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

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Merritt Island

Merritt Island was originally an island and is still referred to as one. Because of the construction of the Crawlerway for the NASA Space Shuttle to move to the launch pad over the Banana Creek in the north, it has been connected to a mainland peninsula. To the west and south it is separated by the Indian River Lagoon and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The east side of Merritt Island splits and is divided by Syke's Creek and New Found Harbour. They, in turn, are separated by the Banana River Lagoon from Cocoa Beach, Florida.

To the north, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, along with a narrow barrier island that make up Canaveral National Seashore, are an unpopulated protected buffer area for the space shuttle launching site of Kennedy Space Center. The area is a wildlife magnet drawing huge sums of migratory birds and more resident wildlife including, alligators, manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, bald eagles, ospreys, bobcats, and the rumor of the elusive Florida panther.

To its south and east, the Island is linked by the Merritt Island Causeway and the NASA Causeway to the beaches of the barrier island that run from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station opposite the southside of the Kennedy Space Center, past the cruise ship docks at Port Canaveral onward to Cocoa Beach, Florida and Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. To the west, the island connects to mainland Brevard County by the Max A. Brewer Causeway to Titusville, Florida and by the Emory L. Bennett Causeway and Merritt Island Causeway to Cocoa, Florida, and Pineda Causeway, just north of Melbourne, Florida.

Merritt Island's recent history dates back into the mid-1800s and centers around the growth of citrus, stressing the cultivation of pineapples and oranges. The famous Indian River oranges and grapefruits come from this sandy area. The Island became a huge draw in the 1950s and '60s as the Space Race took off and NASA expanded. The construction of a barge canal to the Intracoastal Waterway from the Atlantic Ocean cut off the northern half of the Island for many years and to this day remains slightly rural with cattle pastures still holding on to some land. Now though a 4-lane highway connects to the Space Center, moving workers rapidly from the more densly populated central and southern sections of the Island. The small towns of Merritt Island vanished with the coming of the Space Age, towns like Georgiana, Courtney, Tropic, Fairyland, Orsino, Angel City, Wilson and Indianola now only live on in the names of streets and historic churches. The area now belongs to no official city, however the central part of Merritt Island is home to the majority of the population and includes the local high school, library, and shopping district.

With the lack of a municipal government Merritt Island is subject to the care of Brevard County and the double-edged sword that it provides. There are no city taxes and only minimal county police coverage. However, without a local governing body developers have transformed much of the character of the wetlands, coastal marshes, and orange groves that were so dominant even just 15 years ago. Today there is a lack of local parks, public space, and road infrastructure and improvements are far behind schedule for an area of this size.

With Merritt Island's central location within Brevard County the region is a commercial economic hub with the crowded Beaches to the east and the older mainland cities of Rockledge and Cocoa to the west.

To its south and east. Merritt Island is linked by bridges and causeways to the beaches of the barrier island that run from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station opposite the south side of the Kennedy Space Center. past the cruise ship docks at Port Canaveral onward to Cocoa Beach and Indian Harbor Beach. To the west. the island connects to mainland Brevard County by a series of causeways. to Titusville. Cocoa and just north of Melbourne. Merritt Island is also Just 45 minutes from major Orlando attractions, Merritt Island offers its own attractions. Providing the closest accommodations to a launch from Kennedy Space Center or a trip to the KSC visitor's complex to view the space shuttle, see a rocket, and learn the history of space flight -- Merritt Island is the best place to stay. For more Island fun you can visit the local parks and recreation areas, including Kiwanis's Island, and many boat launch locations. If you want to just relax and enjoy the sights and sounds of the Island, local entertainment and restaurants provide for every taste from ethnic to a more classical fare.

Local shopping is very convenient with areas that include the outdoor Grove Street Shopping District; the indoor air conditioned comfort of the Merritt Square Mall, and numerous major retail chain stores, including Circuit City, Home Depot, Office Depot, Toys R Us, Target, Wal-Mart and others.

Information from Wilkepedia

Palm Bay

Palm Bay is a growing community of approximately 100,000 that sits just south of Melbourne and in the Southeast portion of Brevard County or , “The Space Coast.” It includes large tracts of land both east and west of I-95, some frontage on the Indian River Lagoon (which is the ICW or Intracoastal Waterway), and on the east shades into adjoining (and currently more rural) residential areas of Malabar, Grant, and Micco extending south to Sebastian.

The whole area is basically new and is growing at a rapid pace. It’s a young city with an average age of 37 and an average household income over $40,000. New home construction at affordable prices is popping up everywhere. As of August 2005 there are some new homes and condos for under $200,000.

Palm Bay represents not just good real Estate value for prospective homeowners, but also other opportunities which those of you considering relocating to Florida may find attractive. For example, the City of Palm Bay is looking for commercial and industrial development to help balance the residential development that has already occurred within the City.

Finally, for information on employment opportunities please see the Melbourne, Brevard County employment page.
As a place to work and live, Palm Bay has a lot going for it. If you are thinking about relocating here, consider:

Palm Bay and its adjoining areas enjoy some 72 miles of pristine Atlantic coastline, all of it dotted with various public beaches accessible north of Palm Bay from causeway bridges at Melbourne and Eau Gallie or south at the smaller SR510 bridge across the Indian River Aquatic Reserve at about the point of the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge. This is a beautiful area.

Palm Bay has quite an incredible range of both indoor and outdoor recreational opportunities in addition to these big Atlantic beaches, including sailing, water-skiing, fishing, biking and tennis, golf, hiking, horseback riding and surfing, walking and birding.

With 169 parks, 23 golf courses, and 30 marinas throughout the Area, and not to mention several colleges and universities located nearby and offering diverse educational opportunities, you won’t be bored.

Oh, and one more thing. A quirky and quite wonderful distinction that sets Palm Bay apart from a lot of the Space Coast is its seemingly infinite variety of ethnic foods.

If dining out is something you like to do, restaurant choices range from Middle Eastern to Jamaican to Italian and French and much more. And if that’s not enough, there’s still other choices available in historic downtown Melbourne, a few minutes drive away.

Last but not least, if you (for some reason) need a big city fix, well, Orlando is just under an hour away. For access to the rest of the country and the world, Melbourne International Airport is about 20 minutes away.

For more stats on Palm Bay, please go to http://www.city-data.com/city/Palm-Bay-Florida.html
For more stats countywide (Brevard) go to the Melbourne general info links on this Website.
For Real Estate information and related businesses see the Real Estate section on this Website.

“Think about the possibilities of living in an area where most people go for vacation.”

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

Titusville

Titusville is an interesting situation. The city, right now, is reinventing itself. Titusville can lay claim, with considerable justification, to being the original city to give the entire area the name “Space Coast”. Both men and women of every possible NASA job description, and in the greatest numbers, chose Titusville as their place to call home.
Other choices, of course, were Cocoa and Melbourne, but Titusville had pride of place: it was closer, easier to access, and had everything you needed. As time passed, the “center of gravity” for the entire area drifted down the Coast towards Melbourne. It seems now that things have come full circle. Perhaps some of the best values – for buying, for investing – for the moment can be found here in Titusville.
The city has some extraordinary Indian River waterfront areas and is, as we speak, involved in multiple processes to figure out what is their highest and best use. Stay tuned, for the discussions are lively.
.Titusville Florida sits in the northeast corner of Brevard County, on the mainland, along the Indian River, with I-95 and the St. John’s River National Wildlife Refuge as a kind of western edge. It sits just across the tidal Indian and Banana Rivers from the Kennedy Space Center’s rocket launch sites, and provides by far the best uninterrupted view of the nation’s blast-off space activities you can buy into anywhere on the Space Coast.

Titusville – for now anyway – is a small city of just over 40,000 that blends the best of nature with science and technology. The average year round temperature is 79 and it enjoys 295 days of sunshine.
With an average home sale at $204,000 as of August 2005, Titusville is absolutely still affordable. (This will change.) Last but not least, it has a great climate for business and lifestyle.
If you are relocating to Florida, I can think of a number of good reasons to look seriously at Titusville’s unique variant of a relaxed yet connected Florida lifestyle, but here are several good ones:

Titusville really is the Gateway to the Space Coast. You must go through it to get to the Kennedy Space Center and various other space-related attractions and museums. If you want to feel connected to America’s future in the cosmos, hey, this is a cool place to be, like no other.
But it’s a relatively quiet place. Titusville is “behind” Cape Canaveral, and is and will remain fairly compact because of its unique geography, unlike the more spread-out megalopis-in-becoming area south of the Cape and SR 528 (on a map, the area stretching from Cocoa through Melbourne to Palm Bay).
For example, “Titusville’s beach” is not a happening place like Cocoa Beach; instead it’s the Canaveral National Seashore, and the pristine, undeveloped, and forever-wild 24-mile stretch of barrier-island sand and palms known as Apollo, Klondike, and Playalinda Beaches.
And that’s not all: In addition to 37 local parks, there is the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. This incredible wildlife preserve has over 140,000 acres and is home to 16 threatened or endangered mammals and some of the world's finest birding. See www.dhphotoart.com Florida has one of the best networks of hiking, biking, and equestrian trails in the United States, and this area has more than its fair share of them, and easy access to a bunch more

Some of the best light-tackle fishing in America is also right at your backdoor, among the myriad islands of Mosquito Lagoon and the upper reaches of the Indian River. This is sea trout, redfish, and even snook country.
Your outdoor recreation of choice is paddleboating? Again, some of the best canoe and kayak trails to be found anywhere in North America are right here. And much of the nearby St. John’s river basin has been preserved from further development.
Despite all this incredible feast of pristine outdoor recreational options, you can work in Orlando! Or you can play in Orlando! Orlando – the big city, with all that implies for jobs, for shopping, for dining, for the Arts, for access to colleges and a rich variety of higher education, for the fun of professional sports, and for other entertainment choices, is just a 45-minute drive from Titusville.
Central Florida is a veritable smorgasbord of interesting neighborhoods, backcountry roads, beach communities, whatever. Again, Titusville’s location is uniquely convenient.
So is Orlando International Airport, with nonstop flights to most of the USA and Europe. Parking is abundant, convenient, and inexpensive. Most people in the USA’s big metropolitan centers would love this kind of hassle-free convenience! (By the way, if you fly your own plane or have a business that does, the well-equipped Space Center Executive Airport is right here.)
If all this sounds appealing to you, check it out: for more information on Titusville, at
http://www.titusville.com/about/index.htm

For more stats countywide (Brevard) go to the Melbourne general info links.
For Real Estate information and related businesses see the Real Estate section.

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

Viera

Situated on former Duda Ranch and scrub forest land, Viera is a master planned community in Brevard County, Florida, located in the Space Coast region. It is unincorporated.[1] Viera is home to many of the county's government buildings. It also contains the Space Coast Stadium, home field for the Brevard County Manatees, former spring training home to the Florida Marlins, and now training home to the Washington Nationals. The population of Viera (as of 2000) is approximately 19,083. Viera represents the perfect lifestyle, featuring nature trails meandering between neighborhoods and the best of tropical Florida within an easy drive.
The Brevard Zoo is just south of Wickham Road and concerts and entertainment events are ten minutes away at the Maxwell C. King Center for the Performing Arts.
A day at the beach is just fifteen minutes away and easy day trips reveal the best of old Florida glories alongside exciting entertainment venues that are second to none.
Nearby, discover fishing, boating, wind surfing, sailing, golf, tennis, biking, hiking, bird watching and shuttle viewing...it's all possible here.