Understand Clearwater before you commit to an address
Clearwater is 118,000 people on the north Pinellas coast, the county seat, with Clearwater Beach on the barrier island across the Memorial Causeway and a bluff-top downtown that has spent forty years trying to become something. It is also the international headquarters of the Church of Scientology, which owns a substantial share of the downtown. Figures are the same two indexes measured the same way in all 24 municipalities here, on Florida's rules including the homestead exemption.
The cost of living in Clearwater, 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 Clearwater
Whether buying here beats renting, and the year it turns over. With twenty-three of twenty-four municipalities down last year, appreciation is the input worth arguing with.
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 Clearwater is the right part of the bay
No neighborhood guides for Clearwater yet. What is here instead is both sides of the bay on one comparable footing.
All 24 municipalities in Tampa Bay
Every municipality across Hillsborough and Pinellas side by side on home value, millage, the rate a homesteaded buyer pays, and what storm surge did to it.
Compare the bayTampa, neighborhood by neighborhood
One of the two municipalities here with sourced guides rather than a single row of figures, including how high above the bay each part sits and what that is worth on a quote.
Explore TampaSt. Petersburg, area by area
The other municipality here with a hub of its own: the same row of figures as this table, the five areas the city divides into, and neighborhood guides on the peninsula where Helene's surge was the largest on record.
Explore St. PetersburgMiami and Miami-Dade
The same rules, the same exemptions and the same two Zillow indexes, and against every expectation, higher insurance premiums than Tampa Bay on a coast that has taken less surge.
Compare the two coastsWhat buying in Clearwater actually involves
The city's total of 19.3522 mills is the fifth-highest in this layer, and a homesteaded buyer's effective rate of 1.70% produces about $5,900 a year on a typical home value of $344,142. The city's own 5.8850 funds a full service set including its own fire and library.
The city spans two very different exposures. Clearwater Beach and Island Estates, across the causeway, are barrier-island properties that took Helene's surge in 2024; the mainland bluff downtown sits high enough that it did not. A single index across both is a coarse instrument, and the flood question here depends entirely on which side of the Intracoastal the address is.
The mainland city is larger and more varied than its beach reputation suggests. Countryside and the northern subdivisions are 1970s and 1980s suburban housing well away from the water, the bluff neighborhoods near downtown are older and higher, and the eastern edge along US-19 is a commercial corridor rather than a neighborhood. Those are three different price levels inside one municipal rate.
US-19 divides the city in practice. It has been rebuilt as a limited-access road through much of Pinellas, which is faster to drive and much harder to cross, so an address's access to the interchanges matters to daily life more than the straight-line distance to anything does.
Moving to Clearwater: check these before you commit
- Which side of the Intracoastal: the beach and the mainland are different flood, insurance and price markets under one rate.
- For beach condominiums: reserve study, milestone inspection and 2024 repair position.
- Downtown redevelopment plans, which have been contested for decades and remain so.
- Which part of the city the address is in, since the beach, the bluff downtown and Countryside are three markets.
- Access to a US-19 interchange, because crossing the corridor is now a detour rather than a turn.
Clearwater's own council sets 5.8850 of the 19.3522 mills charged here. The rest is Pinellas County, the school board and the countywide special districts, and the 19.3522 is the total Pinellas County publishes for this taxing district rather than a figure assembled on this site.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Clearwater 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 Clearwater 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 each municipality, computed on one method across all twenty-four, The same series and month the Charlotte, Orlando, Palm Beach and Miami pages use, Year-over-year change to June 2026, which is negative in twenty-three of the twenty-four
- Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), all homes, smoothed: city file, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Asking rents for the seventeen municipalities Zillow indexes
- 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
- Millage rates levied for 2025 taxes · Pinellas County Tax Collector · retrieved Supports: A published real estate total for every taxing district in Pinellas County, from Redington Shores at 15.1568 to Belleair at 20.4449, including St Petersburg at 19.9197 and Belleair Beach at 15.4466, Countywide components: general fund 4.5423, health department 0.0713, emergency medical services 0.8050 and school 6.2930, Other districts totalling 1.0256: planning council 0.0175, Juvenile Welfare Board 0.8250 and the Southwest Florida Water Management District 0.1831, The Transit District at 0.7300 and which districts are inside it, and the Pinellas Suncoast Fire District at 0.6700 and which are inside that
- 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
- 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