Understand Gulfport before you commit to an address
Gulfport is twelve thousand people on Boca Ciega Bay, enclosed almost entirely by St. Petersburg, with a waterfront main street of galleries and restaurants and a long-standing reputation as the most bohemian corner of Pinellas County. 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 Gulfport, 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 Gulfport
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 Gulfport is the right part of the bay
No neighborhood guides for Gulfport 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 Gulfport actually involves
The city's total of 17.4930 mills gives a homesteaded buyer an effective rate of 1.55%, about $5,500 a year on a typical home value of $357,477. That value is down 5.4% year over year, among the steeper falls in this layer, and the reason is at the end of the street: Gulfport sits low on the bay and Helene's surge went through much of it in 2024.
What the town has is genuinely distinctive. A waterfront district that functions, a casino ballroom on the water, an arts economy that is real rather than marketed. What it has alongside that is a housing stock of small mid-century houses at low elevation, which is the hardest combination in Florida to insure and the one the 2024 storms found. The recovery is visible and incomplete.
Gulfport is almost entirely surrounded by St. Petersburg, which makes municipal boundaries genuinely confusing on the ground: the school, the fire response and the police service for an address may not be what the neighborhood name suggests. It is worth confirming which city an address is in before comparing rates, because the two are interleaved along the boundary streets.
The town's housing is small and mid-century, on modest lots, with a waterfront strip and a marina district. Stetson's law school sits inside the town, and the arts and hospitality economy around Beach Boulevard supports a rental market that is unusually active for a town this size. Both are reasons values held a premium before 2024 and reasons the recovery is being watched closely.
Moving to Gulfport: check these before you commit
- Whether the property flooded in 2024 and what was done about it: this town took water widely.
- Elevation certificate and the substantial improvement rule before planning any renovation.
- Flood insurance availability and cost, quoted rather than estimated, as a separate policy.
- Which municipality the address is actually in, since Gulfport and St. Petersburg interlock along the boundary.
- For any property bought as a rental, the town's rules on short-term letting, which are stricter than the county's.
Gulfport's own council sets 4.0258 of the 17.4930 mills charged here. The rest is Pinellas County, the school board and the countywide special districts, and the 17.4930 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 Gulfport 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 Gulfport 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