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Palm tree silhouettes at dusk in Palmetto Bay, capturing the tropical character of this Miami suburb

Miami Neighborhood Guide

Palmetto Bay: Waterfront Community

Neighborhood Boundaries

Palmetto Bay

Interactive map of Palmetto Bay and six surrounding Miami-Dade neighborhoods. Use the links below the map to open any neighborhood guide.

Boundaries shown are approximate.

Your Market Analyst

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Palmetto Bay calls itself "A Village by the Bay." That's the 8.29-square-mile version of it. Village governance, small scale, and direct proximity to Biscayne Bay, inside southern Miami-Dade County. Population is approximately 25,400, and the residential pattern here is well-established suburban character that has held its form as the surrounding region has urbanized.

The waterfront is part of the village's history as well as its present. The Charles Deering Estate, a National Register Historic Site on the bay, is the cultural landmark of the area. Thalatta Estate Park adds green space and community event grounds. Through the rest of the village, you get tree-lined streets, generous lots, and well-kept homes.

For families, the schools are a major draw. Howard Drive Elementary (9/10), Coral Reef Elementary (8/10), Dr. Henry E. Perrine Academy of the Arts (9/10), Southwood Middle (9/10), and Miami Palmetto Senior High are among the highly rated in the county, and private options like Westminster Christian School and Palmer Trinity School add further depth. The median household income of approximately $105,000 supports a stable, professional community.

At a $1,200,000 single-family median (MLS, Q2 2026), Palmetto Bay sits below Pinecrest at $2,560,000 and Coral Gables at $2,550,000 while carrying many of the same demand drivers. Pricing edged up 1.5% year over year with price per square foot up 8.2%, and transaction volume held steady at 93 quarterly sales. After two decades in Southwest Miami-Dade, that's the comparison work I run for buyers weighing Palmetto Bay against those two neighbors.

At a Glance

Population 25,402 (2024 est.)
Area 8.29 sq mi
Median Sale Price $1,200,000
YoY Price Change +1.5% (median); $/SF +8.2%
Median Household Income ~$105,000
Days on Market 50.5 days
Median Lot Size 15,670 SF / 0.36 AC
Zip Codes 33157, 33158, 33176
Top Schools Howard Drive Elementary (9/10), Coral Reef Elem (8/10), Perrine Academy of the Arts (9/10)
Notable Deering Estate, Thalatta Park, near Biscayne Bay

Market data: closed SFH sales, Q2 2026 (Apr - Jun), classified by mapped location, via MLS. Last updated: July 2026.

Palmetto Bay Market Snapshot

Updated Q2 2026

Closed sales (Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025)

Palmetto Bay single-family closed sales, Q2 2026 versus Q2 2025
MetricQ2 2026YoY
Median sold price$1,200,000+1.5%
Median $/SF$508+8.2%
Median days on market50.5 days+4.5 days
Closed sales93+10.7%

Active inventory (as of July 5, 2026)

Palmetto Bay active single-family inventory as of July 5, 2026
MetricValue
Active single-family listings101
Median list price$1,500,000
List price range$729,000 to $9,495,000
Under contract35
View Active Inventory

Single-family homes reassigned to Palmetto Bay by mapped location. Closed figures Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025. Active inventory as of July 5, 2026, excluding Coming Soon and Private Exclusive listings; under contract includes pending and active-with-contract listings. Source: SE Florida MLS, polygon-classified. Full Q2 2026 market report for all 8 neighborhoods.

Market Intelligence

Market Analysis: Single-Family Homes

I track the Palmetto Bay market the same way I track every area I cover: I take the closed single-family sales for the quarter and reassign each one to the village's true boundary by parcel location rather than by the neighborhood field a listing agent typed into the MLS. That step matters here because Palmetto Bay borders Cutler Bay, Pinecrest, and the unincorporated Perrine area, and homes on all sides of those lines get mislabeled in both directions. The numbers below come from that reassigned pull, Q2 2026 closings measured against Q2 2025.

The headline for the quarter is a split that is easy to miss if you only read the median. Palmetto Bay's median sold price landed at $1,200,000, up 1.5% year over year, according to Q2 2026 MLS closings reassigned to the village's actual boundary. That reads as flat. But median price per square foot rose to $508, up 8.2% over the same period. When the per-foot number climbs more than five times as fast as the median, it tells you buyers paid meaningfully more for what they bought, and the median stayed calm because the mix of homes that traded skewed a little smaller. Both things are true at once: the price of a foot of Palmetto Bay went up, and the typical closing happened to be a somewhat smaller house than a year ago. That is the single most useful thing to understand about this market right now, and I will come back to it.

What You Will Actually Pay

A median is a marker for the middle of the range. It does not lay out a full menu of what you can buy. At $1,200,000 and $508 per square foot, the math points to a typical closing around 2,360 square feet on the village's standard interior lot of 15,670 square feet, just over a third of an acre per the county records. That is the center of gravity. The range around it is wide.

The July 5, 2026 active list ran from $729,000 to $9,495,000. Read that spread as three rough bands. Below $1,000,000 you are looking at the smaller or older interior homes, more of them toward the south end of the village near Perrine, some needing updates, some on the more modest lots. The $1,000,000 to $1,500,000 band is the working core of Palmetto Bay: updated three- and four-bedroom houses on full interior lots, dry (non-flood-driven) locations, walkable to the parks and the better-rated schools. Above $1,500,000, and climbing fast past $2,000,000, you move toward the newer construction, the larger renovated homes, and the bay-adjacent and waterfront parcels along the Old Cutler Road corridor. The top of that active range, the $9,495,000 listing, is a direct-bay waterfront property, which is a different asset class than the interior median and should be read as such.

The median list price on the active set was $1,500,000, a good bit above the $1,200,000 closed median. That gap is normal and worth explaining rather than glossing. Asking prices always sit above where deals actually clear, because inventory carries the aspirational listings and the overpriced holdouts that have not sold yet, while the closed number reflects what buyers and sellers agreed on after negotiation. When I price a Palmetto Bay listing, I anchor to the closed comps and the per-foot trend rather than to whatever the neighbor down the street is asking.

Market Pace and Inventory

Median days on market came in at 50.5, up 4.5 days from a year earlier. In practical terms, a well-priced, well-presented Palmetto Bay home is going under contract inside two months. That is a healthy, functioning market, running cooler than the frantic multiple-offer pace of the 2021 to 2022 window but well clear of a stall. Homes that sit past 60 or 90 days are, in nearly every case I see, priced ahead of the comps or showing a condition or location issue that the price has not accounted for.

On the supply side, there were 101 active single-family listings on July 5, 2026, with another 35 under contract. Set the active count against the quarter's transaction pace and you get a useful read. Ninety-three closings in Q2 works out to 31 a month. At that absorption rate, 101 active listings is roughly 3.3 months of supply (an estimate I calculated from the packet rather than a reported MLS field). For comparison, Miami-Dade County overall carried 5.2 months of single-family supply in Q2 2026, according to the countywide figures. So Palmetto Bay is tighter than the county at large, which is what you would expect from an established village where turnover is limited by how few people leave once they are in.

The 35 homes under contract matter too. That is a real pipeline of demand that has not shown up in closed data yet. Set it beside the tight months-of-supply read and you have a market that favors sellers modestly, without the imbalance that produces runaway pricing.

Price Per Square Foot, and Why It Moved

Now back to the split. The reason $/SF is the number I watch in Palmetto Bay this quarter is that it strips out the size-mix noise the median carries. A median can hold flat simply because the homes that happened to close were smaller. Price per square foot cannot hide that way. It went up 8.2%, to $508, which means the underlying value of built space in Palmetto Bay appreciated even though the median headline looked quiet.

For a buyer, the actionable version comes down to one thing. Do not read the flat median as a flat market, and do not assume you have room to lowball on a per-foot basis. You do not. The per-foot trend is up, and it is up more than the county's near-zero move. For a seller, the same fact cuts your way, but only if you price to the per-foot comps for your home's size class rather than to the raw median.

Palmetto Bay's $508 per square foot also sits low relative to its price tier, and that works in a buyer's favor. It is the practical reason the village trades where it does. Buyers here are paying for square footage and lot, on generous parcels, rather than for the per-foot premium that a Coral Gables or Coconut Grove address commands. I will put exact numbers on that in the comparison section.

What I Tell My Clients

When a buyer asks me for the one-sentence read on Palmetto Bay in Q2 2026, I tell them the market is stable on price, tighter than the county on supply, and quietly appreciating on a per-foot basis, so treat the flat median as calm rather than as an opening to underbid. When a seller asks, I tell them the demand is real (35 homes under contract, roughly 3.3 months of supply), but the pace still punishes overpricing, so we price to the closed per-foot comps for the home's size and we present it clean.

I will also flag what the data does not say. Q2's 93 closings are a solid sample, one of the largest of the eight areas I track, so the medians here are more stable than in a thin market. But a single quarter is still a single quarter. The prior quarter, Q1 2026, showed a lower median around $1,050,000 on a smaller count of 64 closings, which is a good reminder that quarter-to-quarter medians swing on mix and sample size. I would not build a pricing decision on one quarter's median alone. I build it on the trend, the per-foot direction, and the comps for your specific block and home.

Competitive Analysis

How Palmetto Bay Compares

Where a neighborhood sits on the price ladder tells you who its buyer is. The table below places Palmetto Bay against the seven other areas I track, all from the same Q2 2026 reassigned pull, so the comparison is apples to apples.

Median sold price, year-over-year change, price per square foot, median days on market, and closed sales across eight Southwest Miami-Dade neighborhoods, Q2 2026
NeighborhoodMedian soldYoY$/SFMedian DOMClosed
High Pines + Ponce-Davis$7,250,000n/m$1,2555915
Coconut Grove$2,750,000+2.8%$1,1053768
Pinecrest$2,560,000+21.9%$72962.551
Coral Gables$2,550,000+10.3%$95744133
Glenvar Heights$2,394,990+50.6%$74310727
Palmetto Bay$1,200,000+1.5%$50850.593
Kendall$1,092,500+19.4%$4942588
South Miami$1,020,000-7.3%$6554932

Source: MLS closed single-family sales, reassigned to true neighborhood boundaries by parcel location. Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025. Median bars scale to the highest statistically meaningful median; High Pines + Ponce-Davis rests on 15 sales and is shown without a bar. n/m = not meaningful.

Three things stand out when I line Palmetto Bay up against the field.

First, on the median, Palmetto Bay is the entry point to the lower-priced tier of the areas I cover. At $1,200,000 it sits above only Kendall ($1,092,500) and South Miami ($1,020,000), and it sits at less than half the median of the four areas above $2,000,000. Weighed against Pinecrest, its direct neighbor to the north at $2,560,000, Palmetto Bay clears at roughly 47 cents on the Pinecrest dollar for a broadly similar suburban form: single-family homes, generous lots, strong public schools, a family orientation. That spread is the whole reason buyers cross-shop the two.

Second, on price per square foot, Palmetto Bay ranks at the low end of the group at $508, above only Kendall's $494. That is the value story stated in numbers. Palmetto Bay's per-foot is roughly 70% of Pinecrest's $729, just over half of Coral Gables' $957, and under half of Coconut Grove's $1,105. A buyer who wants square footage and lot for the money, and is willing to trade the marquee-address premium to get it, finds more house per dollar in Palmetto Bay than almost anywhere else on this list.

Third, on appreciation, Palmetto Bay's +1.5% is the mildest positive move on the board among the areas with a meaningful sample, which is exactly what makes it readable. Several of the bigger year-over-year jumps on this table are mix-driven rather than true block-level appreciation. Glenvar Heights at +50.6% and Pinecrest at +21.9% reflect a shift in which homes traded rather than a market that repriced by half in a year. Palmetto Bay's small, steady number is a cleaner signal: prices held, per-foot value rose, and the market did it on high volume. Speaking of volume, note the closed-sales column. Palmetto Bay's 93 closings are the second most of any area I track, behind only Coral Gables' 133. High transaction volume means more comparable sales, tighter pricing, and easier liquidity in both directions. It is genuinely easier to buy well and sell well in a market that trades this often.

One honest caveat on the comparison: these are median-to-median reads across neighborhoods with different housing stock. A $508-per-foot Palmetto Bay home and a $957-per-foot Coral Gables home are not the same product at a different price. The Gables number carries older architecture, walkability, and a location premium that some buyers value and others do not need. The comparison tells you where the price ladders sit; it does not prove that one area is objectively underpriced against another.

Jorge Guanche, Palmetto Bay real estate expert

Why Palmetto Bay

The Value Proposition

Palmetto Bay single-family closed at a $1,200,000 median across 93 sales in Q2 2026 (MLS), up 1.5% year over year at a 50.5-day median to contract. Price per square foot rose 8.2% to $508, and Palmetto Bay continues to trade as one of the most established residential villages in South Florida.

The closest comparisons run west and north. Kendall sits on comparable 15,000 SF lots at a $1,092,500 median. Pinecrest clears more than double Palmetto Bay pricing on half-acre-plus parcels further north. What Palmetto Bay adds that neither neighbor offers is Biscayne Bay frontage along the Old Cutler Road corridor, with Howard Drive Elementary (9/10) covering the village interior and Coral Reef Elementary (8/10) anchoring the south end.

Zoning carries most of the weight on values here. The village code caps commercial density and prioritizes residential character, and the 33157 and 33158 zip codes hold most of the bay-adjacent inventory. For buyers weighing Palmetto Bay against Kendall at roughly a $100,000 spread, the village premium buys the water access, the school pipeline, and the canopy along Old Cutler.

On property tax, Palmetto Bay's combined rate runs 17.3245 mills, second lowest of the areas I cover and about $390 a year more than the unincorporated rate per $1M taxable. That gap buys the village commission and the zoning protections cited above. The full per-neighborhood breakdown shows how each city or UMSA portion stacks against the countywide and school millages.

Know the Pockets

Subdivisions & Micro-Neighborhoods

Palmetto Bay reads as one continuous suburb to a passing driver, but it is really a set of distinct pockets, and the differences drive price more than the village-wide median suggests. Broadly, the village splits along Old Cutler Road, which runs north to south near the bay side and separates the waterfront and bay-adjacent parcels to the east from the larger interior to the west.

The waterfront and bay-adjacent corridor along Old Cutler Road is the top of the market. Several small gated communities sit here. Old Cutler Bay, founded in the early 1960s off Old Cutler Road, holds around 136 homes, most of them waterfront with direct, bridge-free access to Biscayne Bay. Old Cutler Cove is a smaller pocket of some 94 custom homes on larger lots just south of SW 144th Street and west of Old Cutler Road. Paradise Point, built in the early 2000s at the southern end of the Gables Waterway, is a gated, guarded community of newer waterfront homes. These are the parcels behind the top of the active price range, the ones that clear well above $2,000,000 and, at the high end, into the $9,000,000 territory. If a buyer's priority is a boat and open-water access, this is where the search concentrates, and it is a genuinely limited supply.

The interior, west of Old Cutler Road, is the heart of family Palmetto Bay and the source of most of the $1,000,000 to $1,600,000 closings. Lot sizes across the interior commonly run from 10,000 square feet to well over 40,000 on the larger estate parcels, with the village median at 15,670 square feet. Much of the interior is unincorporated-style large-lot suburban platting from the postwar decades, without HOA governance, which many buyers prefer for the freedom it gives on the property. Some of the newer or gated pockets do carry association rules; that is worth confirming lot by lot rather than assuming, because it varies within a few blocks.

The south end, closer to the Cutler Bay line and the Perrine area, carries a wider price range and more of the sub-$1,000,000 inventory. This is where value-oriented buyers find the entry points into a Palmetto Bay address, often on smaller lots or in homes that need work. The tradeoff is real and worth naming: some of the south-end and bay-adjacent parcels carry different flood-zone designations than the higher interior, which affects insurance cost and, increasingly, financing. I walk every buyer through the specific flood zone and elevation for a given address before we get attached to it, because in this market the insurance line can move the true monthly cost by a meaningful amount. Insurance rates in Miami-Dade are finally coming down in 2026, and I cover what the decreases mean for buyers in a separate piece.

Education

Schools & Education

Schools are the primary demand driver in Palmetto Bay, and unlike a lot of neighborhood copy, the ratings here hold up when you check them. The figures below are current GreatSchools ratings as of July 2026.

On the public side, the village is served by three strongly rated elementary schools. Howard Drive Elementary (PK-5) carries a 9/10 GreatSchools rating. Dr. Henry E. Perrine Academy of the Arts (K-5), a magnet with a gifted-and-talented program, also rates 9/10. Coral Reef Elementary (PK-5) rates 8/10. All three run above the Florida average for their grade levels on state proficiency measures.

For middle school, Southwood Middle (grades 6-8) rates 9/10 and is worth understanding beyond the number. It was the first magnet middle school to open in Miami-Dade County and runs a long-established visual and performing arts program within the school, with recognition including Magnet Schools of America School of Excellence and a National Blue Ribbon award. On state tests, close to three in four students hit proficiency in math and reading. For an arts-inclined family, Southwood is a genuine draw in its own right, worth choosing for the program itself.

At the high school level, most of the village feeds toward Miami Palmetto Senior High (grades 9-12), a large magnet high school with AP offerings, a gifted program, and a broad athletics slate. I will be straight about the number. Its current GreatSchools rating is 6/10, which reads as average by that particular metric even though the school is well known regionally and rates highly on other platforms. If a family's plan hinges on the high school specifically, I encourage touring it and looking past any single rating source, because a school this large serves a very wide range of students and the aggregate score compresses that.

On the private and independent side, Palmetto Bay and its immediate surroundings give families real options. Westminster Christian School and Palmer Trinity School are the two most commonly cited, both long-established college-preparatory schools drawing from across South Miami-Dade. Assignment boundaries and magnet eligibility change, so I always tell buyers to confirm the current zoned schools for a specific address with Miami-Dade County Public Schools directly before making a purchase decision on school grounds. A house two blocks away can zone differently than you assume.

Daily Life

Lifestyle & Community

Palmetto Bay's day-to-day character is set by two things: the bay on its eastern edge and an unusual density of parks for a village its size. Residents did not name it the "Village of Parks" as marketing. The park system is the amenity.

The anchor is the Charles Deering Estate, a bayfront historic site of more than 400 acres that served as industrialist Charles Deering's winter home. Beyond the historic structures, the grounds hold what is believed to be the largest old-growth coastal tropical hardwood hammock left in the continental United States, plus access to Biscayne Bay, canoe and kayak launches, and a regular calendar of cultural programming. It functions as both a nature preserve and a cultural venue, and it is the single feature most responsible for the village's identity.

Coral Reef Park is the recreational center of gravity, more than 50 acres of ball fields, tennis and pickleball courts, a large playground, an exercise trail, and preserve areas. A new recreation center and additional pickleball courts opened at the park in March 2026, expanding its programming. Thalatta Estate Park adds nearly four acres of green space with open bay views and a restored historic home used for community events and weddings; the name comes from a Greek word for the sea, and the setting earns it. Between the three, plus the smaller neighborhood parks, Palmetto Bay gives families more accessible green space per resident than most Miami-Dade suburbs.

On the practical side of daily life, the village keeps its commercial footprint deliberately small. Palmetto Bay Village Center along the US-1 corridor supplies the everyday errands, grocery, pharmacy, casual dining, and services, and the broader retail of Pinecrest and the Dadeland area sits a short drive north. What Palmetto Bay does not have, by design, is a walkable downtown or a nightlife district. The village code caps commercial density in favor of residential character, which is exactly what its buyers are choosing. If a client's priority is walk-out-the-door dining and urban energy, I steer them toward South Miami or Coconut Grove and tell them so plainly. Palmetto Bay's appeal is quiet, green, family-scaled, and residential, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Getting Around

Transportation & Access

Palmetto Bay is a car-first suburb, and any honest guide has to lead with that. There is no Metrorail station in the village. Miami-Dade's rail line ends to the north at Dadeland South, and Palmetto Bay residents who want rail typically drive to the Dadeland park-and-ride stations and connect from there. The US-1 corridor along the village's western edge carries the South Dade TransitWay, the dedicated busway that runs rapid bus service down the South Dixie Highway spine, which is a real option for a US-1-aligned commute but is not a substitute for door-to-door rail. Plan on owning a car here.

For drivers, the two arteries are US-1 (South Dixie Highway) on the west and Old Cutler Road on the east, with SW 152nd Street (Coral Reef Drive) and other east-west connectors linking them. Representative off-peak drive times, measured to the village center: Miami International Airport is roughly 15 miles and 25 to 30 minutes; Brickell and downtown Miami are just over 22 miles and 30 to 35 minutes off-peak; Coral Gables and the South Miami job and shopping corridor are closer, in the 15-to-25-minute range depending on the exact origin. These are non-rush-hour estimates. US-1 at peak, northbound in the morning and southbound in the evening, runs materially longer, and that commute reality is a real factor for buyers who work downtown. I tell downtown-commuting clients to test-drive the route at their actual commute time before they fall for a house, because the map minutes and the 8 a.m. minutes are not the same number.

The upside of the geography is the reverse commute and the weekend access. Getting south toward the Keys, or to the Deering Estate and the bayfront, is easy from here, and midday or off-peak trips north to the Gables and Coral Way are quick. Palmetto Bay trades urban transit access for space, quiet, and a location that is still inside the county's core rather than out past the suburban edge.

Client Experience

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Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Single-family homes in Palmetto Bay are transacting at a $1,200,000 median (MLS, Q2 2026), up 1.5% year over year across 93 closed sales, with price per square foot up 8.2% to $508. Median days on market is 50.5. Per-foot pricing moving up on steady volume reads as quiet strength, and the village continues to trade as one of South Florida's established residential communities.

Palmetto Bay is officially known as A Village by the Bay, reflecting its proximity to Biscayne Bay and its small-town governance structure. The village is home to the Charles Deering Estate, a historic waterfront property and national landmark, as well as Thalatta Estate Park. With a focus on green spaces, community events, and bayfront access, Palmetto Bay offers a suburban retreat with coastal character.

Palmetto Bay is served by excellent schools including Howard Drive Elementary (9/10), Coral Reef Elementary (8/10), Dr. Henry E. Perrine Academy of the Arts (9/10), Southwood Middle (9/10), and Miami Palmetto Senior High, with nearby private options like Westminster Christian School and Palmer Trinity School.

Yes. At a $1,200,000 single-family median (MLS, Q2 2026), Palmetto Bay prices below Pinecrest and Coral Gables while keeping suburban scale, waterfront access, and strong public schools. The $105,000 median household income fits the buyer profile, and village landmarks like the Charles Deering Estate, Thalatta Estate Park, and direct Biscayne Bay access are the cultural anchors. Pricing stability plus steady volume points to sustained demand at these levels.

How I source and verify the data behind this analysis → Data & Methodology

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Ask About Palmetto Bay

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