Understand Delray Beach before you commit to an address
Delray Beach is seventy thousand people between Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, and Atlantic Avenue is the best main street in Palm Beach County. Two miles of restaurants and shopfronts running from the interstate to the ocean, which almost nowhere else in south Florida has managed. Its typical home value of about $342,000 is the third-lowest in this layer, after Greenacres and Hypoluxo. Figures are the same two indexes measured the same way in all 24 municipalities on this coast, on Florida's rules including the homestead exemption.
The cost of living in Delray Beach, and what a home costs
Two calculators on Florida's own rules: monthly compounding and the month private mortgage insurance stops, and the closing costs this state actually charges.
Rent or buy in Delray Beach
Whether buying here beats renting, and the year it turns over. On this coast insurance moves the answer more than the mortgage rate, and you can edit it.
Mortgage calculator
Monthly compounding, the 30-year fixed loan, the private mortgage insurance a low down payment triggers, and Florida's documentary stamp and intangible taxes on the loan itself.
Then work out whether Delray Beach is the right part of this coast
No neighborhood guides for Delray Beach yet. What is here instead is the whole coast on one comparable footing.
All 24 municipalities on the Palm Beach coast
Every municipality from Boca Raton to Tequesta side by side on home value, millage, the rate a homesteaded buyer pays, and which of them pay the county for fire.
Compare the coastThe 24 municipalities of the Orlando metro
Identical rules and exemptions, the same two Zillow indexes, and insurance at less than half what it costs here. It is the clearest measure of what proximity to the Atlantic costs.
Compare coast and inlandWhat buying in Delray Beach actually involves
That low index is doing something specific and it is worth understanding before reading anything into it. Delray has a very large stock of older condominiums west of the city (the Kings Point and High Point communities, much of it age-restricted and trading well under $200,000) and the all-homes index blends those with the single-family neighborhoods east of Swinton and the oceanfront. A detached house in Delray costs a multiple of the figure on this page.
The city runs its own fire department and its own library, so it pays neither county levy, but its own operating rate of 6.1611 mills is among the highest of the full-service cities here and its total of 18.4500 sits just below the county middle. There is also a Downtown Development Authority levying a further mill inside a defined downtown district, which is not in the figure here and applies to a small and specific area.
The city is three markets in one boundary: the walkable downtown and beach district east of the Intracoastal, the historic bungalow neighborhoods just west of it, and the large planned communities out toward the Turnpike, many of them age-restricted. Prices, buyer profiles and carrying costs differ enormously across those three, and the city figure sits somewhere in the middle of all of them.
Downtown's success is also its constraint. Atlantic Avenue draws visitors year-round, parking is managed and contested, and the residential streets immediately behind the avenue absorb the overflow. Two blocks of distance changes the experience of living here more than almost anything else on this page.
Moving to Delray Beach: check these before you commit
- Whether you are comparing a detached house or an older condominium, because the typical value here averages two very different markets.
- For any condominium west of I-95: reserve studies, age restrictions and the recreation lease, several of which are unusual arrangements in these communities.
- Whether the property is inside the Downtown Development Authority district, which levies an additional mill.
- How close the address is to Atlantic Avenue, since evening and season traffic reach a few blocks back.
- Whether a western community is age-restricted, which narrows the resale pool as well as the buyer pool.
Delray Beach levies 6.1920 of the 18.4500 mills charged here. The remaining 12.2580 is Palm Beach County, the school district and the countywide special districts, none of which the municipality sets, and none of it is the county Fire/Rescue MSTU, because Delray Beach is outside it.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Delray Beach figure below is cited, stamped with the period it describes, and editable, because a number for the whole city rarely describes your purchase. Appreciation and investment returns are assumptions rather than facts, and they are labelled that way. Read the methodology for how the line is drawn.
- Prices, rents and tax rates: published statistics and the official schedules.
- Nothing here is a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice.
Where the Delray Beach figures come from
- 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 and Orlando metro pages use, so all three 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 eighteen municipalities Zillow indexes, No index at all for the six smallest, several of which have fewer than five hundred residents
- Taxing Authority Code Description, Palm Beach County 2025 · Palm Beach County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: One row per tax authority code, 123 codes, with a named column for every levy and a published TOTAL, which settles the district set for all twenty-four municipalities by inspection, The Fire/Rescue MSTU at 3.4581 on five of the twenty-four and on no others: South Palm Beach, Lake Worth Beach, Wellington, Royal Palm Beach and Lake Park, The county Library district at 0.5491 on eleven: Ocean Ridge, Hypoluxo, South Palm Beach, Greenacres, Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Palm Beach Shores, Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, Jupiter Inlet Colony and Tequesta, The Jupiter Inlet District at 0.0722 on three: Jupiter, Tequesta and Jupiter Inlet Colony, Children's Services 0.4908, the Health Care District 0.6561 and F.I.N.D. 0.0270 on all 123 codes, which is why they are countywide here, The published TOTAL every row in this layer reproduces, from Palm Beach's 14.8690 to Lake Worth Beach's 21.6106
- 2025 millage rates by taxing authority, Palm Beach County · Palm Beach County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: The countywide levies: county 4.5000 and county debt 0.0330, school state 3.0730 and local 3.2480, Children's Services 0.4908, Health Care District 0.6561, three SFWMD levies totalling 0.2301 and FIND 0.0270, The conditional Fire/Rescue MSTU at 3.4581 and the separate Jupiter Fire/Rescue MSTU at 1.7251, Every municipality's own operating and debt millage, and the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District at 1.0800, A published total for Boca Raton of 17.0029 mills, which this layer's stack reproduces exactly
- 2026 Proposed, Rollback and 2025 Final Millage Rates, Palm Beach County · Palm Beach County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: The 2025 Final column corroborating the three district rates read off the code chart: Fire/Rescue 3.4581, Library 0.5491 and Jupiter Inlet District 0.0722, F.I.N.D. at 0.0270 for 2025, against the 0.0288 this layer carried for a year, which is the 2024 rate
- Table 1: Comparison of Taxes Levied, county and municipal governments, fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26: Palm Beach · Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight · retrieved Supports: The adopted 2025-26 millage rate and taxes levied for Palm Beach County and every municipality in it, Independent confirmation of the municipal rates taken from the property appraiser's table