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The soothing sight of the ocean may seem priceless — but a new study from property management company Casago shows that there’s sometimes a hefty premium to pay for properties that include beach views — and by just how much depends on the market.
In Tequesta, Florida, for instance, buyers wanting beach views can expect to pay 270.81 percent the price of an average home in the town, which is located in Palm Beach County and is the northernmost town in the Miami metropolitan area. The town commands the highest beach-view premium out of all cities analyzed by Casago.
For this study, Casago analyzed Zillow sales prices from January 2023 for properties located in coastal U.S. towns and cities and used an algorithm to calculate the premium on buying a home with a beach view in each city versus one without the view.
Any property that contained a description with “ocean,” “gulf,” “partial gulf,” “direct ocean,” “ocean view,” or “direct gulf front” was considered to have a beach view for the purposes of the study. U.S. states that do not disclose home sale price data were not included in the study.
In seven different U.S. cities, a beach view can more than double the price of a home — and all of those seven cities are located in Florida: Tequesta (270.81 percent), Naples (190.24 percent), Delray Beach (174.50 percent), Bonita Springs (152.98 percent), Boca Raton (149.72 percent), Vero Beach (142.26 percent) and Deerfield Beach (137.23 percent).
The Florida town of Fisher Island takes the cake when it comes to the priciest beach-view properties, with a median price of $6.1 million for beach-view homes.
However, California cities dominate the list of top 10 cities with the priciest beach-view homes with Montecito, Del Monte Forest, Malibu, Del Mar, Newport Beach, Manhattan Beach, Laguna Beach and Carmel-by-the-Sea all making the list with median beach-view property prices between $3 million to $5.99 million. The only other city that made the top 10 most expensive beach-view property list was Nantucket, which had a median beach-view property price of $3.5 million.
Credit: Casago
Buyers who are looking for a more economical beach view will want to turn to the Mid-Atlantic. In particular, buyers will find bargains on beach-view homes in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the market with the least expensive beachfront properties, with the average beach-view home costing just $130,000.
Despite laying claim to properties with the most expensive beach views, Florida also holds some of the cities with the least expensive beach views, including Daytona Beach (with a median beach-view property price of $239,000) and Carrabelle (with a median beach-view property price of $267,000).
The Sunshine State also has the greatest disparity between median prices in the least- and most-expensive coastal cities, at a difference in median prices of beach-view properties in Fisher Island and Daytona Beach of $5.861 million.
By contrast, in Georgia, the median price of a beach-view property in its least expensive coastal city — Saint Simons Island (median of $615,000) — and its most expensive coastal city — Jekyll Island (median of $695,000) — is only $80,000.
Credit: Casago
When shopping for beach-view properties, buyers should also take care to remember a number of additional costs are involved with such properties aside from a premium for the view. Those expenses include higher insurance premiums and maintenance costs due to erosion from saltwater and often damage from hurricanes.
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