Renting vs buying in Hialeah
Hialeah's typical home value is down 1.5% over the year to June 2026. Here is the arithmetic anyway: a Miami-Dade tax bill with no county fire or library levy on it, which the homestead exemption makes smaller again, the two taxes Florida charges on the loan, the insurance that covers wind and not water, and the mortgage insurance that stops in the middle of the model, and then the part the arithmetic misses.
Calculator
The short answer
The typical home in the City of Hialeah was worth $445,331 in June 2026, down 1.5% on the year, and a three-bedroom rents for about $2,944 a month. Run those against each other at the 2% appreciation the calculator opens with and the answer turns on how long you stay and on the mortgage rate. Run them at zero, which is closer to what this county has done over the last year, and the break-even moves later.
The tax is lower than the county's usual because two lines are missing. The City runs its own fire department and libraries, so neither county district is on the bill, and the 18.6468 mills here come to about $7,534 a year on the typical home for an owner who lives in it, 1.69% of the price, and about $8,304 for a landlord.
The flood map and the permits are the two things to read first. About 40% of the city's residents lived in a FEMA special flood hazard area on the City's layer in 2020, and additions that were never permitted are common enough here to be worth a search on every house.
The calculator below opens with real City of Hialeah figures and every one of them is editable. Three warnings: the property tax rate is set to 1.69% of the price, the homesteaded rate, not the 18.6468 mills levied before the exemption, so if you will not live in the house, set it to 1.86%; no flood premium is included anywhere; and the appreciation default is a long-run figure rather than a description of a market that has been falling. All three are explained in the questions below.
Your situation
Compare like for like: the rent on somewhere you would actually be willing to live, not the cheapest listing in the city. Drop the price to around $300,000 and the rent to a one-bedroom figure to compare apartments instead, and put the condo fee in under Assumptions.
20.0% down. The renter starts with this plus closing costs: $93,366: invested instead.
The single biggest lever. Buying costs a lot to enter and a lot to exit, and only time amortizes that away.
Assumptions: every one of them editable
Hialeah's typical value is down 1.5% over the year to June 2026, and fifteen of the twenty-four municipalities in the Miami-Dade table fell. Try zero, and try negative.
What the renter earns on the down payment they never spent. This is the comparison's hidden lever. A renter who spends it instead of investing it does far worse than this model shows.
Florida forbids its counties and cities from controlling rents at all. The statute allowed a narrow exception (a declared housing emergency, a specific finding, and a referendum) and the legislature closed even that in 2023. There is no cap, no guideline and no prospect of one, so any rent-growth figure you enter here is a forecast rather than a legal ceiling.
Roofs, furnaces, fences, hail. Averaged out it is a real cost even in the years nothing breaks.
Zero for a house with no association. Not everything for sale in Hialeah is a house on its own lot: there are condominiums and townhouses, and west of Interstate 75 houses in master-planned communities where a homeowners association sets the fee. $850 a month is a reasonable middle for a condominium with funded structural reserves, and an older building facing its milestone inspection can be far more. Ask what the fee covers and what the last special assessment was.
Commission and legal fees, charged against the price you eventually sell at. The owner's net worth below is after this comes off.
Net worth, side by side
The buyer's line is home value minus what is still owed minus the cost of selling, plus anything they invested in months when owning was cheaper. The renter's line is one portfolio: the down payment and closing costs they never spent, plus the monthly difference whenever renting is cheaper.
Show the year-by-year figures
| Year | Owner | Renter | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $74,120 | $109,980 | −$35,859 |
| 2 | $86,772 | $127,140 | −$40,369 |
| 3 | $99,877 | $144,870 | −$44,993 |
| 4 | $113,459 | $163,193 | −$49,734 |
| 5 | $127,542 | $182,133 | −$54,591 |
| 6 | $142,152 | $201,718 | −$59,565 |
| 7 | $157,317 | $221,973 | −$64,656 |
| 8 | $173,065 | $242,927 | −$69,862 |
| 9 | $189,428 | $264,611 | −$75,183 |
| 10 | $206,439 | $287,056 | −$80,617 |
| 11 | $224,131 | $310,294 | −$86,162 |
| 12 | $242,543 | $334,359 | −$91,816 |
| 13 | $261,715 | $359,288 | −$97,573 |
| 14 | $281,687 | $385,119 | −$103,431 |
| 15 | $302,506 | $411,890 | −$109,384 |
| 16 | $324,218 | $439,643 | −$115,425 |
| 17 | $346,874 | $468,423 | −$121,548 |
| 18 | $370,529 | $498,273 | −$127,744 |
| 19 | $395,239 | $529,241 | −$134,002 |
| 20 | $421,066 | $561,379 | −$140,312 |
| 21 | $448,076 | $594,737 | −$146,662 |
| 22 | $476,336 | $629,372 | −$153,036 |
| 23 | $505,922 | $665,340 | −$159,418 |
| 24 | $536,913 | $702,702 | −$165,789 |
| 25 | $569,391 | $741,521 | −$172,130 |
| 26 | $603,447 | $781,864 | −$178,417 |
| 27 | $639,176 | $823,800 | −$184,624 |
| 28 | $676,679 | $867,402 | −$190,723 |
| 29 | $716,066 | $912,747 | −$196,681 |
| 30 | $757,449 | $959,913 | −$202,464 |
- The rate is fixed for the life of the loan, so there is no renewal to model, but nothing here credits you for refinancing into a lower one either.
- Neither household is credited with tax on their investments, and the buyer's gain on a principal residence is tax-free while the renter's portfolio may not be.
An estimate from published figures, not a lender quote.
Questions people actually ask
Is it worth buying in Hialeah right now?
The typical home in the City of Hialeah was worth about $445,331 in June 2026, down 1.5% on the year, and a three-bedroom rents for roughly $2,944 a month. At 6.67% on a 30-year fixed loan with 20% down the mortgage alone is about $2,292 a month; add $628 of property tax and $505 of homeowners insurance and the owner's month is nearer $3,425 before a dollar of flood cover or an association fee. The honest complication is the direction of the market: fifteen of the twenty-four municipalities in the Miami-Dade table fell in value over the year to June 2026, Hialeah among them. The 2% appreciation this calculator opens with is a long-run figure, not a description of this market. Try zero, and try negative.
Why is the tax rate here 1.69% when Hialeah is charged 18.6468 mills?
Because of Florida's homestead exemption, not because of any assessment lag. Florida assesses at full market value and a purchase resets the assessment to what you paid. What there is instead is an exemption: $25,000 of taxable value comes off for every taxing authority, and a second slice, $25,000 in the 2024 base year and adjusted for inflation each 1 January since, comes off for all of them except the school district, which levies 6.4990 of the total. On a homesteaded $445,331 house that comes to about $7,534 a year, 1.69% of the price; without the exemption, which is what a landlord pays and what a buyer who never files pays, the same house owes about $8,304. Every line of the 18.6468 is on the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's 2025 chart, and the City's own council sets 6.3018 of it. The exemption is not automatic: you file with the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser by 1 March of the year after you buy.
Why are there no fire or library levies on a Hialeah tax bill?
Because the City runs both services itself. Hialeah is one of five municipalities in Miami-Dade with its own fire department, so it is outside the county's Fire Rescue district and pays none of its 2.3965 mills, and one of seven in this site's Miami-Dade table outside the county library district, so it pays none of that district's 0.2812 either. The City pays for both out of its own 6.3018, so the saving is not free money, but it is why the total here is lower than in most of the county: on the typical home the two districts would add about $1,059 a year to a homesteaded bill. It also means a Hialeah address is not comparable to one in Hialeah Gardens or Miami Lakes next door on the tax line alone.
Does this include flood insurance?
No, and in Hialeah that omission matters. The $505 a month here is homeowners insurance, $6,060 a year, against a Miami-Dade average of about $6,045, and homeowners insurance does not cover flood anywhere in the United States. On the City's flood zone layer, which matched FEMA's effective map at every point checked, 90,311 of the city's 223,109 residents in 2020, about 40%, lived in a special flood hazard area, most of them in zone AH, FEMA's designation for shallow flooding, and the rest in zone AE. A lender will require a flood policy where FEMA maps say so, and it is priced off the elevation certificate rather than the address. Get a quote on the specific property, and ask how the street drains in heavy rain.
Why does everyone say to check the permits on a Hialeah house?
Because additions are the city's building type. Most of the stock is small post-war houses on small lots, and a great many have been added to: enclosed porches, converted garages, a room or an efficiency at the back. Unpermitted additions and conversions are common enough here that a permit search on the property is a standard step rather than an unusual one, and an unpermitted one is a frequent and expensive surprise. Search the permits for every part of the house you are paying for, and check that each was finished and closed out. If the plan is to add to the house yourself, read the parking and setback rules first, because the lots are small.
Why is the seller's tax bill so much lower than the figure here?
Save Our Homes. A homesteaded property's assessed value may rise no more than 3% a year, or the change in the consumer price index if that is lower, for as long as the same owner keeps the exemption, and it resets to full market value on the roll after a sale. A long-tenured neighbor may be paying a fraction of what you will. If you already own a Florida homestead you can carry up to $500,000 of the accrued benefit to the new one, on its own application. And note the corollary in a falling market: your assessment resets to what you paid, so buying after a decline sets a lower base than a buyer at the peak.
What are the closing costs, and why do they get bigger if I put less down?
Florida taxes the loan as well as the house. The documentary stamp on the deed is the seller's by convention, and in Miami-Dade it is 60 cents per $100, the one county rate in Florida that is not 70, plus a 45-cent surtax on anything but a single-family house. Yours is a second documentary stamp on the promissory note at 35 cents per $100 and a non-recurring intangible tax on the mortgage at 0.2%. On a $356,264 loan that is $1,959, and because it is charged on the borrowing rather than the price it rises as your down payment falls: at 5% down it is $2,327. With a settlement fee around $850, the buyer's title charges, an inspection at about $700 (in Florida that is really three reports, the general one plus wind mitigation and four-point, and the last two are what an insurer asks for) and the clerk's recording, the buyer's side comes to roughly $4,299 before lender fees.
How long do you have to stay for buying to beat renting in Hialeah?
Getting in costs about $4,299 before lender fees, and $1,959 of that is Florida's tax on the loan itself. Getting out costs about 6.1%: commission and Miami-Dade's 0.6% documentary stamp on the deed, or about $27,165 on a $445,331 house, and a seller of a condominium, townhouse or duplex pays the 0.45% surtax on top. On the defaults below owning never catches renting at all: the renter is ahead in every one of the 30 years the model runs. The friction alone is a shorter and different answer: at a 2% appreciation assumption those two ends take about 3.7 years to earn back. Zillow's index for the city is down 1.5% on the year, so set appreciation to zero as well and see what the answer looks like.
How much do you need for a down payment in Hialeah?
Legally, nothing sets a floor: this is a lender's decision rather than a rule. Conventional loans start at 3% down and FHA at 3.5%. On a $445,331 house, 3% is $13,360 and 20% is $89,067. What the low end costs you on a conventional loan is private mortgage insurance: at 3% down, about $313 a month until the balance reaches 78% of the price, which takes 12.2 years and about $45,700. At 5% down it is $236 a month and $32,600. In Florida a smaller down payment also means more tax on the loan at closing.
Does Florida have rent control?
No, and Hialeah is not permitted to introduce it. Florida forbids its counties and cities from controlling rents at all. The statute allowed a narrow exception (a declared housing emergency, a specific finding, and a referendum) and the legislature closed even that in 2023. There is no cap, no guideline and no prospect of one, so any rent-growth figure you enter here is a forecast rather than a legal ceiling. If you are renting long-term, set the rent-growth input above the 2% default and see what it does to the answer.
Which Hialeah are we talking about?
The City of Hialeah: the municipality whose millage and Zillow indexes every figure on this page describes. Several places around it are not in it. Hialeah Gardens, on its western edge, is a separate city with its own council and its own rate, and so are Medley and Miami Springs across Okeechobee Road and the Miami Canal, Miami Lakes to the north, at 17.1804 mills, and Opa-locka to the northeast, at 24.0024. Palm Springs North, West Little River and Gladeview are unincorporated Miami-Dade, which pays the county's service area levy in place of a city rate. Amelia Earhart Park, which two of the city's neighborhoods border, is County land. A Hialeah mailing address does not settle which one a house is in, and if the address you are looking at is not inside the city, the tax figure here is the wrong one for it. The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's record for the property says which.
What is the calculator not accounting for?
Federal tax, mainly, and it cuts both ways. Mortgage interest and property tax are deductible if you itemize, and whether itemizing beats the standard deduction depends on the household: first-year interest on the typical loan is about $23,600 and property tax about $7,534. A principal residence's gain is excluded up to $250,000 single or $500,000 married under section 121, and the renter's portfolio is not. None of that is modeled, and none of it is advice. Three Hialeah things it also cannot price: the flood policy; the cost of legalizing or removing an addition that was never permitted; and the association fee on a condominium, a townhouse or a house in one of the master-planned communities west of Interstate 75.
Which figures here are estimates
The prices, rents and millage above come from published sources, each one listed below with the period it describes, and the tax figure is derived from that millage through Florida's own exemption rules. These do not:
- Home insurance at $505 a month, which is the layer's mainland Miami-Dade figure for a single-family policy and excludes flood entirely
- The association fee, at $850 a month: no authority publishes a Hialeah average, and an older low-rise condominium in the old city and a new master-planned community west of Interstate 75 are not comparable
- The bedroom split of the rent figure, which applies the same 0.86 / 1.00 / 1.24 ratios as the four Florida metro layers to a single all-homes index
- The utilities an owner pays over a renter, at $160 a month
- Maintenance at 1% of the home's value a year
- Every forward-looking rate: appreciation, rent growth, cost inflation and the return on the invested difference, in a city whose typical value fell over the year to June 2026
- The private mortgage insurance rate, which is priced per borrower by credit score rather than published as a schedule
- Both the insurance and the tax rate as they apply to any particular address. These are figures for the municipality, and the flood exposure inside it runs from under a tenth of the residents in some parts of the city to all of the newest ground west of Interstate 75
If you want the payment side on its own, with the biweekly plan, prepayments, the month mortgage insurance stops and the two taxes Florida charges on the loan, the mortgage calculator covers it in more detail. To work out where rather than whether, start with the neighborhood guides, or compare the city against the other municipalities of Miami-Dade.
Sources
- Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), all homes, mid-tier, smoothed and seasonally adjusted: city file, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical home value for the 35th to 65th percentile of each municipality's market, computed on one method across all twenty-four, The same series and month the Charlotte, Orlando and Palm Beach pages use, so all four American layers can be read against each other, Year-over-year change to June 2026
- Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), all homes, smoothed: city file, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Asking rents across the whole rental stock for the twenty-two municipalities Zillow indexes
- Table 1: Comparison of Taxes Levied, county and municipal governments, fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26: Miami-Dade · Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight · retrieved Supports: The adopted 2025-26 millage rate for Miami-Dade County and every municipality in it, The county's own components: countywide 4.5740, Fire/Rescue 2.3965, Library 0.2812 and the Unincorporated Municipal Service Area at 1.9090, Municipal rates from Sunny Isles Beach's 1.7000 to Biscayne Park's 9.3000
- 2025 millage rates and taxing authorities, Miami-Dade County · Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: A published combined rate for unincorporated Miami-Dade of 16.9317 mills, Its components: school district 6.4990, countywide 5.7361, regional water districts 0.3911, Fire Rescue 2.3965 and UMSA 1.9090, which this layer's stack reproduces exactly, Millage code 0100, the City of Miami, at 19.9878 mills for 2025: 7.1080 of city operating levy and 0.2536 of city debt service on the countywide 12.6262, Opa-locka's municipal operating levy of 8.9797, and a 2025 total of 24.0024 for millage code 0800, A city debt service column, which nine of the twenty-four municipalities here carry: Miami 0.2536, Miami Beach 0.2779, North Bay Village 1.1666, Golden Beach 0.6000, Miami Shores 0.1331, North Miami Beach 0.2000, Miami Gardens 0.4331, Doral 0.4810 and Homestead 0.2446, A blank library district column for Hialeah, North Miami, North Miami Beach, Homestead, Miami Shores, Bal Harbour and Surfside, which are outside the county library district, A blank Fire Rescue column for Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah and Key Biscayne, which is the five this layer flags
- About Fire Rescue · Miami-Dade Fire Rescue · retrieved Supports: The Fire Rescue district covering the unincorporated county and twenty-nine municipalities, Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah and Key Biscayne operating their own fire departments and lying outside the district
- Documentary stamp tax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A Miami-Dade deed rate of 60 cents per $100 rather than the 70 cents charged in every other county, A Miami-Dade surtax of 45 cents per $100, not due on a document transferring only a single-family dwelling, 35 cents per $100 on a promissory note, statewide
- Annual estimates of the resident population for incorporated places, 2020 to 2024 · United States Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program · retrieved Supports: 2020 census counts and 2024 estimates for each municipality, Miami at 487,014 and Hialeah at 235,388; Golden Beach at 1,034
- Average cost of home insurance in Florida, 2026 · MoneyGeek · retrieved Supports: A Miami-Dade County average of about $6,045 a year: below Palm Beach County's $6,614, A Florida average of about $3,815 and a national average of about $2,543
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey · Freddie Mac · retrieved Supports: 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 6.67%
- Documentary stamp tax · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: 70 cents per $100 on a deed, in every county except Miami-Dade, which charges 60 cents plus a 45-cent surtax, 35 cents per $100 on a promissory note or other written obligation to pay money
- Governmental leasehold intangible personal property tax and the non-recurring intangible tax on mortgages · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A non-recurring intangible tax of 2 mills: 0.2%, on the obligation secured by a mortgage on Florida real property
- Property tax exemptions and additional benefits · Florida Department of Revenue · retrieved Supports: A $25,000 homestead exemption applying to all taxing authorities and a second slice, $25,000 in the 2024 base year and adjusted for inflation each 1 January since, applying to all but the school district, The Save Our Homes assessment limitation of 3% or the change in CPI, whichever is lower, Portability of up to $500,000 of accrued Save Our Homes benefit to a new homestead, The 1 March filing deadline
- Chapter 2023-17, Laws of Florida: preemption of rent control · The Florida Senate · retrieved Supports: The repeal of the referendum exception that had allowed a local rent control ordinance in a declared housing emergency
- 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
These are estimates built from published figures, not a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice. Rates, premiums and state and federal rules change; confirm anything you plan to act on with a mortgage professional and read the sourcing methodology.