Understand Madeira Beach before you commit to an address
Madeira Beach is forty-two hundred people on the barrier island around John's Pass. A boardwalk, a working fishing and charter fleet, and the busiest tourist waterfront in Pinellas outside Clearwater Beach. Figures are the same two indexes measured the same way in all 24 municipalities here, on Florida's rules including the homestead exemption. It is on a barrier island, which after the 2024 storm season is the most consequential fact about any address in this bay. Zillow publishes no rent index for a municipality this size, so the rent shown is the median of the seventeen here that have one, and is marked as such wherever it appears.
The cost of living in Madeira 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 Madeira Beach
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 Madeira Beach is the right part of the bay
No neighborhood guides for Madeira Beach 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 Madeira Beach actually involves
The city's 16.2172 mills give an effective rate of 1.52%, about $9,900 a year on a typical home value of $648,675. The value has fallen 6.4% over the year to June 2026. The pattern across these beach towns is consistent and it is not a coincidence: low millage, high value, large bill, and a market absorbing the most damaging storm season this coast has had.
The specific thing to understand at John's Pass is that a working waterfront and a residential market share a very small island. Boat traffic, the pass itself and the tourist economy shape which streets are quiet, and the 2024 storms hit the commercial waterfront as hard as the houses. Redevelopment pressure here is real and contested.
The city is small enough that the tourist economy at John's Pass and the residential streets are within a few hundred meters of each other. Parking pressure, evening noise and event traffic are concentrated at the northern end, and the difference between a street two blocks from the boardwalk and one a kilometer south is larger than any price index can show.
Boating is the other half of the market. Much of the housing is on canals with docks and direct access to the pass, which is a genuine premium and comes with the same seawall, dock permit and insurance questions as every canal property on this coast. A dock built without a permit is the buyer's problem after closing.
Moving to Madeira Beach: check these before you commit
- 2024 damage and any substantial improvement determination on the property.
- Proximity to the John's Pass boardwalk and the charter fleet, which is amenity or noise depending on the street.
- Seawall and dock condition, and flood insurance quoted separately.
- Distance from the boardwalk and the parking overspill it generates in season.
- Dock and lift permits, and whether the seawall has been repaired or only patched.
Madeira Beach's own council sets 2.7500 of the 16.2172 mills charged here. The rest is Pinellas County, the school board and the countywide special districts, and the 16.2172 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 Madeira 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 Madeira 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 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