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Place dossier plate
SheetFL-PALM-BAY-FL · Palm Bay, FL 125,273 pop · income 46th pct · 45 tracts
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Palm Bay
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Palm Bay on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Allentown · lowest
53,403
Allentown · lowest
53,403 median HH income
39.7% of the leader · rank #1
Austell · near
67,500
Austell · near
67,500 median HH income
50.2% of the leader · rank #2
Nicholasville · near
67,514
Nicholasville · near
67,514 median HH income
50.2% of the leader · rank #3
Palm Bay · this city
67,521
Palm Bay · this city
67,521 median HH income
50.3% of the leader · rank #4
Galeton · near
67,521
Galeton · near
67,521 median HH income
50.3% of the leader · rank #5
Port Vincent · near
67,538
Port Vincent · near
67,538 median HH income
50.3% of the leader · rank #6
Thousand Oaks · highest
134,367
Thousand Oaks · highest
134,367 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Palm Bay on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 125,273.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Palm Bay - the verdict
Measured against every US city with at least 1,000 residents, Palm Bay lands in the 46th percentile for household income and the 50th percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
46th
percentile, household income
55th
percentile, home value
73rd
percentile, median rent
50th
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Palm Bay, FL
Palm Bay is a mid-sized U.S. city in Florida, home to 125,273 residents per U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Palm Bay households earn a median of $67,521 annually, below the median for U.S. cities on this measure, with a poverty rate of 8.2%. Home values in Palm Bay run a median of $248,000, and the median resident age is 41.3 years. About 22.6% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 56.6% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
In 2024, 3,062 residential building permits were authorized in Palm Bay (Building Boom), up 292% from five years earlier, per Census BPS data. Palm Bay reports a comparatively low crime rate: the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program logs 1364.6 total incidents per 100,000 residents here, below the national average (agency reporting is voluntary, so this measures reporting activity, not a definitive danger score). NOAA puts Palm Bay's yearly average temperature at 72.6°F with 55.5 inches of precipitation per year.
Florida carries a cost-of-living premium: the state registers 103.4 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Above Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in this state is $1,526 per month. Statewide, average monthly utility bills in Florida run around $225, per EIA 2023 residential energy data. Commute times here average 25.0 minutes, with 76.5% driving alone and 9.4% working from home, per Census ACS commuting data. Natural-hazard exposure scores 75.7 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (High).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Palm Bay's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from schools and households to work and mobility to comparison shortlist to housing and income to population change to within-city variation to climate and hazard context to reported crime; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Palm Bay, city-specific coverage includes local building permits, annual population history, within-city Census tract profiles, FBI reported-crime rates, commute-mode shares, matched public-school count.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
Question 1
What does the education layer cover for Palm Bay?
The NCES join finds 20 public schools within the city match. 22.6% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
What does the journey to work look like in Palm Bay?
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. No single mode completely explains the work trip here. The mix is more useful than a one-number commute grade, especially when comparing places where transit, walking, and remote work divide the non-driving share differently.
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 76.5%. The reported mean trip to work is 25.0 minutes.
Which cities make useful reference points for Palm Bay?
Within Florida, the closest population matches are Lehigh Acres (127,391 residents, $62,330 income); West Palm Beach (119,508 residents, $69,261 income); Spring Hill (118,814 residents, $66,557 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Allentown, PA (125,320 residents); Thousand Oaks, CA (125,676 residents); Meridian, ID (124,865 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
That layer breaks the citywide income, rent, and home-value medians into smaller Census geographies, which can reveal differences that one municipal median necessarily hides. A tract is a statistical area, not a locally defined neighborhood or a promise about conditions on a particular block. Start with the city profile for the broad comparison, then use the tract layer to test whether the same housing and income pattern is consistent across the city. Large within-city spreads are a reason to avoid treating any citywide median as a universal resident experience.
PlainCities matches 45 Census tracts to this city.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Housing and income
How far does income reach against housing in Palm Bay?
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 3.7 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 8.2%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. Income and home value move within the same broad scale here. The useful next check is not a generic affordability label, but whether similar-size cities offer a materially different income, housing, or commute trade-off.
Household income
$67,521
Home value
$248,000
Value / income
3.7×
City-level Census ACS 2023 medians. The ratio divides two separate medians and is descriptive only.
Is Palm Bay growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Recent estimates point upward. Growth can increase housing demand and service needs, but the permit record must move in the same direction before calling it a supply response; the two series measure different things.
Census PEP estimates show the population grew by +27,933 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +23.2% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 3,062 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Period change
+23.2%
2025 estimate
148,092
2020 estimate
120,159
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
NOAA normals put the annual mean temperature at 72.6°F, with 55.5 inches of precipitation. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for Florida is 75.7 out of 100. Climate normals describe long-run weather; the FEMA score on PlainCities is a state average of county NRI inputs and combines hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and resilience.
The two sources should not be blended into one comfort or safety score. Use the climate values for baseline conditions and the risk index as a prompt to inspect specific hazards, insurance, and local emergency guidance for a particular address.
Mean temperature
72.6°F
Annual precipitation
55.5 in
FEMA risk index (state avg)
75.7
NOAA Climate Normals and FEMA National Risk Index (state-averaged on PlainCities). Hazard context is not address-level.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Palm Bay?
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1364.6 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 40% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Property rate
1017.5
Violent rate
347.2
Total reported rate
1364.6
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
Below median income · poverty 8.2% (Above-median poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
103.4 (US=100)
Above-average cost · BEA RPP 2024, Florida average
F
City profile score · Palm Bay, FL
37/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Poverty rate D
8.2%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Household income D
$67,521
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Bachelor's+ share D
22.6%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Violent crime F
347 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Cost of living F
103.4 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Palm Bay profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Poverty rate: 47/100 (D) · 8.2%
Household income: 46/100 (D) · $67,521
Bachelor's+ share: 42/100 (D) · 22.6%
Violent crime: 26/100 (F) · 347 /100k
Cost of living: 25/100 (F) · 103.4 index
Where Palm Bay sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Palm Bay's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Palm Bay highlighted among 9 peers.Read the chart values
Palm Bay, FL (this city): home $248,000, crime 1,365/100k
Allentown, PA : home $188,900, crime 1,841/100k
Thousand Oaks, CA : home $951,200, crime 1,123/100k
Meridian, ID : home $485,000, crime 718/100k
Simi Valley, CA : home $753,500, crime 1,053/100k
Vallejo, CA : home $557,500, crime 4,730/100k
Pearland, TX : home $330,900, crime 1,536/100k
West Palm Beach, FL : home $369,800, crime 2,714/100k
Coral Springs, FL : home $502,700, crime 1,230/100k
How does Palm Bay compare to other US cities?
Palm Bay measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income46% higher than other cities
Home value55% pricier than other cities
Median rent73% pricier than other cities
Safety50% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
A national percentile can hide a lot of local variation: narrowed to Florida alone, Palm Bay ranks #45 of 120 Florida cities by lowest crime rate - a different, more locally useful comparison than stacking it against the entire country.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Palm Bay against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Florida only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Florida-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Palm Bay near the bottom of Florida's cities
Among the 930 Florida cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Palm Bay ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Palm Bay only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#466 of 903
48th percentile in Florida
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 930
0th percentile in Florida
Median Home Value
#576 of 894
35th percentile in Florida
Poverty Rate
#448 of 930
51st percentile in Florida
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#551 of 930
41st percentile in Florida
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within Florida only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
46th percentile nationally for median household income · 50th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Palm Bay's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Palm Bay's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Palm Bay's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$248,00045th percentilemore affordable than 45% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
Palm Bay's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.7×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#9,624 of 15,516
More affordable than 38% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#259 of 750
Mid-size cities (50,000–199,999)
At 3.7×, Palm Bay sits in the moderate band:
national rank #9,624 of 15,516 and #259 of 750mid-size cities (50,000–199,999).
Income and home value move in the same broad scale; check same-state peers before treating the multiple as an advantage or a warning.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$67,521Palm Bay, FL median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Palm Bay, FL median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Palm Bay, FL.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)22.6%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)8.2%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)56.6%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
125,273
Median Income
$67,521
Median Home Value
$248,000
Median Age
41.3
Poverty Rate
8.2%
Labor force participation
56.6%
Bachelor's Degree+
22.6%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1364.6
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
347.2
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1017.5
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Climate
Avg Temperature
72.6°F
Annual Precipitation
55.5"
Annual Snowfall
N/A
Schools
Total Schools
20
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Palm Bay's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
120,159 residents
2021
122,976 residents
2022
129,294 residents
2023
135,798 residents
2024
141,351 residents
2025
148,092 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📈 Building Boom
Total Permits (2024)
3,062
housing units authorized
Single-Family
2,402
detached homes
Multifamily
660
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
24.4
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
782
782
0
$201.8M
2020
1,278
1,278
0
$334.1M
2021
2,486
2,486
0
$674.1M
2022
2,523
2,255
268
$749.8M
2023
2,716
2,716
0
$1060.4M
2024
3,062
2,402
660
$953.5M
Permit volume increased 292% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
25.0 minutes
Drive Alone
76.5%
Carpool
10.3%
Public Transit
1.0%
Walk
0.6%
Work from Home
9.4%
Other
2.2%
Based on 56,213 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Florida statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $225
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Florida at $225 (electricity about $145 , water and sewer about $55 ).
These are Florida statewide averages, not a meter reading for Palm Bay. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Florida's BEA cost-of-living index is 103.4 (Above Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Palm Bay is $1,526/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Florida statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 75.7 / 100 (High).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Florida statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Palm Bay sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Palm Bay compares to similar-size Florida cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NOAA Climate Normals, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.