La Mare

Start with the rate, read at the folio rather than off a chart. The total in this town is 18.8893 mills across fifteen named authorities: the town at 3.9000, the county group at 7.6454, the school board group at 6.6230, the children's trust at 0.4638, and four water and navigation levies totalling about 0.257. The town levies no debt service at all, so its 3.9000 is entirely operating.

Now the direction of travel, which is the finding. The town's own rate went from 3.4583 to 3.9000 mills, an increase of about 12.77 per cent, while Sunny Isles Beach cut by about 2.86 per cent. Of the four benchmark jurisdictions we compared, this town has both the highest total and the only total that rose. On one of these parcels the entire year-over-year increase of about $1,607.68 is the town. Every other authority on that bill went down.

The cross-town comparison is large enough to change where people buy. The same unit costs about $5,252 a year more here than in Sunny Isles Beach, which is about $52,522 over ten years before any further rate movement. The reason is structural: the low-rate beach towns buy county fire service and carry the county fire millage, while this town's higher own-rate reflects what it provides itself. Whether that trade is worth five thousand a year is a judgement, but it should be a conscious one.

On non-ad-valorem the answer is a clean zero. All three parcels carry $0.00 in non-ad-valorem assessments, confirmed at two separate endpoints, against controls of about $824.51 on a suburban single-family house and about $74.10 on an Aventura condominium unit. No solid waste charge, no fire charge, no lighting district, no stormwater line. That is a real advantage of the address and it is worth stating precisely because it is unusual.

The full annual figure, on the nearest defensible comparable. At the median recently completed comparable unit in this town, about $2,335,750 of market value across forty unit records, the bill is about $44,120.68 without homestead and about $43,341.79 with it. Homestead saves about $778.89.

And that saving is almost nothing here, which is the point. About $778.89 on a bill of about $44,121 is roughly 1.77 per cent. The same exemption is worth about 6.83 per cent on a suburban Florida house. The exemption is a flat dollar amount, so the more expensive the unit the less it does. If you are buying at this price point, do not let anyone build a homestead saving into your carrying-cost estimate as though it were meaningful.

One thing this page will not give you, and the reason is not laziness. No association dues figure, reserve balance, insurance premium or special assessment history exists in any public record for any Florida condominium before its declaration records, and for these three none has recorded. On nine-to-eighteen-unit waterfront buildings the per-unit share of a roof, a seawall or an elevator is carried by very few owners. That number will very likely exceed the tax line, and it is the number to chase hardest.

The practical version: the tax side is clean, high, and rising, and you can compute it to the dollar. The association side is unknowable from outside and is probably larger. Get the proposed budget and reserve schedule for the specific condominium, in writing, and read them inside your rescission window rather than after it.

This is a barrier island and the hazard record says so, but with more nuance than the label suggests. The parcels are in flood zone AE with a base flood elevation of about 9 feet, on an effective panel dated 2009. There is no velocity zone, no limit of moderate wave action line and no frontal dune designation. That distinction matters to an engineer and to an insurer: this is still-water flooding rather than breaking-wave exposure, and it is why the construction requirements here are not the oceanfront ones.

On surge the site behaves better than its reputation and worse than the mainland. The evacuation zone is B. The county surge layers show the site dry at categories one and two and inundated at three, four and five, while the mainland control stays dry at all five. Site grade derives to roughly four to five feet, which keeps it dry through three feet of sea level rise on the published surfaces, where a mainland control we ran the same day floods at one foot. Being a little higher than the water is worth more than being a little further from it.

The postcode claim record is the clearest statement of the island premium. This postcode records about 446 federal flood insurance claims and about $4.87 million paid, against about 2,084 federal assistance registrations. The mainland control postcode records about 784 claims and about $9.20 million paid against about 10,477 registrations. Normalise those and the island files roughly five times the flood claims per storm registration that the mainland does. The mainland gets the storm; the island gets the water.

So the insurance instruction here is the opposite of the one on an inland page. Flood cover is not optional in substance here even where it is not mandated, and the building's own master policy and its deductible structure will matter more to your annual cost than the tax line does. On a nine-unit building the per-owner share of a windstorm deductible is a large number. Ask for the intended master policy structure and the deductible before you sign.

On schools the assignment is identical for all three sites. The island's own kindergarten-through-eighth centre, a Miami Beach middle school and Miami Beach Senior High. Confirm with the district before contracting, since the published boundary layers carry older modification dates.

Ownership in the nearest recently completed building is the number that tells you what this market is. A 2025-completed comparable in this town runs about 6.67 per cent homesteaded. The single-family control we ran the same day came back at about 83.70 per cent. So roughly one unit in fifteen is somebody's declared permanent home, against roughly five in six across the causeway.

Price that honestly rather than emotionally. A building where almost nobody is homesteaded is a building where most owners are not there most of the year, and where a proposed assessment is decided by people weighing it against a second home rather than a residence. On a nine-unit association that dynamic is concentrated into a very small room. It is not a reason to avoid the category. It is a reason to know which of the three buildings you are joining, and who else is in it.