the difference is Florida's homestead exemption rather than any assessment lag. The state assesses at full market value and a purchase resets the assessment to the price. What there is instead is an exemption: $25,000 of taxable value comes off for every taxing authority and a second slice comes off for all of them except the Pinellas County school board, which levies 6.2930 of the 19.9197. That second slice was $25,000 through the 2024 tax roll and has been adjusted for inflation every 1 January since, under the 2024 amendment to Article VII section 6 of the state constitution, so it is now somewhat more than $25,000. The figures here use the base amount, because the Department of Revenue sends the adjusted figure to the county property appraisers rather than publishing it. The difference is worth a few dollars a year on a bill, and the county property appraiser can tell you the amount in force. A homesteaded buyer's first-year bill is therefore about $6,248 on the $355,759 typical home value here. That 19.9197 is the figure Pinellas County publishes for this taxing district rather than a total assembled here, and St. Petersburg's own council sets 6.4525 of it. The exemption is not automatic: you file for it with the county property appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy. The seller's tax bill is not a guide to yours. Save Our Homes caps a homesteaded property's assessed value at 3% growth a year, and that cap resets to full market value the January after the sale, so a long-tenured owner can be taxed on a fraction of what you will be taxed on for the same house. Ask the property appraiser what the assessment would be at your purchase price, not what the current bill is. 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 | St. Petersburg | 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 | 502 (2025) | 178 (2025) | Hialeah |
| Property crime per 100,000 | 2,059 (2025) | 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. | 9 (2025) | 3 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
Down, and clearly so in 2025. On the FBI CDE's annual totals violent offenses were 1,622 in 2022, 1,519 in 2023, 1,642 in 2024 and 1,325 in 2025, about 618, 573, 618 and 502 per 100,000 on each year's Vintage 2025 population, so 2025 was 19% below 2024 after three flat years. Property offenses fell from 7,052 in 2023 to 6,528 in 2024 and 5,437 in 2025, down 17% in the last year, with motor vehicle theft more than halved from 917 in 2023 to 407. The department's own figures agree in direction and nearly in count: it reported overall crime down 16% in 2025, 175 robberies against a five-year average of 224, and 406 auto thefts against an average of 735 (Patch). The CDE counts were read on 1 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.
What the rates cover: Computed: 1,325 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the St. Petersburg Police Department (ORI FL0521400) in calendar 2025, divided by the 264,033 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 269,098 the rate is 492. That is close to Boston's 507 and Jacksonville's 514, above Tampa's 375.5 (on the Tampa Police Department's own counts) and Miami's 359, and almost four times Port St. Lucie's 130. The department reports to the CDE as annual totals rather than month by month, and the CDE carries a full year for each of 2022 to 2025 and nothing for 2021.
Homicides: 9 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, about 3.4 per 100,000 on the city population, against Tampa's 17 (4.1), Orlando's 10 (3.0) and Port St. Lucie's 4 (1.5). The department's own count, announced in January 2026, is 10 homicides, which it called the fewest since 1967, when the city had six, and 44% fewer than the 18 of 2024 (Patch, reporting the St. Petersburg Police Department). The CDE series is 16 in 2022, 13 in 2023, 18 in 2024 and 9 in 2025.
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 | St. Petersburg | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| January mean | 16.8 °C | 19.7 °C | Not directly comparable |
| July mean | 28.8 °C | 28.5 °C | Not directly comparable |
| Precipitation a year | 1,185 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 NCEI 1991-2020 normals for St. Petersburg Albert Whitted Airport (station USW00092806), the downtown waterfront airport about a mile east of the city's center, which is the station the brief names and has full temperature and precipitation normals: January mean 62.2F, July mean 83.8F, annual mean 74.7F, 46.65 in of precipitation. The airport's normals carry no snowfall, so the 0.0 in of snow stored here is the normal at the St. Petersburg cooperative station (USC00087886), at the same coordinates in NCEI's listing. August is the warmest month by two tenths of a degree at 84.0F, with a mean high of 89.8F; January's mean low is 55.3F. August (8.39 in) and July (7.49 in) are the wettest months, and June through September bring 29.33 in, 63% of the year; November (1.46 in) is the driest. The normals count 70.9 days a year at 90F or above, none at 100F and 0.1 nights at or below freezing. Converted here to 16.8 C, 28.8 C, 1,185 mm and 0 cm. The other stations bracket it: the cooperative station averages 62.1F in January and 83.9F in July with 52.48 in a year, and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (USW00012873), about 10 miles north and away from the bay, 61.6F and 83.1F with 53.62 in and 94.1 days at 90F. St. Petersburg's year is almost Tampa's (Tampa International's 62.0F and 83.8F); its January is level with Port St. Lucie's (62.3F), warmer than Orlando's (60.6F) and six degrees colder than Miami's (68.6F). Sunshine is not stored: Current Results' US city table, the source and 1961-1990 basis of the other US profiles' sunshine hours, lists Tampa (2,927 hours, at Tampa International) and no St. Petersburg station, and the 1991-2020 normals do not include sunshine; the city's nickname, the Sunshine City, rests on a Guinness record of 768 consecutive sunny days from 1967 to 1969 (Wikipedia), not on a measured annual total.
Hazards: Storm surge is the defining hazard, and 2024 showed how much of the city sits low. Hurricane Helene passed offshore on 26 September 2024 on its way to a Big Bend landfall, and the National Ocean Service tide gauge at St. Petersburg, the longest record in Tampa Bay, dating to 1947, measured 6.31 ft above mean higher high water, far above its previous record of 3.97 ft in Hurricane Elena in 1985 (National Hurricane Center). Twelve people drowned in the surge in Pinellas County, two of them in St. Petersburg and nine on the barrier islands from St. Pete Beach to Indian Rocks Beach, and Helene destroyed at least 419 homes in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and did major damage to at least 18,512 structures (NHC). Albert Whitted recorded a gust of 82 mph that day. Two weeks later, on 9 October, Hurricane Milton came ashore at Siesta Key, about 35 miles south, as a Category 3; its track spared the bay a surge but not the rain or the wind. Albert Whitted measured 18.54 in (471 mm) on 9 October, the wettest day in its record since 2010, and the NHC gives the airport 18.88 in for the storm and a gust of 88 kt (101 mph); a volunteer gauge near the city recorded 20.40 in, the highest storm total anywhere in Milton's path. Milton tore most of the fabric roof off Tropicana Field (NHC) and toppled a construction crane onto a downtown office building that housed the Tampa Bay Times (Bay News 9). The Rays played the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa and returned on 6 April 2026 after repairs (Wikipedia). Wikipedia notes that neither storm made landfall in the city and that the last hurricane to strike it directly was in 1921. Heat is long rather than extreme: 70.9 days a year at 90F or above on the normals and none at 100F (37.8 C); Albert Whitted recorded 128 such days in 2024, the most in its record since 2010, and 94 in 2026 through 28 September. Frost is almost unknown on the waterfront: one night at 32F (0 C), on 18 January 2018, since 2010, and a lowest reading of 36F in 2026 on 1 February.
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 | St. Petersburg | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $73,048 USD (2024) | $57,151 USD (2024) | St. Petersburg |
| Unemployment rate | 4.8% (July 2026) | 3.7% (July 2026) | Hialeah |
| Sales tax | 7% | 7% | Even |
| 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 St. Petersburg 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 |
BLS counted 1,559,600 nonfarm jobs in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 14,200 or 0.9% on the year. Private education and health services added the most (+9,700, or 3.8%, to 264,400), then professional and business services (+6,000, or 2.1%, to 288,800) and construction (+1,600, to 99,600), while information lost 1,700 (-5.6%, to 28,600) and federal employment 1,000 (to 30,900). The city's own employment picture is a headquarters town's: the ten principal private employers in its 2025 financial report, led by Raymond James (4,800), Johns Hopkins All Children's (2,800), Power Design and Jabil (1,700 each), employ 17,837, or 12.5% of the 147,705 people working in the city, against 20,300 for the 2016 list, which then included HSN, FIS and Bayfront Medical. Much of the commercial activity is in the Gateway area in the city's north, which it shares with Pinellas Park (Wikipedia). Unlike Port St. Lucie, most residents work in their own county: 14% of the city's workers (20,739 of 144,736) worked outside Pinellas County in 2024, 21.3% worked from home, and the mean commute for the rest was 25 minutes, with 5% spending an hour or more (ACS 2024 1-year, B08007, B08013, B08301 and B08303).
Main sectors: Finance and insurance: Raymond James, headquartered in the city and its largest private employer with 4,800 staff, Franklin Templeton (1,200) and the credit union service organization PSCU (800), in a metro with 142,400 financial activities jobs in August 2026, Health care: Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital (2,800 staff), BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital (1,437), HCA (1,350) and Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital, in a metro sector (private education and health services, 264,400 jobs) that added 9,700 jobs over the year, Manufacturing and engineering: Jabil, the electronics manufacturer headquartered in the city (1,700), Catalent Pharma Solutions (800) and Power Design, an electrical contractor (1,700), Utilities: Duke Energy Florida, headquartered in the city (1,250 staff), Tourism, arts and sports: the Dali Museum, the Pier, seven miles of public waterfront parks, the Rays at Tropicana Field and the IndyCar Grand Prix on downtown streets (leisure and hospitality, 167,300 metro jobs).
Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Florida's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 0.78%, and a homestead exemption takes as much as $50,000 off a permanent residence's taxable value, with the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). A St. Petersburg home paid 19.9197 mills for 2025 on the Pinellas County Tax Collector's published total, of which the city's own rate is 6.4525; a little above Tampa's 19.8428 in the same layer. On 17 September 2026 the City Council voted 6 to 2 to keep the city rate at 6.4525 mills for fiscal 2027, the rate it has levied since fiscal 2025, which is above the 6.3854-mill rolled-back rate and so needed a two-thirds vote; rising taxable values, about $39.3 billion, bring the city about $14.8 million more (St Pete Catalyst). Zillow's typical home value for the city was $355,759 in June 2026, down 3.9% on the year, and its typical rent $2,058; the bills, insurance and flood exposure that follow from them belong to the housing layer.
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 | St. Petersburg | Hialeah | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| System | Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA), the countywide agency formed in 1984 from the St. Petersburg Municipal Transit System and the Central Pinellas Transit Authority: more than 34 bus routes including two express routes to Tampa, the Central Avenue and Suncoast Beach trolleys, and the SunRunner, Tampa Bay's first bus rapid transit line, which opened on 21 October 2022 from downtown St. Petersburg along First Avenues North and South to St. Pete Beach every 15 minutes (Wikipedia). The Cross-Bay Ferry between downtown St. Petersburg and downtown Tampa ran seasonally for eight seasons until its operator's contract ended after 2025, and PSTA bought two vessels in June 2026 to restart it (Wikipedia). There is no passenger rail: CSX's freight branch ends at a small yard northwest of downtown, the line into downtown having been abandoned in 2008. | 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 | 2.1% (2024) | 1.4% (2024) | St. Petersburg |
| Walk or cycle to work | 2.9% (2024) | 2.3% (2024) | St. Petersburg |
| Airport | St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE), owned by Pinellas County about 9 miles north of downtown, handled a record 2,794,067 passengers in 2025, 13.6% more than 2024's 2,458,674, almost all of them on Allegiant Air, which uses it as an operating base (Wikipedia). Most of the city's air travel goes through Tampa International Airport (TPA), about 16 miles to the northeast across the Howard Frankland Bridge, which handled 24,811,007 passengers in 2025 (TPA, as in Tampa's profile). Albert Whitted Airport on the downtown waterfront serves general aviation. | 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 |
PSTA carried 10,441,618 unlinked trips in 2025 on the National Transit Database's monthly ridership file (Federal Transit Administration), 8,888,290 of them on its buses and 769,551 on the SunRunner, with the rest on vanpools, demand-response service and a ferry. That is a little below the 11.94 million HART carried in Hillsborough (Tampa's profile, from APTA) for a county with less than two-thirds of Hillsborough's population, and well below PSTA's own peak of 14.6 million in 2014; ridership fell to 9.1 million in 2022 and has recovered to about 10.4 to 10.5 million in each of 2024 and 2025. The SunRunner carried 1,036,048 trips in 2023, its first full year, and 769,551 in 2025.
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, and Florida is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). Florida's uninsured rate was 10.9% in 2024 (2,509,782 of 23,038,464), against 8.2% nationally, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates; the City of St. Petersburg's was 7.3% (19,374 of 263,881), below Port St. Lucie's 9.9%, Pinellas County's 9.0% and the metro's 10.0%. The city is the county's hospital center. Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital, the city's oldest, on the site of a five-room hospital of 1910, is Pinellas County's only Level II trauma center and has a Level III regional perinatal intensive care center and the Bayflite helicopter program (Wikipedia). Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, founded in 1926 and part of Johns Hopkins Medicine since 2011, has 259 beds and a Level I pediatric trauma center (Wikipedia). BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital and HCA's hospitals are also among the city's ten largest private employers (City of St. Petersburg). This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.
Education
Pinellas County Schools, the countywide district, is shrinking: it reported more than 3,000 fewer students in 2025-26 than a year earlier (Bay News 9), its schools were 68% full against 87% ten years before, and in February 2026 the board voted to close two schools, Cross Bayou Elementary in Pinellas Park and Disston Academy in Gulfport, at the end of the 2025-26 year and to merge others (FOX 13). In higher education the city has the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, a downtown campus of about 6,500 students; Eckerd College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1958; St. Petersburg College, founded in 1927, a state college with four of its eleven campuses and centers in the city; and the Poynter Institute, the journalism school that owns the Tampa Bay Times (Wikipedia). Stetson University's law school is next door in Gulfport.
Living there
St. Petersburg is the smaller and older half of Tampa Bay's urban core: a city of 264,033 on the southern tip of the Pinellas peninsula, with more water than land inside its limits, connected to Tampa by the Gandy and Howard Frankland bridges and to Bradenton by the Sunshine Skyway. It was a railroad town before it was a resort (the Orange Belt Railway arrived in 1888 and the town was incorporated in 1892) and a retirement town for most of the twentieth century; its median age is still 43.0, the second-oldest of the Florida cities here after Port St. Lucie, though Wikipedia notes a younger turn since the Great Recession. Downtown is the draw, with the Dali Museum, the rebuilt Pier, seven miles of public waterfront parks, more than 600 murals and the Rays at Tropicana Field, who returned in April 2026 after Hurricane Milton tore off the roof but will leave: Hillsborough County voted 5 to 2 on 28 August 2026 to put $796 million toward a $2.3 billion stadium in Tampa for 2029 (WUSF). Its economy is a set of headquarters (Raymond James, Jabil, Duke Energy Florida) and hospitals (Johns Hopkins All Children's, Bayfront). The numbers set it apart from its Florida neighbors. It grew only 2.2% from 2020 to 2025 and lost residents in the year of the 2024 storms, in a county that is now losing people. Its median household income, $73,048, is $11,066 below Tampa's; its violent crime rate, 502 per 100,000 in 2025, is higher than Tampa's but falling, and its nine homicides were the fewest the police department has counted since 1967. It has the highest transit share of the Florida cities here outside Miami, at 2.1%. And it learned in 2024 what living in Tampa Bay costs: a record surge from Helene, which drowned twelve people in the county, and 18 inches of rain from Milton two weeks later.
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 this is one of the pairs where the figures net directly with neither a measure gap nor a rate gap. St. Petersburg's typical home was $355,759, 3.9% below a year earlier, the city's row in the Tampa Bay layer, and Hialeah's $445,331, 1.5% below, its row in the Miami-Dade layer; Hialeah's is about 1.25 times St. Petersburg's. Against local pay the headlines are 4.9 times St. Petersburg's 2024 median household income of $73,048 and 7.8 times Hialeah's $57,151, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares. At 20% down, St. Petersburg's $284,607 loan costs $1,831 a month and Hialeah's $356,265 loan $2,292. A homesteaded buyer's first-year property tax is about $6,248 in St. Petersburg, 1.76% of the price on 19.9197 mills, against $7,534 in Hialeah, 1.69% on 18.6468, a lower millage on a higher price, and insurance is budgeted at $390 and $505 a month, the Tampa Bay layer's band for a coastal address and the Miami-Dade layer's mainland figure, neither including flood. The three lines come to about $2,742 and $3,425, roughly 45% and 72% of local median income, and of the $683 gap $461 is the mortgage, $107 the tax and $115 the insurance. Renters see the same order: Zillow's observed rent index was $2,058 in St. Petersburg and $2,374 in Hialeah in June 2026, about 34% and 50% of median income. Condominium fees are estimated at $700 a month against $850, neither of them a published average.
This is one of the pairs where the definitions match, since both cities' figures are the FBI's Crime Data Explorer counts for 2025 divided by Census Vintage 2025 populations, and on them Hialeah is far the lower on every line. The St. Petersburg Police Department submitted 1,325 violent offenses, 502 per 100,000 on 264,033 residents, and 5,437 property offenses, 2,059. The Hialeah Police Department submitted 412 violent offenses, about 178 per 100,000 on 230,968, about a third of St. Petersburg's rate, and 3,273 property offenses, 1,417. Homicide was 3 in Hialeah, about 1.3 per 100,000, against 9 in St. Petersburg, about 3.4, which its department, counting 10, called the fewest since 1967. One caution applies to Hialeah's property figure: the FBI's copy carries 7 motor vehicle thefts for the department in 2025, against 337 in the file of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which feeds the FBI, so the rate is understated; with the state's count it would be about 1,560, still about a quarter below St. Petersburg's, whose total counts 407 car thefts. Both are falling. St. Petersburg's violent offenses fell 19% in 2025 after three flat years and its property offenses 17%, with motor vehicle theft down from 917 in 2023 to 407. 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; leaving out the car thefts the FBI's series stopped carrying in October 2023, its property offenses fell 14% over three years. The St. Petersburg counts were read on 1 October 2026 and the Hialeah counts a day later, and both can still be revised.
Hialeah has the warmer winter and the wetter year, and the two cities flood from different directions. January averages 19.7 C at the Hialeah cooperative station, about half a mile outside the city's southern limit, against 16.8 C at Albert Whitted Airport on St. Petersburg's downtown waterfront, 67.4F against 62.2F, 5.2 F warmer; July averages 28.5 C against 28.8 C, 83.3F against 83.8F, and August is the warmest month in both, 83.5F and 84.0F. Hialeah gets 1,852 mm of rain a year, the most of any Florida city this site compares, and St. Petersburg 1,185 mm, and neither has snow in the normals. The normals count 91.0 days a year at 90F or above in Hialeah and 70.9 in St. Petersburg, and no freezing nights in Hialeah against 0.1. Hialeah's sunshine figure, 3,154 hours, is Miami's on the older series; St. Petersburg has no measured one, and its nickname, the Sunshine City, rests on a Guinness record of 768 consecutive sunny days. St. Petersburg's risk is surge into the bay. Helene passed offshore on 26 September 2024 and put 6.31 ft of water above mean higher high water on the city's tide gauge, the highest in a record that began in 1947, drowning twelve people in Pinellas County, two of them in the city, and the City recorded 5,189 of the 13,494 parcels it assessed afterward with major damage and 146 destroyed; two weeks later Albert Whitted recorded 18.54 in (471 mm) of rain from Milton. Hialeah is inland, and its risk is rain on flat, low ground. 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. Miami International, 5.4 miles south, had 9.70 in of rain on 22 May 2012, its wettest day since 2010, and the last hurricane-force gusts near Hialeah were Irma's in September 2017, 85 mph at Opa-locka Airport, 2.9 miles north of the city's center.
Hialeah's labor market is tighter, and St. Petersburg'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 4.8% for Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, and the cities themselves at 2.3% and 4.2%. Miami-Dade, the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall division, had 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in August, 0.5% more than a year earlier, with professional and business services and private education and health services adding the most; the Tampa Bay metro had 1,559,600, 0.9% more, with private education and health services in front. St. Petersburg is a headquarters town: Raymond James, its largest private employer with 4,800 staff, Jabil, Duke Energy Florida and Power Design, with Johns Hopkins All Children's and Bayfront among its hospitals. 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. Residents of both mostly work in their own county: 14% of St. Petersburg's workers worked outside Pinellas in 2024 and 21.3% from home, and 9.8% of Hialeah's outside Miami-Dade and 13.2% from home, though 61.8% of Hialeah's left the city itself. Median household income was $73,048 in St. Petersburg in 2024 and $57,151 in Hialeah, $15,897 less, against $78,275 across Tampa Bay and $80,625 across greater Miami. Both are older than most of the Florida cities here, with median ages of 43.0 and 46.0, and St. Petersburg is the more owner-occupied, 62.1% of its homes against 42.8%. Hialeah is also the most Cuban city in the country: 72.7% of its people are of Cuban origin, and 91.9% speak Spanish at home. Florida takes no income tax in either, so $100,000 pays the same $13,449 in federal tax for 2025, and sales tax is 7% in both Pinellas and Miami-Dade. Property tax and insurance come to about $10,928 a year on St. Petersburg's typical home and $13,594 on Hialeah's.
Neither is a city to live in without a car; St. Petersburg has more of its workers on transit, and Hialeah has the rail. In 2024, 2.1% of St. Petersburg's workers commuted by transit, almost all of them by bus, and 2.9% walked or cycled, against 1.4% and 2.3% in Hialeah; 65.6% and 68.5% drove alone. The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority carried 10,441,618 trips in 2025, 769,551 of them on the SunRunner, Tampa Bay's first bus rapid transit line, every 15 minutes from downtown St. Petersburg to St. Pete Beach. 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. St. Petersburg has no passenger rail; the freight line into downtown was abandoned in 2008. The two are built at different densities: St. Petersburg has about 4,270 residents per square mile of land, with more water than land inside its limits, and Hialeah about 10,700. Miami International, about 5.4 miles south of Hialeah's center, handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025. Most of St. Petersburg's flying goes through Tampa International, about 16 miles away across the Howard Frankland Bridge, which handled 24,811,007, and St. Pete-Clearwater International, about 9 miles north of downtown, handled a record 2,794,067, almost all of them on Allegiant.
Florida has not expanded Medicaid, so coverage in both runs through an employer or marketplace plan, Medicare or Medicaid, and the two cities sit far apart on what that leaves. The City of St. Petersburg's uninsured rate was 7.3% in 2024 and Hialeah's 15.1%, against Florida's 10.9% and the national 8.2%. St. Petersburg is its county's hospital center: Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital is Pinellas County's only Level II trauma center, with a Level III perinatal intensive care center and the Bayflite helicopters, and Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital has 259 beds and a Level I pediatric trauma center. 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 shrinking. Pinellas County Schools reported more than 3,000 fewer students in 2025-26, its schools were 68% full against 87% ten years before, and in February 2026 its board voted to close two schools. 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. St. Petersburg has the University of South Florida's downtown campus of about 6,500, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg College and the Poynter Institute; 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 that the lower millage is in the dearer city, and what neither carry includes. A City of St. Petersburg address pays 19.9197 mills across the Pinellas stack, of which the City's council sets 6.4525 and kept it for fiscal 2027 on a 6 to 2 vote. A City of Hialeah address pays 18.6468, of which the City's own 6.3018 is a rate it has held for at least ten years, and 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; without it the bills are about $7,087 and $8,304. Closing costs differ by county. Pinellas charges the seller the state's documentary stamp of 70 cents per $100, about $2,490 on St. Petersburg'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 $1,565 and $1,959. Then the water, which reaches the two from different directions. St. Petersburg's insurance line is the Tampa Bay layer's band for a coastal address, inside the $3,900 to $5,500 a year its source gives for a single-family house with wind cover, and the City's Helene assessments found water in thousands of homes along the bay and almost none inland. Hialeah's is the Miami-Dade layer's mainland figure, against a county average of about $6,045 a year, 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. Neither figure includes flood, a separate policy priced on the elevation certificate, and from 1 January 2027 every Citizens Property Insurance homeowners policy with wind cover must carry it. And both cities are now losing people: St. Petersburg grew 2.2% from 2020 to 2025 and lost 1,822 residents in 2024-25, the year of the storms, and Hialeah grew 3.5% and lost 2,210 in the same year, as Miami-Dade shrank by 10,115.
Better here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,742 a month on the June 2026 typical home, roughly 45% of median household income, against $3,425 and 72% in Hialeah at the same rate.
- City median household income was $73,048 in 2024, $15,897 more than Hialeah's $57,151.
- The city's uninsured rate was 7.3% in 2024, against 15.1% in Hialeah, and Johns Hopkins All Children's has a Level I pediatric trauma center.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $2,058 in June 2026, about 34% of median income, against $2,374 and 50% in Hialeah.
- 2.1% of workers commuted by transit in 2024 against 1.4%, and the SunRunner runs every 15 minutes from downtown to St. Pete Beach.
- Insurance is budgeted at $390 a month against $505, and 21.3% of workers worked from home in 2024 against 13.2%.
Worse here
- Violent crime was 502 per 100,000 on the FBI's 2025 counts, against about 178 in Hialeah, and property crime 2,059 against 1,417.
- There were 9 homicides in 2025, about 3.4 per 100,000, against 3 and about 1.3 in Hialeah.
- Metro unemployment was 4.8% in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 3.7% around Miami, and the city's own rate 4.2% against 2.3%.
- January averages 16.8 C, 5.2 F cooler than Hialeah's 19.7 C.
- Helene put a record 6.31 ft of surge on the city's tide gauge in 2024, and the City recorded 5,189 of the 13,494 parcels it assessed with major damage.
- There is no passenger rail, and the main airport, Tampa International, is about 16 miles away across the bay.
Choose St. Petersburg if
- you want a house that costs under half of local median income to hold
- you work in finance, utilities or health care at Raymond James, Duke Energy Florida, All Children's or Bayfront, or from home
- you want a waterfront downtown, with the Dali Museum, the Pier and seven miles of public parks
- you will read the elevation certificate and the City's Helene assessment before the price
The St. Petersburg guide · Neighborhoods · St. Petersburg rent vs buy · St. Petersburg mortgage calculator
Better here
- Violent crime was about 178 per 100,000 on the FBI's 2025 counts, about a third of St. Petersburg's 502, and there were 3 homicides against 9.
- Metro unemployment was 3.7% in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 4.8% around Tampa Bay, and the city's own rate 2.3%.
- January averages 19.7 C with no freezing nights on the normals, against 16.8 C in St. Petersburg.
- 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.
- The millage is 18.6468 against 19.9197, because the City runs its own fire department and library.
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 $2,742 and 45% in St. Petersburg at the same rate.
- City median household income was $57,151 in 2024, the lowest of the Florida cities this site compares.
- Zillow's observed rent index was $2,374 in June 2026, about half of median income, against $2,058 in St. Petersburg.
- The uninsured rate was 15.1% in 2024, against 7.3% in St. Petersburg, and both of the city's hospitals went through Steward Health Care's bankruptcy.
- 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.
- Only 1.4% of workers commuted by transit in 2024 despite the rail, and the population fell by 2,210 in 2024-25.
Choose Hialeah if
- you want a third of St. Petersburg's violent crime rate 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 for rain rather than surge
The Hialeah guide · Neighborhoods · Hialeah rent vs buy · Hialeah mortgage calculator
St. Petersburg or Hialeah, in short
Is St. Petersburg or Hialeah cheaper to live in?
St. Petersburg, on the house, 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: $355,759 in St. Petersburg and $445,331 in Hialeah. The mortgage at 20% down is $1,831 against $2,292, property tax about $6,248 a year against $7,534, and insurance $390 a month against $505, so the three lines come to about $2,742 and $3,425, roughly 45% and 72% of each city's median household income, $73,048 and $57,151. Neither includes flood cover. Zillow's observed rent index was $2,058 in St. Petersburg and $2,374 in Hialeah. Neither city levies income tax, and sales tax is 7% in both.
Is St. Petersburg or Hialeah safer?
Hialeah, on every line of the FBI's 2025 counts for both, divided by the Census estimates: about 178 violent offenses per 100,000 in Hialeah against 502 in St. Petersburg, and 1,417 property offenses against 2,059. Hialeah's property rate is understated, since the FBI's copy carries 7 car thefts against the state's 337; with the state's count it would be about 1,560. Homicides were 3 in Hialeah, about 1.3 per 100,000, and 9 in St. Petersburg, about 3.4, the fewest its department has counted since 1967. Both are falling: St. Petersburg's violent offenses dropped 19% in 2025, and Hialeah's for January to July 2026 were 22% below the same months of 2025. The counts can still be revised.
Which has the better job market, St. Petersburg or Hialeah?
Hialeah's metro, on unemployment, and St. Petersburg's households on pay. On the same unadjusted basis BLS put July 2026 unemployment at 3.7% for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro and 4.8% for Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, and the cities themselves at 2.3% and 4.2%. Miami-Dade had 1,349,400 nonfarm jobs in August and the Tampa Bay metro 1,559,600. St. Petersburg's work is headquarters, Raymond James, Jabil and Duke Energy Florida, and hospitals; 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 $73,048 in St. Petersburg in 2024 and $57,151 in Hialeah.
Which floods, St. Petersburg or Hialeah?
Both, from different directions, and neither figure here includes flood. St. Petersburg's water is the bay: Helene put 6.31 ft above mean higher high water on the city's tide gauge in September 2024, a record since 1947, the City recorded 5,189 parcels with major damage, and its assessments found water along the bay and almost none inland. Hialeah's is rain on flat, low ground: 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, and from 1 January 2027 every Citizens policy with wind cover must carry one.
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 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, St. Petersburg city 258,358 (April 2020 base), 262,655 (2022), 264,921 (2023), 265,855 (2024) and 264,033 (2025); Pinellas County 948,563; Clearwater 114,364; national and Florida ranks and the 92 cities of 250,000 or more
- 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, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA 3,175,282 (April 2020 base) and 3,418,895 (2025) and its components of change; Pinellas County's 2024-25 loss of 11,834, its births, deaths and migration
- 2024 Gazetteer Files: Places (national) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: point, City population, Climate normals, Airport passengers, Character, St. Petersburg city: 61.804 sq mi of land, 73.661 sq mi of water, internal point 27.762727, -82.644131
- St. Petersburg, Florida (history, geography, economy, arts, education, transportation) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, Climate hazards, Main sectors, Labour market, Transit system, Education, Character
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, St. Petersburg Police Department (FL0521400): violent crime, property crime, homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson, 2021-2025 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character
- St. Pete Crime Rates Declined In 2025: Police · Patch · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend, Character, 10 homicides in 2025 against 18 in 2024, the fewest since 1967; overall crime down 16%; 175 robberies and 406 auto thefts against five-year averages of 224 and 735
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00092806 St. Petersburg Albert Whitted Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Climate normals, Climate hazards, January 62.2F, July 83.8F and August 84.0F and the monthly highs, lows and rain from the monthly series, which carries no snowfall normal for this station, and annual mean 74.7F, precipitation 46.65 in, 70.9 days at 90F, 0.0 at 100F and 0.1 nights at freezing from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USC00087886 St. Petersburg (cooperative station) (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Annual snowfall, Climate normals, 0.0 in of snow (monthly and annual), January 62.1F, July 83.9F, 52.48 in of precipitation
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00012873 St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, January 61.6F, July 83.1F, 53.62 in of precipitation, 94.1 days at 90F
- NCEI data search, normals-monthly-1991-2020 stations within 28.0N to 27.6N and 82.85W to 82.45W · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals, the stations with 1991-2020 normals in and around the city, including USW00092806 and USC00087886 at 27.7628N, 82.6261W
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, St. Petersburg Albert Whitted Airport (USW00092806), 2010-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, 18.54 in on 9 October 2024 and a 101.1 mph gust; an 82.1 mph gust on 26 September 2024; 128 days at or above 90F in 2024 and 94 in 2026 through 28 September; 32F on 18 January 2018, the only reading at or below freezing since 2010; 36F on 1 February 2026
- Average Annual Sunshine in US Cities · Current Results (NCDC Comparative Climatic Data, 1961-1990) · retrieved Supports: Sunshine hours, Climate normals, Tampa 2,927 hours; no St. Petersburg station
- Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Helene (AL092024) · NOAA National Hurricane Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character, 6.31 ft above MHHW at the St. Petersburg tide gauge (record since 1947; previous record 3.97 ft in Elena, 1985); 12 drowned in Pinellas County, 2 in St. Petersburg; at least 419 homes destroyed and 18,512 structures with major damage in Pinellas and Hillsborough
- Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Milton (AL142024) · NOAA National Hurricane Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character, Landfall at Siesta Key as a Category 3; Albert Whitted storm total 18.88 in and gust 88 kt; maximum storm total 20.40 in at a CoCoRaHS site near St. Petersburg; Tropicana Field's fabric roof ripped off
- Tropicana Field roof damaged by Hurricane Milton, downtown St. Pete crane snapped · Bay News 9 · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Tropicana Field (Milton damage, 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field, return on 6 April 2026) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character
- A new Rays stadium in Tampa gets clinching Hillsborough County approval · WUSF · retrieved Supports: Character
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B19013, B25003 and B08301 for St. Petersburg, Tampa and Port St. Lucie cities, Pinellas County, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08007 (place of work), B08013 (aggregate travel time) and B08303 (travel time to work) for St. Petersburg city and Pinellas County · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Labour market
- ACS 2024 1-year table B01002 (median age) for St. Petersburg, Tampa, Port St. Lucie, Jacksonville, Miami and Orlando cities, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for St. Petersburg city, Pinellas County, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA, Florida and the US · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL MSA (LAUMT124530000000003), St. Petersburg city (LAUCT126300000000003) and Pinellas County (LAUCN121030000000003), not seasonally adjusted · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- Current Employment Statistics, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL MSA: total nonfarm (SMU12453000000000001), construction (SMU12453002000000001), supersectors (SMU1245300xx00000001), retail trade and federal government (SMU12453009091000001) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- FY2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, Statistical Section: Principal Employers · City of St. Petersburg (filed with the Florida Auditor General) · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Health care, Character, Raymond James & Associates 4,800, All Children's Health 2,800, Power Design 1,700, Jabil Circuit 1,700, St. Anthony's Hospital 1,437, HCA Hospital 1,350, Duke Energy 1,250, Franklin Templeton 1,200, Catalent 800, PSCU 800; 17,837 or 12.45% of 147,705; the 2016 list of 20,300
- Discretionary Sales Surtax Information for Calendar Year 2026 (DR-15DSS) · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, Pinellas 1%, February 1, 1990 to December 31, 2029
- Penny for Pinellas: frequently asked questions · Penny for Pinellas (Pinellas County) · retrieved Supports: Sales tax, first approved in 1989 and in effect from 1990; renewed on November 7, 2017 for 2020-2029 with 83% support; tourists and seasonal visitors estimated to pay a third
- Florida Tax Rates & Rankings · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000, Tax notes
- 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
- Millage rates levied for 2025 taxes · Pinellas County Tax Collector · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, St Petersburg real estate total 19.9197 mills, of which the city 6.4525 (as carried in lib/metro-tampa/market.ts)
- St. Pete keeps property tax rate unchanged · St Pete Catalyst · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, 6.4525 mills for fiscal 2027 adopted 6-2 on 17 September 2026, above the 6.3854 rolled-back rate
- St. Pete holds property tax rate steady · St Pete Catalyst · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, taxable values of about $39.3 billion; ad valorem revenue up about $14.8 million; 6.4525 mills since fiscal 2025
- Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) and Observed Rent Index (ZORI), city files, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, St. Petersburg $355,759, down 3.9% year over year, and rent $2,058, as carried in lib/metro-tampa/market.ts
- Monthly Module Adjusted Data Release, complete monthly ridership with adjustments and estimates (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, NTD 40027) · Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database (via data.transportation.gov) · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership, Transit system
- Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (history, routes, SunRunner, Cross-Bay Ferry) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system
- St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (location, owner, airlines, annual passenger traffic 2024 and 2025) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions · KFF · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Main sectors
- Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care, Main sectors
- Pinellas County School Board considers closing schools due to low enrollment · Bay News 9 · retrieved Supports: Education
- Pinellas County Schools move forward with closures, consolidations as enrollment declines district wide · FOX 13 · retrieved Supports: Education
- 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
- 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 · 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Final 2025 millage rates by taxing district · Hillsborough County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Published totals of 19.8428 for Tampa, 19.5319 for Temple Terrace, 18.2926 for Plant City and 18.2515 for the unincorporated county, Every component behind them, including the 0.5583 library services levy Temple Terrace and Plant City are outside and the 0.5000 transit authority levy Plant City is outside, A county General Purpose MSTU of 4.6163 paid in the unincorporated area in place of a municipal rate
- Table 1: Comparison of Taxes Levied, county and municipal governments, fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26 · Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight · retrieved Supports: Independent confirmation of each municipality's own adopted 2025-26 levy in both counties
- Annual estimates of the resident population for incorporated places, 2020 to 2024 · United States Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program · retrieved Supports: 2020 census counts and 2024 estimates for each municipality, Tampa at 414,547 and St. Petersburg at 267,102; Indian Shores at 1,190
- Hurricane Helene storm surge and Pinellas County flooding, September 2024 · Latent Insurance, on National Weather Service and Pinellas County data · retrieved Supports: The largest storm surge on record for St. Petersburg, over six feet in the city and more than seven on the barrier islands, Thousands of Pinellas homes flooded, many of which had never flooded before, St. Petersburg single-family homeowners insurance of roughly $3,900 to $5,500 a year with wind coverage, and higher on the barrier islands
- Home insurance in Tampa, Florida: 2026 rates · InsuranceQuotes · retrieved Supports: Tampa homeowners insurance averaging about $2,400 a year in 2026, A Tampa Bay range of roughly $3,285 to $5,100 across Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco
- 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
- Helene_Damage_Assessment_Data, one point per parcel assessed after Hurricane Helene · City of St. Petersburg, ArcGIS Online · retrieved Supports: 13,494 parcels assessed after Hurricane Helene, 5,189 of them recorded as major damage and 146 as destroyed, A record per parcel rather than per home, with no description published for the layer
- Substantial improvement · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: Substantial improvement is any reconstruction, rehabilitation, addition or other improvement whose cost equals or exceeds 50 percent of the market value of the structure before the start of construction, The category also covers structures that have sustained substantial damage, whatever repair work is actually carried out
- 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
- 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
- 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