Southwest Ranches — photography to follow
What Southwest Ranches costs on the public record — recorded sales, not asking prices.
Key Takeaways
- ⭐⭐ Prices are up 342% from the 2009–12 trough — Median recorded sale price across the parcels we pulled went from $520,000 in 2009–12 to $2,300,000 in 2024–26. Per square foot, $164 to $566 — up 245%. Those are 61 and 55 qualified sales respectively, on the Broward County record.
- Most of the move happened in three years — Between 2017–20 and 2021–23 the median went from $780,000 to $1,441,100 — up 84.8%, on 131 and 117 sales. The pandemic land rush hit an equestrian estate town about as hard as it hit anywhere in South Florida.
- ⭐ Your tax bill will not look like your neighbour’s. It will be roughly double — Across the houses in our sample, the county’s assessed value is a median of just 47.6% of market value. Florida’s assessment caps hold long-tenured owners far below market, and the cap resets to your purchase price when you buy.
- The county classifies parcels here as “horses with residence” — Not a marketing phrase — a Florida property use code. Of the 941 parcels we pulled, 455 are zoned Rural Ranches, 323 Rural Estate and 97 Agricultural Estate: 93% of the sample.
- The houses are big and they are not new — Living area 900 to 18,925 square feet, median 3,088. Year built 1957 to 2025, median 1985 — and the 1970s is the single largest decade in the sample. This is not a new-build market.
- Nearly a billion dollars of houses in a third of the town — The 496 parcels in our sample that carry a house have a combined 2026 market value of $990,942,320, median $1,602,310, top $10,704,510.
- 🔴 This page is a large sample, not a census, and every number says so — Broward County publishes no municipality-wide query we can reach. These figures come from 941 parcels swept from 28 named roads — on the order of a third of the town. No town-wide total is claimed anywhere below.
Southwest Ranches, Broward County, Florida — ZIP codes 33330, 33331 and 33332 | Neighborhood: South Florida neighbourhoods
Southwest Ranches is a town of roughly thirteen square miles on the eastern edge of the Everglades in southwest Broward County, incorporated in 2000 specifically to keep itself rural. It has no traffic lights on most of its roads, no sidewalks by design, acre-plus lots as the default, and horses as a permitted land use rather than an eccentricity. It is also, on the county record, one of the strongest-performing residential markets in South Florida over the past fifteen years.
🔴 A note on method before any numbers. The Broward County Property Appraiser publishes no municipality-wide query we can reach, so a complete census of this town is not available to us. What follows is built on 941 parcels swept from 28 named roads and filtered to the town, with the full county record pulled for each one. That is on the order of a third of Southwest Ranches. Every count below is a count within that sample and is labelled as one. No town-wide total is claimed. Medians and percentages are sample statistics on samples large enough to mean something — 494 recorded sales and 496 houses.
What Southwest Ranches is, on the county record
Of the 941 parcels:
| Zoning district | Parcels |
|---|---|
| RR — Rural Ranches | 455 |
| RE — Rural Estate | 323 |
| A-1 — Agricultural Estate | 97 |
| Community Facility | 26 |
| Recreation / open space and water features | 16 |
Eight hundred and seventy-five of the 941 — 93% — sit in a rural, estate or agricultural district. That is not a description of the atmosphere; it is the legal classification of the land, and it is what stops the town becoming another Broward subdivision grid.
⭐ The Florida property use codes are better evidence still, because they describe what the land is actually doing. The sample carries:
- 451 single-family parcels, and a further 45 recorded as “house with guest house”
- 72 parcels classified Grazing Land Soil Capability Class IV, and 35 more classified “Grazing Land Class IV — horses with residence”
- 13 classified ornamentals or miscellaneous agriculture with residence and 10 as orchard groves with residence
- 48 vacant residential parcels, plus 12 vacant residential with an extra feature
- 98 right-of-way parcels — the roads and drainage themselves
“Horses with residence” is a tax classification, not a slogan. If you want to know whether a place is genuinely equestrian rather than equestrian-themed, that is where to look, and Southwest Ranches passes.
The town spans three ZIP codes — 33330, 33331 and 33332 — and shares mailing addresses with neighbouring Davie and Hollywood in places, which is one reason its property data is so often reported wrongly.
What it costs, and what it cost
The Broward record holds 494 qualified, single-parcel, arm’s-length sales above $100,000 across our sample. Deeds covering more than one parcel are excluded, because in a town of multi-acre holdings they are common and they wreck a median.
| Period | Sales | Median price | Median $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005–08 | 23 | $698,000 | $251 (12) |
| 2009–12 — the trough | 61 | $520,000 | $164 (45) |
| 2013–16 | 107 | $633,000 | $219 (78) |
| 2017–20 | 131 | $780,000 | $256 (95) |
| 2021–23 | 117 | $1,441,100 | $407 (88) |
| 2024–26 | 55 | $2,300,000 | $566 (39) |
From the 2009–12 trough to today: the median price is up 342.3% and the median price per square foot is up 245.1%. Those are fifteen years and, at the two ends, 61 and 55 recorded transactions.
But look at where the move actually happened. Between 2017–20 and 2021–23 the median went from $780,000 to $1,441,100 — up 84.8% in three years, on 131 and 117 sales. Land, space and distance from a city centre were exactly what 2021 was buying, and this town is made of all three.
⚠️ The per-square-foot column has a smaller sample behind it — only sales whose parcel carries a recorded living area — and the count is shown for each band. On multi-acre parcels, price per square foot of house is in any case a poor measure: a large part of what is being bought here is land, and the county records a median land value of $494,270 per house parcel.
The largest recent transactions on the record: $8,350,000 in July 2024 on SW 136th Avenue, $8,250,000 in August 2026 on Stirling Road, $5,050,000 in February 2025, $5,000,000 in June 2026, and $4,300,000 in June 2025 on Holatee Trail.
The tax bill nobody warns you about
⭐ This is the most practically useful number on the page and almost nobody publishes it.
Across the 496 parcels in our sample that carry a house, the county’s assessed value is a median of 47.6% of its market value. For scale, the median market value across those parcels is $1,602,310 and the median assessed value $770,270 — those two medians describe different parcels, so they do not divide to exactly 47.6%; the figure quoted is the median of each parcel’s own ratio.
That gap is Florida’s assessment caps. An owner who has held a property for years is taxed on a capped base far below what the house is worth. When the property sells, that base resets to the new market value.
So the tax figure on a listing, or the one the seller quotes you, can be less than half what you will actually pay. On a $1.6 million house here, the difference between an inherited capped assessment and a fresh one is on the order of $15,000 to $20,000 a year depending on the millage. Ask for an estimate computed from your purchase price, from the Broward Property Appraiser’s own estimator, before you write an offer — not from the current bill.
⛔ One thing we are not going to tell you: what share of homes here are owner-occupied. The Broward record’s homestead flag returns implausible results on this sample — it reports almost none as homesteaded, while the assessment gap above is exactly what a homestead cap looks like. The flag contradicts the numbers next to it, so we are not publishing a figure derived from it.
The houses: big, and older than you think
496 of the 941 parcels carry a house. Living area runs 900 to 18,925 square feet, median 3,088. Their combined 2026 market value is $990,942,320 — median $1,602,310, ranging $557,340 to $10,704,510.
| Decade built | Houses in the sample |
|---|---|
| 1950s | 1 |
| 1960s | 53 |
| 1970s | 150 |
| 1980s | 83 |
| 1990s | 99 |
| 2000s | 51 |
| 2010s | 27 |
| 2020s to date | 32 |
Median year built: 1985. The single largest decade is the 1970s.
That combination — $2.3 million median recent sale price, 1985 median build year — is the thing to understand about this market. A great many of these transactions are people paying two million dollars and more for the land, the acreage and the zoning, on which sits a house that predates Hurricane Andrew and modern building code. Only 59 of the 496 were built in 2010 or later.
What that means for you, concretely: assume the roof, windows, septic system, well and air conditioning are all live questions, get a four-point inspection, and price the renovation into the offer rather than discovering it afterwards. Many properties here are on septic and well rather than municipal services — confirm which, and get both tested.
What this page is, and what it is not
It is a large sample, not a census, and we would rather say so than imply a completeness we do not have.
Broward County exposes no municipality-scoped parcel query that we can reach. We tested the appraiser’s own city filter and found it inert — a search restricted to Southwest Ranches returned parcels in Hollywood. The county’s mapping service refuses connections. So the town was covered the only way available: 28 named roads swept individually and filtered to the town, deduplicated to 941 distinct parcels, with the full county record pulled for every one and no errors.
⚠️ And one warning that applies well beyond this page. In the course of this work we found that the Broward appraiser’s search reports a “total records found” figure that is not a total at all — it is simply the number of rows in the page you requested. Ask for 500 rows and it reports 500 whether the real answer is 500 or 5,000. Our first sweep of Griffin Road came back with 500 parcels and a reported total of 500; the true figure is 649. Every sweep behind this page was re-run with that corrected. If you have ever pulled Broward parcel counts from that search, they may be short and give no sign of it.
What that means for the figures above: the medians, the percentage changes and the distributions are sound — they rest on 494 sales and 496 houses, which is plenty. What we cannot tell you is how many parcels or houses Southwest Ranches contains in total, and we have not guessed.
Who Southwest Ranches suits, and who it does not
It suits a buyer who wants land in South Florida and is prepared to run a property rather than just live in one. Acre-plus lots, rural and agricultural zoning across 93% of the parcels we pulled, horses as a permitted use, and a town that incorporated in 2000 explicitly to prevent itself being subdivided. There is very little like it this close to Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and the zoning is the reason there will not be more of it.
It suits a buyer who wants space for a compound. Forty-five parcels in our sample are recorded as house with guest house, and the largest house on the record runs to 18,925 square feet. Multi-generational and staffed arrangements are normal here in a way they are not in a Broward subdivision.
It suits badly a buyer who wants walkability, services or a new house. There are no sidewalks by design, most services are a drive, and only 59 of the 496 houses in our sample were built in 2010 or later. If you want turnkey new construction you will mostly be buying a lot and building.
And it suits badly anyone who has not priced the true cost of ownership. Between the tax reset described above, an ageing housing stock, septic and well systems, acreage maintenance and the insurance profile of a pre-Andrew house, the gap between the purchase price and the first-year cost of ownership here is wider than in almost any other market this site covers.
Four things to establish before you commit:
- Your own projected tax bill, computed from the purchase price, using the Broward Property Appraiser’s estimator. Not the current bill.
- Septic or sewer, well or municipal water — and a test of whichever it is.
- Roof age, window rating and a four-point inspection. The median house here was built in 1985.
- What the zoning on that specific parcel actually permits — RR, RE and A-1 are three different districts with three different answers on animals, structures and subdivision.
Verified 26 August 2026 against the Broward County Property Appraiser record. 🔴 THIS PAGE IS BUILT ON A SAMPLE, NOT A CENSUS, and no town-wide total is claimed anywhere in it. The appraiser exposes no municipality-scoped parcel query reachable from here: its search’s city filter was tested and is inert (a search restricted to Southwest Ranches returned a parcel in Hollywood), its subdivision sales search returns nothing for this town, and the county’s mapping service refuses connections. The town was therefore covered by sweeping 28 named roads individually, filtering each result to the town, and deduplicating — giving 941 distinct parcels, for which the full county record was retrieved individually with zero errors. Every count above is a count within those 941. ⚠️ A defect in the appraiser’s own search was found in the course of this work and is described in the body: its “total records found” figure equals the number of rows returned in the requested page rather than the true match count, so any sweep sized at or below that page returns a silently truncated set. Every sweep behind this page was re-run with a page size above the true counts. Sale figures are qualified, arm’s-length transactions above $100,000 with multi-parcel deeds excluded via the county’s own flag. Price per square foot uses only sales whose parcel carries a recorded living area, and the count for each band is shown. ⛔ No owner-occupancy or homestead figure is published: the record’s homestead flag returns results that contradict the assessment data beside it on this sample, and a figure derived from it would be unsound. All figures are nominal. Re-check when the next tax roll publishes.
Southwest Ranches, Florida — Frequently Asked Questions
What does a home cost in Southwest Ranches?
On 55 qualified sales recorded in 2024–26 across the parcels we pulled, the median was $2,300,000, or $566 per square foot of house. The 2021–23 median, on 117 sales, was $1,441,100. Recent transactions run as high as $8,350,000.
Has Southwest Ranches appreciated?
Sharply. From the 2009–12 trough at a median of $520,000 to 2024–26 at $2,300,000 is +342.3%; per square foot, $164 to $566, +245.1%. ⭐ Most of it happened fast: between 2017–20 and 2021–23 the median rose 84.8% in three years.
How big are the lots and houses in Southwest Ranches?
Houses run 900 to 18,925 square feet, median 3,088. The land is the point: 93% of the parcels we pulled are zoned Rural Ranches, Rural Estate or Agricultural Estate, and the county records a median land value of $494,270 per house parcel. Forty-five parcels in the sample are recorded as “house with guest house”.
Can you keep horses in Southwest Ranches?
Yes — it is written into the tax roll. Beyond the rural and agricultural zoning across most of the town, the county classifies 35 parcels in our sample as “Grazing Land Class IV — horses with residence” and 72 more as grazing land. ⚠️ Rules differ between the RR, RE and A-1 districts, so confirm what the specific parcel permits.
How old are the houses in Southwest Ranches?
Older than the prices suggest. Median year built 1985, and the 1970s is the largest single decade in our sample at 150 houses. Only 59 of 496 were built in 2010 or later. Buyers are largely paying current prices for the land and the zoning, with a pre-1992 house on it.
Why will my property tax be higher than the current owner’s?
⭐ Because Florida’s assessment cap resets when a property sells. Across the houses in our sample the county’s assessed value is a median of just 47.6% of market value — $770,270 against $1,602,310. The tax figure on a listing can be less than half what you will pay. Get an estimate computed from your purchase price before you make an offer.
Is this page a complete survey of Southwest Ranches?
🔴 No, and we would rather tell you than imply otherwise. Broward County publishes no municipality-wide parcel query we can reach, so these figures come from 941 parcels swept from 28 named roads — on the order of a third of the town — with the full county record pulled for each. The medians and percentage changes rest on 494 recorded sales and 496 houses. No town-wide total is claimed anywhere on this page.
Sources and further reading
Interested in selling in Southwest Ranches?
Learn more about selling your home in Southwest Ranches with Josh Stein.
Related coverage
Part of Miami Neighborhoods.