Highland Beach and — photography to follow
What Highland Beach costs on the public record — recorded sales, not asking prices.
Highland Beach — Area Facts
- Where
- Town of Highland Beach, Palm Beach County — the barrier island between Delray Beach and Boca Raton
- Total parcels on the roll
- 4,164
- What it is made of
- 3,691 condominiums (88.6%) · 282 single-family (6.8%) · 86 townhouses · 57 co-ops
- Condominium market value
- Median $685,000 · $125,000–$14,988,136
- Single-family market value
- Median $3,443,436 · $652,369–$39,241,369
- Townhouse / co-op median
- $902,337 / $506,500
- Homesteaded
- 1,749 of 4,164 — 42.0%
- 2026 condominium sales
- 129 warranty deeds · median $925,000
- 2026 single-family sales
- 16 warranty deeds · median $3,342,500
- Highest recorded sale
- $50,000,000 — an oceanfront estate on South Ocean Boulevard, 2024
- ⚠️ Source limit
- The county table carries one sale per parcel and no living area — see the limits section
Key Takeaways
- ⭐ Highland Beach is a condominium town with a handful of very large houses in it. Of 4,164 parcels, 3,691 are condominiums and only 282 are single-family. Fewer than seven parcels in a hundred here are a house.
- 🔴 The gap between those two markets is roughly fivefold. Median condominium market value is $685,000. Median single-family market value is $3,443,436. They are not competing for the same buyer and they do not move together.
- ⭐⭐ The bigger surprise is inside the condominium market, not outside it. Median values by building run from $389,740 at Seagate of Highland to $2,243,000 at Beach Walk East and $2,159,125 at Villa Magna. That is a 5.8× spread across buildings in a town three miles long. “A Highland Beach condo” is close to a meaningless description.
- 🔴 Fifty-eight per cent of Highland Beach is not somebody’s primary residence. Only 1,749 of 4,164 parcels are homesteaded. Among co-ops it falls to 26.3% and among condominiums to 40.3%, while single-family runs 65.6%. This is a seasonal and second-home town, and that shapes everything from association politics to how quickly things sell.
- The condominium market has stopped rising. On warranty deeds of $100,000 or more, median prices read $970,000 (2024), $965,000 (2025), $925,000 (2026). That is flat and then slightly down — but read the limits below before treating it as a trend, because the earlier years are not complete.
- The top of the market is genuinely deep. Six recorded sales at or above $27 million, topping out at $50,000,000 for an oceanfront estate on South Ocean Boulevard in 2024, against a county market value on that parcel of $39,241,369.
What Highland Beach actually is
Highland Beach is a narrow strip of barrier island in Palm Beach County, sitting between Delray Beach to the north and Boca Raton to the south, with the Atlantic on one side and the Intracoastal Waterway on the other. It is small, almost entirely residential, and it has essentially one road through it.
What the county record makes clear — and what most descriptions of the town miss — is how lopsided its housing stock is. I pulled the full Palm Beach County Property Appraiser roll for the municipality on 26 August 2026. It returns 4,164 parcels:
| Classification | Parcels | Share | Median market value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Condominium | 3,691 | 88.6% | $685,000 |
| Single family | 282 | 6.8% | $3,443,436 |
| Townhouse | 86 | 2.1% | $902,337 |
| Cooperative | 57 | 1.4% | $506,500 |
| Residential common area | 25 | 0.6% | — |
| Multifamily under 5 units | 13 | 0.3% | — |
| Everything else | 10 | 0.2% | — |
Ten parcels cover the town’s municipal buildings, two churches, a motel, two vacant lots and its parkland. That is the entire non-residential footprint. Highland Beach is a place people live, not a place people go.
The single-family stock is small and expensive. Two hundred and eighty-two houses, median market value $3,443,436, running to $39,241,369 at the top. Most of them are on South Ocean Boulevard with either ocean or Intracoastal frontage. When people talk about Highland Beach as a luxury market, they are usually talking about these, and they are under seven per cent of the town.
The spread inside the condominium market
This is the part I would want to know before looking at anything here, and it is why a town-wide median is not much use.
Grouping the 3,691 condominium parcels by their recorded declaration gives the actual buildings. The largest and the most expensive are not the same list:
| Declaration | Units on the roll | Median market value |
|---|---|---|
| Beach Walk East | 41 | $2,243,000 |
| Villa Magna | 106 | $2,159,125 |
| Toscana South | 159 | $1,538,000 |
| Trafalgar of Highland Beach | 56 | $1,404,000 |
| Highlands Place | 45 | $1,383,850 |
| Clarendon | 42 | $1,371,000 |
| Toscana North | 142 | $1,356,000 |
| Toscana West | 118 | $1,302,025 |
| Braemar Isle | 236 | $865,500 |
| Dalton Place I | 120 | $842,000 |
| Coronado at Highland Beach | 333 | $680,000 |
| Highland Beach Club | 200 | $626,250 |
| Regency Highland Club | 219 | $581,000 |
| Penthouse Towers | 134 | $515,425 |
| Ambassadors V North | 219 | $440,000 |
| 45 Ocean | 160 | $430,000 |
| Seagate of Highland 1–4 | 316 | $389,740 |
⭐ From $389,740 to $2,243,000 is a 5.8-fold spread, inside one small town. The two largest declarations — Coronado at 333 units and Seagate at 316 — sit at $680,000 and $389,740, well below the town’s single-family and townhouse medians. The three Toscana buildings together account for 419 units at medians between $1.30 and $1.54 million and are effectively a distinct sub-market of their own.
The practical consequence: if someone quotes you a Highland Beach average, ask which buildings are in it. A buyer comparing a Seagate unit to a Villa Magna unit is comparing two different products that happen to share a postcode.
Who actually owns Highland Beach
Only 1,749 of the 4,164 parcels — 42.0% — carry a homestead exemption. The remaining 58% are second homes, seasonal residences or investment property.
| Classification | Homesteaded | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Single family | 185 of 282 | 65.6% |
| Townhouse | 55 of 86 | 64.0% |
| Condominium | 1,489 of 3,691 | 40.3% |
| Cooperative | 15 of 57 | 26.3% |
That pattern is worth sitting with. The houses are lived in; the condominiums largely are not. Two out of three houses are somebody’s legal home. Three out of five condominiums are not, and among co-ops it is closer to three out of four.
This matters in ways that do not show up in a price. A building where most owners are seasonal has different attendance at association meetings, different appetite for special assessments, different pressure to fund reserves properly, and a different rhythm of listings — inventory tends to appear after the season rather than before it. If you are buying into an association here, the homestead share of the building is a fair proxy for how engaged its ownership is, and it is public.
It also has a direct financial consequence for you. A homesteaded seller has been paying tax on a capped assessed value; the town-wide medians show condominium market value at $685,000 against assessed $597,000, and single-family market at $3,443,436 against assessed $2,530,618. That cap does not transfer. On the median house that is roughly $900,000 of taxable value a buyer picks up that the seller was not paying on.
What has been selling
Restricting to warranty deeds of $100,000 or more — which removes the quit-claims, life estates and trust transfers that make up a large share of recorded activity — the record reads:
| Year | Condominium | Median | Single family | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 114 | $875,000 | 4 | $4,625,000 |
| 2024 | 131 | $970,000 | 8 | $5,262,500 |
| 2025 | 130 | $965,000 | 8 | $10,750,000 |
| 2026 to date | 129 | $925,000 | 16 | $3,342,500 |
The condominium column is the readable one. Roughly 130 sales a year, and a median that went $970,000, $965,000, $925,000 across 2024 to 2026. That is a market that stopped appreciating and has drifted down slightly — consistent with what is happening to older Florida condominium stock generally, and notable here because volume has not collapsed.
🔴 Do not read the single-family column as a trend. Four sales, then eight, then eight, then sixteen. A median of $10,750,000 on eight transactions in 2025 tells you that year happened to include several very large oceanfront trades, not that house prices tripled and then fell by two thirds. With this few sales, the median is a description of which houses sold, not of what houses are worth.
The top end is real and it is deep. The roll records six sales at or above $27 million, all single-family and all on South Ocean Boulevard: $50,000,000 in 2024, $34,700,000 in 2022, $30,000,000 in 2023, $29,500,000 in 2021, and $28,500,000 and $27,050,222 in 2025. I checked each against its own county market value and they are consistent — the $50 million parcel is valued at $39,241,369 — so these are genuine trades rather than recording artefacts.
The limits of this data, stated plainly
This is the first Highland Beach analysis on this site built from the Palm Beach County roll rather than from county-wide association statistics, and there are three limits you should know about. I would rather tell you than have you assume the numbers are stronger than they are.
One sale per parcel. The county table carries only each parcel’s most recent transaction. So 2026 is a complete year — every parcel that sold in 2026 shows a 2026 sale — but every earlier year is missing anything that has since resold. The 2023 and 2024 counts are therefore undercounts, and their medians carry a selection bias, because the properties that traded again quickly have been removed from them. The direction in the condominium column is probably real; the precise year-to-year magnitudes are not something I would defend.
No living area, so no price per square foot. The table has no building square-footage field. Every other market page on this site leads with median dollars per square foot because it is the only figure that survives differences in floorplate. I cannot compute it here, and I am not going to derive a fake one from lot acreage. Medians on this page are medians of price, with all the mix sensitivity that implies.
No qualified-sale flag. Miami-Dade and Broward both publish a flag marking a transaction arm’s-length. Palm Beach’s table does not. I have used instrument type “WD” (warranty deed) plus a $100,000 floor as the closest available filter — on 2026 alone that removes 47 quit-claims, 14 life estates, 12 trust deeds and 127 transfers recorded under $100,000. It is a good filter. It is not the county telling me the sale was arm’s-length.
What to check before you buy here
The building’s reserve study and structural inspection, before anything else. Highland Beach is overwhelmingly condominium and much of that stock dates from the late 1970s and early 1980s — the declarations above include buildings recorded in 1978, 1981 and 1982. Florida’s structural-integrity reserve rules bite hardest on exactly this kind of building. Ask for the most recent inspection and the current reserve study before you make an offer, not after.
The homestead share of the building. It is public, it is a fair proxy for how engaged the ownership is, and in a town where 58% of parcels are not primary residences it varies a great deal building to building.
Which side of the road you are on. Ocean and Intracoastal frontage are different products at different prices, and on an island this narrow the distinction is the main thing separating otherwise similar units.
What your taxes reset to. With median single-family market value at $3,443,436 against assessed $2,530,618, the gap on a long-held house is substantial and it lands on you at closing. Ask for the seller’s current bill and have your closing agent estimate the reset.
Who Highland Beach suits
It suits a buyer who wants oceanfront Palm Beach County at a condominium price. A median around $925,000 on this stretch of coast, with roughly 130 sales a year to choose from, is a genuinely accessible entry to a very good address.
It suits a seasonal owner. Practically speaking this town is built for that — 58% of it is already used that way, and the services and association structures reflect it.
It suits a house buyer with real money and patience. Two hundred and eighty-two houses, sixteen sales so far in 2026, and a top end that clears $50 million. Supply is the constraint, not demand.
It does not suit someone who wants a town. Ten non-residential parcels is not a walkable centre. Delray Beach and Boca Raton are where you go for everything.
It does not suit a buyer who assumes condominium values here are rising. They are not, on this record — $970,000 to $965,000 to $925,000. Buy the building and the location, not an appreciation assumption.
And a word to owners thinking of selling. Roughly 130 condominium sales a year across 3,691 units is a turnover rate near one unit in twenty-eight. Your competition is other units in your own building far more than it is the town, and with medians drifting down slightly, the buildings that hold value will be the ones whose reserves and inspections are in order. That documentation is now a pricing factor, not paperwork.
Verified 26 August 2026 against the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s PROPINFO record for the Town of Highland Beach — all 4,164 parcels retrieved, count reconciled against the service’s own total, covering property-use classification, subdivision, market and assessed values, homestead status, and the most recent recorded sale with its instrument type. 🔴 Three limits apply and are described in full above: the table carries one sale per parcel, so only 2026 is a complete sale year and earlier years are undercounted and mix-biased; it carries no living area, so no price per square foot is published; and it carries no qualified-sale flag, so arm’s-length transactions are approximated by warranty deeds of $100,000 or more. ⚠️ No image accompanies this page — the Media Library holds no Highland Beach, Delray Beach or Palm Beach County photography. Re-check when the next roll publishes.
Highland Beach, Florida — Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of housing is Highland Beach?
Overwhelmingly condominium. Of 4,164 parcels, 3,691 are condominiums (88.6%), 282 are single-family (6.8%), 86 are townhouses and 57 are co-ops. Only ten parcels in the entire town are non-residential.
How much does a condo in Highland Beach cost?
On warranty deeds of $100,000 or more, the median was $925,000 in 2026 on 129 sales, after $965,000 in 2025 and $970,000 in 2024. But building matters enormously: median market values run from $389,740 at Seagate of Highland to $2,243,000 at Beach Walk East.
How much does a house in Highland Beach cost?
Median market value on the 282 single-family parcels is $3,443,436, ranging to $39,241,369. In 2026 there were 16 warranty-deed sales at a median of $3,342,500. ⚠️ With this few transactions the annual median reflects which houses sold, not what houses are worth.
What is the most expensive sale recorded in Highland Beach?
$50,000,000 for an oceanfront estate on South Ocean Boulevard in 2024 — a parcel the county values at $39,241,369. Five further sales are recorded at $27 million or more, in 2021, 2022, 2023 and two in 2025.
Are Highland Beach condo prices rising?
No, on this record. Medians read $970,000 (2024), $965,000 (2025), $925,000 (2026) — flat, then slightly down, on steady volume of about 130 sales a year. ⚠️ The county table holds only each parcel’s most recent sale, so earlier years are undercounted; the direction is probably real, the exact magnitudes are not.
How many Highland Beach homes are primary residences?
Fewer than half. 1,749 of 4,164 parcels (42.0%) are homesteaded, so 58% are second homes, seasonal or investment. The split varies sharply: 65.6% of single-family homes are homesteaded, against 40.3% of condominiums and just 26.3% of co-ops.
Why is there no price per square foot on this page?
Because the Palm Beach County table this analysis is built from carries no living-area field. Every other market page on this site leads with median dollars per square foot; here it cannot be computed from the public record, and I will not derive a substitute from lot acreage and present it as the same thing.
Sources and further reading
- Palm Beach County Property Appraiser — PROPINFO parcel table, published through the county’s open GIS service (all 4,164 Town of Highland Beach parcels retrieved 26 August 2026: property-use classification, subdivision, market and assessed values, homestead flag, most recent sale date, price and instrument; count reconciled against the service total)maps.co.palm-beach.fl.us
- Palm Beach County Property Appraiser — public property searchpbcpao.gov
Buying or selling in Highland Beach?
The town-wide number is close to useless here — the buildings run from $390,000 to $2.2 million. I have the full county roll for all 4,164 parcels. Let me show you where the building you are looking at actually sits.
TALK TO JOSH ABOUT HIGHLAND BEACH
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