Understand Temple Terrace before you commit to an address
Temple Terrace is twenty-seven thousand people north-east of Tampa, laid out in 1922 around a golf course and an orange grove (the Temple orange it is named for) and now defined as much by the University of South Florida on its western edge. It is the second of Hillsborough's three municipalities. 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 inland and out of the storm-surge zone that reshaped the rest of this market in 2024.
The cost of living in Temple Terrace, 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 Temple Terrace
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 Temple Terrace is the right part of the bay
No neighborhood guides for Temple Terrace 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 Temple Terrace actually involves
Its total of 19.5319 mills is just below Tampa's, and the difference is instructive: Temple Terrace runs its own library, so it pays none of the county's 0.5583-mill library services levy, while its own municipal rate of 6.4550 is higher than Tampa's 6.2076. A homesteaded buyer's effective rate is 1.71%, or about $5,600 a year on a typical home value of $329,643.
The city is inland and comparatively elevated, which in this metro is worth real money on the insurance line. The surge that reached Tampa and Pinellas in 2024 did not reach here. What it has instead is the university: a large student rental market on the western side, and a housing stock that runs from 1920s Mediterranean around the golf course to 1960s ranches everywhere else.
The Hillsborough River runs through the city and is its real flood exposure. Surge does not reach here, but river and rainfall flooding do, and the streets along the water sit in mapped flood zones while the ridges either side do not. That distinction is street by street rather than neighborhood by neighborhood, and it is the first thing to establish about any address near the river.
For a city of twenty-seven thousand this is an unusually full service package: its own police department and its own library, plus a golf course the city itself has had to keep deciding what to do with. That is what the municipal millage buys, and it is the reason the rate sits just under Tampa's while the services differ.
Moving to Temple Terrace: check these before you commit
- Whether the block is student rental territory, which shapes several neighborhoods near the university.
- The 1920s housing around the golf course, which is beautiful and carries the insurance profile of pre-war construction.
- That the city runs its own library and is outside the county district. A small but real difference from Tampa.
- River and rainfall flood mapping for the specific street, which varies sharply within this small city.
Temple Terrace's own council sets 6.4550 of the 19.5319 mills charged here. The rest is Hillsborough County, the school board and the countywide special districts, and the 19.5319 is the total Hillsborough County publishes for this taxing district rather than a figure assembled on this site.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Temple Terrace 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 Temple Terrace 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