Live in Old Southeast

In 1905 C. A. Harvey and A. F. Freeman of the Bayboro Investment Company bought the land east of 4th Street South between Salt Creek, Booker Creek and Bayboro Harbor and laid out a grid running down to the bay. Still on the ground are brick streets and sidewalks of colored six-sided blocks, set in patterns, which St. Petersburg began laying about 1914. In 1992 City Council created an overlay to protect hexagon block sidewalks outside the historic districts, and the City still has only one: the Old Southeast Hexagon Block Preservation District. The sidewalk is protected; the houses are not. No City historic district or National Register district touches this ground, so the review a buyer meets in Kenwood or the Old Northeast does not apply here, except at three City landmark houses, the Bayboro House, the Robert Lavery House and the Emery House.

The line is the association's, not the City's. This guide is the area the Old Southeast Neighborhood Association filed on the City's map: 174 acres from 4th Street South to Beach Drive SE, and from Salt Creek and Bayboro Harbor south to about 24th Avenue. The 2020 census counted 1,294 residents in 749 housing units. Lassing Park, more than 14 acres of bayfront lawn that Judge Robert B. Lassing gave the City in 1924, is just across Beach Drive and in no association's area; USF St. Petersburg and Albert Whitted Airport are across the harbor to the north.

The bay sets the price of owning here. FEMA's map, effective since August 2021, puts 28.9% of the area and 286 residents in its 1% annual chance flood zone; the reference point, on 20th Avenue SE, is in Zone X. On 26 September 2024 Hurricane Helene pushed the tide gauge on Bayboro Harbor, about 1.3 km away, to 6.31 feet above mean higher high water, beating Elena's 1985 record by more than two feet. The City afterward assessed 34 parcels here and recorded water inside 27 of them, 21 with a foot or more. These are the City's assessment points, one per parcel, not a count of homes. In the 1% zone the City's rule is 49%, not FEMA's 50%: repairs and improvements whose cumulative cost reaches 49% of the structure's value require the whole building to meet current flood rules, which can mean raising it. The parcel at the reference point is in evacuation Zone C, sized for surge up to 20 feet.

No price index follows the line. ZIP code 33705 holds 1,030 of the residents, and Zillow's typical value there was $331,140 in August 2026, but the ZIP held 27,915 people in 2020, the largest shares in Pinellas Point and on Coquina Key. The whole city's was $355,759 in June 2026. Every address pays the same Pinellas stack, 19.9197 mills for 2025. A homesteaded buyer at the ZIP figure owes about $5,758 a year after Florida's homestead exemption, $25,000 off every levy and a second, indexed slice off all but the school board's; a landlord owes about $6,596. Stormwater comes on the City utility bill, $12.67 to $59.08 a month for a house from 1 October 2026. Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessed value at 3% a year and resets on a sale, so the seller's bill understates yours. The arithmetic is on the St. Petersburg page.