About Brevard County-Melbourne Florida

Melbourne

Historically, the place that gives this entire area its “name” is Melbourne, the oldest and best-known community on what Floridians call the “Space Coast”. Melbourne is right in the center of a long north-south corridor – coastal Brevard County – that is sandwiched between the St. Johns River Basin to the West and the Atlantic Ocean. It stretches from Palm Bay and other smaller communities in the south through Melbourne, West Melbourne, and Melbourne Village in central Brevard to Viera, Cocoa and Titusville in the north.

And it includes a half dozen beach communities on one long, fabulous barrier island stretching from Sebastian Inlet to Cape Canaveral. This “greater Melbourne” is one of the most rapidly growing residential areas in Florida, and it currently boasts the fifth most rapidly appreciating home property values in the entire United States [USA Today, Sept 2, 2005]!

Yet Melbourne itself is reminiscent of an older not so built up Florida.
The main streets are wide and the city is well maintained. It has Arts, Fine Dining Health and Educational facilities that compare with the best Florida’s larger cities offer. It’s just an hour from Orlando and three hours from Miami.

The location makes anywhere in the state very accessible. Even remote Key West is just a 5 or 6 hour drive. As to Outdoor and recreational opportunities, in my opinion it’s one of the best places in Florida. The beaches are not jammed, there is plenty of access and it’s not wall to wall development.

When you approach the Ocean over the high bridge across the Indian River (the Intra-Coastal Waterway or ICW), your view is sweeping. It is not blocked by condos and hotels, thanks to strict zoning laws enacted well before the current rapid growth and development. For one thing, there are 3- and 4-story height limits, unlike what you find throughout much of South Florida.

For another, there is lots of easy to find, easy to use “forever” beach access. Before development there was conservation, and Melbourne and its beachside communities have some of the nicest public beaches in all of Florida

Melbourne also has a great Old-Town, downtown area with specialty shops, antique stores, theaters, restaurants and more. There are dining places overlooking both the Indian River Lagoon (the IntraCoastal) and the Ocean. Another Old Town section, Eau Gallie, features art galleries and the county art museum.
In a recent study, with a major space employer in Melbourne, the employees had this to say.

Melbourne is a safe place to live
It has great weather and lots of sun
It’s easy to travel and get to work and there are good job opportunities..
There is a wide variety of recreational facilities.
It’s easy to get involved in the community.
It’s a great place for creative people.
Three out of four would recommend a friend or family member to relocate to Melbourne.
Melbourne has the amenities that a larger town would have yet it has a small town atmosphere.
I call it user friendly.
All that and the Real Estate is a good deal. As of this writing (summer 2005) single-family homes, minutes from the beaches can be had from 200,000 up.

Melbourne, and its landside communities of West Melbourne and Melbourne Village, plus its beachside communities of Indialantic, Melbourne Beach, and Floridana (going south), or Indian Harbor Beach and Satellite Beach (going north) is simply a great place to live. Ditto for the greater Melbourne area from Sebastian Inlet to Cape Canaveral. What a great place to relocate or retire to.

Check out the dropdown menus to the left for more information. Better yet, come down and take a look for yourself! See the google map to the upper right.

.©2006. Florida Real Estate Network Inc. All Rights Reserved

Melbourne Beach

When Ponce de Leon landed near Melbourne Beach in 1513, he became the first European to set foot in Florida.
Melbourne Beach is Brevard County's oldest beach community. It was established in 1883 by a retired Union general. Pineapples were grown there until 1895, when freezing weather wiped out crops and ended commercial farming there.
In 1921, the Melbourne Causeway was built, connecting Melbourne beach to the mainland via the town of Indialantic. In 1923 it was incorporated as a town.
The town's population oscillated until World War II, when it began growing steadily. Currently, it is largely residential, with an elementary school, some businesses, and many condominums in the unincorporated areas to the north and south.

In 2007, it was voted one of ten best bargain retirement spots in America.

This island, approximately 35 miles in length, stretches from Cape Canaveral to the north to the Sebastian Inlet (see The Sebastian Inlet State Park) to the south. Melbourne Beach is neighbored by the town of Indialantic to the north.

Personal income:2006

The median income for a household in the town was $57,035, and the median income for a family was $62,139. Males had a median income of $46,424 versus $34,028 for females. The per capita income for the town was $31,489.

Median home value was $425,500 in 2007.

Melbourne Beach is second in Brevard for per capita income and 124 out of 887 places.

Indialantic

No shirt, no shoes, no worries. There is nothing like a few days at the beach to set the world right.

No calls, no computer, no meetings. Sand on your feet, sun on your head, nothing on your mind except ... nothing. The biggest decision involves what to do this afternoon: Read? Walk on the beach? Swim in the ocean? Nap? All of the above?

No deadlines or layoffs or schedules. For your viewing pleasure, dolphins engage in synchronized swimming and pelicans perfect their dive-bombing and formation flying.

Indialantic, a little beach town near Melbourne. Indialantic, and its sister town, Melbourne Beach, are mom-and-pop kind of places, residential beach towns that once were common in Florida but became precious during the past 20 years as the state grew by 6 million residents.

People don't come to Indialantic looking for resorts or country clubs or honky-tonks. They come for the beach in its most basic sense--that wonderful place where the land meets the sea and the sea reaches out to the sky. The approach is simple: Sit down and enjoy it.

This vacation, we weren't interested in sightseeing or hiking or visiting museums or dashing from here to there by car. We wanted to plop down on the beach and stare at the ocean, a simple pursuit that is stupendously soothing. We wanted to devour books and magazines. We wanted to sip margaritas in the afternoon and doze by the pool.

A beach town such as Indialantic is ideal for such lazing. Overhead, the performance is continuous. Every morning, the steadfast sun awakens from the sea in a demonstration as spectacular as it is eternal. Many afternoons in the summer months, billowing clouds assemble into huge dark fists that soon hammer the air with lightning and unleash a river of rain. The demonstration of nature's might is magnificent and makes Central Florida the lightning capital of North America.

The storms aren't a threat, though, as long as you plan for them and stay out of their way: You don't want to be the tallest object on an open beach as a lightning storm swoops in.

Indialantic occupies a slice of the barrier island stretched as thin as taffy as it dangles down from Cape Canaveral 25 miles to the north. Rising only 10 feet above sea level between the Indian River and the ocean, the mile-wide town must stand on its tiptoes to stay above water when the occasional storm stirs up the Atlantic.

But most days are quiet in the neighborhood. There are no high-rise condos to block the view of the sea and blight the landscape. Most structures are two stories, a few rise to four stories.

Except for the mile or so of businesses lining U.S. Highway 192 and a few small hotels near the ocean, most of the buildings are houses. In other words, College Park by the Sea. If the ocean instead of Interstate 4 ran down the east side of College Park, the Orlando neighborhood would be Indialantic.

The leisurely pursuits of residents and visitors alike are flavored with salt air: surfing, surf-fishing, boating, kayaking, swimming. Only 16 miles down A1A is Sebastian Inlet, where the Indian River meets the Atlantic. The inlet is a favorite spot for surfers and fishermen.

During the summer months, the beaches of south Brevard County attract visitors from the sea: thousands of female sea turtles lumber ashore to bury eggs in sandy nests before returning to the waves. Park rangers lead small tour groups on "turtle walks" during June and July. The walks are so popular that reservations must be made weeks in advance.

It was during the decade of the 1920s that Florida became a tourist destination. Carl Fisher created Miami Beach and hyped the city in the national press. He popularized the notion of a vacation at the beach, easy and carefree. Florida, the land of sunshine, was booming. The ocean and the Gulf of Mexico lured visitors from across the South and Northeast.

Indialantic was born of the sun and the sea too. A bridge from Melbourne on the mainland was completed in 1921.

Nowadays the town of 3,800 residents is not so much a tourist destination as it is a slice of seaside suburbia. Which is exactly what makes it so pleasant to visit.

By Ken Clarke | Travel correspondent

Ken Clarke writes for the Orlando Sentinel, a Tribune Co. newspap

Satellite Beach

Just south of Patrick Air Force Base, Satellite Beach is centrally located within Brevard County. Because of its location, Satellite Beach is a favorite of military families and those loving the beach.

The city was first incorporated in 1957, and currently 10,938 people call it home. The impact of the space program and Patrick Air Force Base has contributed greatly to the development of Satellite Beach.

Satellite Beach has a wide range of neighborhood developments, including the upscale, exclusive community of Tortoise Island. The area's location provides for great outdoor recreation including boating, fishing, and trips to the beach. Conveniently situated between two major causeways, residents have easy access to shops, malls, restaurants and area golf courses on the mainland as well as within the city.

Given its beauty, location, great schools, and recreational opportunities, Satellite Beach has become a haven for those wanting it all.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Residents of Satellite Beach typically are affluent married couples between the ages of 45 and 64, and receive their income from salaries, rental properties, interest, dividends, retirement funds, or pensions. Many are business owners or managers. They live in suburban single-family homes valued above the national average. For entertainment, Satellite Beach residents typically play racquet sports, golf, visit museums, and travel.

Cocoa Beach

Cocoa Florida is really two areas, a beach town and a mainland town separated by yet a third town. And geographic terminology can be somewhat confusing too. Let’s try to sort it out for you!Cocoa Beach is a town on the barrier island located between the Atlantic Ocean and the Banana River Lagoon on Florida's Central East Coast, just south of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.

The city of Cocoa is on the western (mainland) side of the Indian River. Merritt Island, a long pointed piece of land and town parsing inland bay or lagoon waters into the Indian (Westside) and Banana (Eastside) “rivers” separates Cocoa from Cocoa Beach. Got that?

Cocoa Beach
This beach town has made it to the radar screen of most Americans with any knowledge of Florida. Like many of the towns in the area, it was more or less a service town for NASA and a nearby air force base, but has now really found its identity as Orlando’s beach, a popular resort town, and a main center of Space Coast night life.

Just six miles long and mostly less than one mile wide, Cocoa Beach is really an adventure in diversity. You can swim, surf, cruise out to sea on a gambling boat, catch a cruise to the Bahamas, enjoy the 800’ long Cocoa Beach Pier, choose fine dining or a beach joint, listen to music, find an art gallery or fly a kite. The place is laid back.

Other options here range from watching a space launch from the beach with hundreds if not thousands of folks from all over the world, to the intensely personal solitude of watching/photographing marine and bird life in their natural habitats. And then there’s good golf, boating, and fishing too.

When thinking about real Estate here, it helps to remember that Cocoa Beach is both a residential community and a tourist destination. The base population is just over 13.000 but it grows to as high as 30,000 during the tourist high season (January through March) and on many weekends.

The City of Cocoa
Located west of Merritt Island, this small multicultural city has a population of just over 17,000 and fronts 4 miles of the Indian River. The city was long a bedroom community for various NASA facilities and Patrick Air Force Base, but it’s in the process of reinventing itself. It’s still that, but it’s also a destination, a great place to live, and you can even commute to Orlando if you want to live here and work there. It’s got its own great shopping and other good shopping varieties at nearby Viera on the mainland side or Cocoa Beach or Merritt Island. 
Recreational opportunities abound too: They include boating, fresh water fishing on the nearby St. Johns River and salt water fishing in the Indian River and the Atlantic Ocean, golf, and minor league and major league baseball spring training. Because of its mainland location, Cocoa also has great access to Canaveral National Seashore (north of the Cape), to the NASA space complex at Cape Canaveral, and to nearby wilderness areas.

Cocoa has a unique downtown historic area which is referred to as Cocoa Village. Over 60 restaurants, art galleries, clubs, theater and unique shops in a great atmosphere make this an enjoyable place to spend a day or an evening for residents as well as tourists. Most weekends in Cocoa Village there are street celebrations, art exhibits, parties and fund-raisers.

All this and Orlando is a straight shot (about 45 minutes) on the Beeline expressway-highway 528. This proximity means that you have easy access to the smorgasbord of entertainment that a major metropolitan center can offer, including concerts, dining, sports, and other entertainment activities. Orlando’s major international airport is only about 30 minutes away; Melbourne’s, easier to use because it’s smaller, is about the same distance.

Cocoa really lets you have your cake and eat it too. World famous beaches, fishing, entertainment and shopping are right here or nearby. You can work locally, or easily commute to Melbourne or Orlando. This plus a quality lifestyle in a small town atmosphere makes Cocoa a stand out community. To top it all off, real Estate here still offers a good range of options and prices.

For more stats countywide (Brevard) go to the Melbourne general info links.
For Real Estate information and related businesses see the Real Estate section.“Think about the possibilities of living in an area where most people go for vacation.”

.©2006. Florida Real Estate Network Inc. All Rights Reserved