Conventional Investment in West Palm Beach

Because Palm Beach County has the highest homeowners premium on the Florida mainland. As of March 2026, the average homeowners premium including wind ran $6,323 in Palm Beach County, ahead of Broward at $6,136 and Miami-Dade at $5,975, and second only to Monroe County statewide. Against Orange County's $3,610, that's about $2,713 a year of extra carry on an otherwise similar house. Insurance goes straight into your qualifying ratio on a conventional file, so get a real quote for the parcel before you commit to a purchase price, not a metro-average guess.

Budget by city, and don't trust the seller's tax bill. The county-wide base is 12.2580 mills, and 2025 adopted municipal rates stack on top: roughly 20.45 mills all in for the City of West Palm Beach, 18.45 in Delray Beach, 15.92 in Boca Raton, and 14.65 in Jupiter, with fire and library districts adding more in some areas. An investor gets Florida's 10% non-homestead assessment cap, not the 3% homestead cap, and that cap resets to market value on a change of ownership, so a seller's current bill understates your first full year. Pull the parcel's real millage stack from the Property Appraiser before you underwrite. DSCR uses the same carry math if your income doesn't fully document.

It can be the reason the deal doesn't qualify at all, regardless of your income. Florida law requires a milestone inspection for condo and co-op buildings three habitable stories or more by the year the building turns 30 (or 25, at a local enforcement agency's option for salt-water proximity), and every 10 years after. Associations can no longer vote to waive structural reserves, and funding now has to come from a special assessment, a line of credit, or a loan. A building behind on its inspection, its structural integrity reserve study, or its reserve funding is commonly non-warrantable for agency financing, which is a lending-industry fact, not specific to this county. Palm Beach's condo index is down 5.8% year over year and 17.0% off its late-2023 peak while single-family homes are down only 0.6%, which is the price signature of this exact problem. Confirm the association's inspection and reserve status before you write an offer.

Yes, rents are running at a series high while values sit flat to down, which is the setup that favors holding. The county-wide rent index across all property types hit $2,662 a month in June 2026, up 2.5% year over year and one dollar off the all-time series high, while the countywide home value index is down slightly over the same period. That combination widens yield on a purchase made today. It doesn't erase the carry side of the ledger: insurance and the local millage stack are what decide whether a conventional file actually qualifies, so run the real numbers for your city before you count on rent growth alone.

No. Miami-Dade is the only county in Florida with a discretionary documentary stamp surtax on deeds. Palm Beach County charges the plain statewide rate: 70 cents per $100 of consideration on the deed and 35 cents per $100 on the note or mortgage. If you've closed deals in Miami-Dade before, don't carry that extra line item into a Palm Beach County closing statement.

No, and getting this wrong overstates your rehab budget. Palm Beach County sits outside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone. The HVHZ wind-load and product-approval provisions of the Florida Building Code (2023, section 1620) apply only to Miami-Dade and Broward counties, which carry a separate, higher-cost set of window, door, roof and shutter approvals. A Palm Beach rehab builds and repairs under the general Florida Building Code, not the HVHZ regime, so don't price materials off a Miami or Fort Lauderdale bid sheet.

Our conventional investment program starts at 580. That is lower than most people expect on a fully documented file, but the score is only one gate: income has to document, and in Palm Beach County the carry lines are what usually decide qualification, since the average homeowners premium including wind runs $6,323 countywide and the City of West Palm Beach millage puts an investor near 2.04% of assessed value before fire and library adders. If the score is below 580, or the income does not document cleanly, a bank statement or DSCR file is the better route. Subject to underwriting.

Start at 20% down and then fund a first-year carry that is heavier than the seller's tax bill suggests. Leverage runs up to 80% LTV on non-owner-occupied property, so on a $400,000 West Palm Beach purchase that is up to $320,000 from us and $80,000 from you (400,000 x 80% = 320,000). Add the closing stack, then the reset: an investor gets Florida's 10% non-homestead cap, not the 3% homestead cap, and the assessment resets to market value at closing, so your first full year runs above what the seller pays today. Income is fully documented on this program. Subject to underwriting.