Understand Ocean Ridge before you commit to an address
Ocean Ridge is a town of about nineteen hundred people on the barrier island east of Boynton Beach, mostly single-family houses on a strip of land between the ocean and the Intracoastal, with its own police department and a long-standing preference for staying exactly as it is. 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. Being on the barrier island puts the insurance figure here in the most expensive band in the state outside the Keys, and flood cover is a separate policy on top of it. Zillow publishes no rent index for a municipality this size, so the rent shown is the median of the eighteen here that have one, and is marked as such wherever it appears.
The cost of living in Ocean Ridge, 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 Ocean Ridge
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 Ocean Ridge is the right part of this coast
No neighborhood guides for Ocean Ridge 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 Ocean Ridge actually involves
Ocean Ridge's municipal rate of 5.4000 mills plus the county library district's 0.5491 takes it to 18.2071 in total: a homesteaded buyer's effective rate of 1.77%, eleventh-highest in this layer. On a typical home value of about $1.49 million that is roughly $26,400 a year in property tax. The town is outside the county's Fire/Rescue MSTU and Palm Beach County Fire Rescue's own areas-served page lists it as a municipality the county neither serves nor dispatches for, so none of that district's 3.4581 mills is on the bill and the cost of the service the town does buy is inside its own 5.4000 mills. Who provides it is worth asking before you buy, because the county's page says only that the county does not.
Everything else here is the barrier-island calculation. Insurance on an oceanfront or near-oceanfront property in Palm Beach County is the most expensive in the state outside the Keys, flood cover is a separate and effectively compulsory policy, and the county's coastal construction control line governs what can be built or rebuilt seaward of it. Sea level and beach erosion are not abstractions on a strip of land this narrow.
There is no commercial development in the town and only one road along it, so daily life runs through Boynton or Delray. That keeps the town quiet and it also means the town's own tax base is entirely residential, which is why the total lands where it does despite a modest municipal rate.
Public beach access points draw visitors from the mainland, and parking near them is limited and regulated. For an address on or near an access point that is a seasonal reality rather than a theoretical one, and it is worth seeing in February rather than in September.
Moving to Ocean Ridge: check these before you commit
- Flood zone, base flood elevation and whether the structure predates the current code, on this island that determines both the premium and the insurability.
- The coastal construction control line, which governs rebuilding seaward of it.
- Insurance quoted, not estimated, including windstorm and flood as separate policies.
- Beach access parking near the address and what it is like in high season.
Ocean Ridge levies 5.4000 of the 18.2071 mills charged here. The remaining 12.8071 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 Ocean Ridge is outside it.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Ocean Ridge 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 Ocean Ridge 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