Pull two housing reports on North Palm Beach from the same week this summer and you get two different stories. One shows the median sale price per square foot up 49.2 percent year over year for the three months ending May 2026, even as the median sale price of a home in the village fell 4.7 percent over that same window, landing at $510,000. Another source, tracking April 2026 listings, shows price per square foot down roughly 4 to 5 percent year over year.
Read those side by side and the natural reaction is to assume one of them is wrong. Neither is. North Palm Beach is not one housing market wearing a single average. It's at least three, and which one happens to close in a given quarter decides what the blended number says, regardless of whether any individual home actually gained or lost value.
Why the Same Village Produces Contradictory Averages
A blended price per square foot only works as a signal if the mix of homes selling stays roughly constant from one period to the next. In a village where a $644,000 Intracoastal condo, a $2.7 million new build, and a $23 million gated estate can all close in the same reporting window, the mix never stays constant. Sell three luxury estates and skip the condo closings for a quarter, and the average jumps without a single owner's equity actually moving. Sell a run of condos and skip the estates, and it falls the same way.
That is the mechanism behind the Redfin and Movoto numbers pointing in opposite directions for roughly the same period. It's less a disagreement about the market and more a disagreement about which slice of the market each snapshot happened to catch.
Here's what those slices actually look like on the ground in North Palm Beach.
| Tier | What it looks like | Typical price per square foot | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intracoastal condo living | Marina-front high-rises, built in the 1970s and 80s, many renovated unit by unit | Around $333 | Old Port Cove, average sale price near $644,000 |
| New construction and infill | Builder-driven single family homes on established village streets | Roughly $900 to $1,100+ | Triple Crown Group's home at 10401 Prosperity Farms Road, listed at $2,695,000 for just over 3,000 square feet |
| Gated golf and oceanfront estates | Private club living with beach and course access | Roughly $1,173 to $2,612, depending on the reporting period | Lost Tree Village, where one Intracoastal assemblage reportedly sold for $97.5 million, about $39 million per acre |
Three tiers, three very different price ceilings, all inside a village that fits on one map.
The Condo Tier: Old Port Cove and the Marina Lifestyle
Old Port Cove sits on a 60-acre peninsula along the Intracoastal, built out between 1971 and 1982 across eight high-rise towers and one low-rise building. Recent sales there have averaged around $333 per square foot, with a full-service marina, boat slips, and Belle's Bar & Grill serving lunch and dinner daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. right on the water.
This is the tier that keeps North Palm Beach's blended average from running away entirely. A wave of condo closings pulls the village-wide price per square foot down even while the luxury tiers above it keep climbing, which is part of why a headline number can look flat or falling in one report while another shows sharp gains.
The Middle Tier: What Builders Are Putting Up Right Now
Between the condo towers and the gated estates sits a tier that didn't exist in this form a decade ago: builder-driven new construction on standard village lots. Triple Crown Group's home at 10401 Prosperity Farms Road is a 4-bedroom, 3.5-bath build spanning just over 3,000 square feet at $2,695,000, which works out to roughly $900 per square foot. A few streets over, Foster Banyan has a pre-construction waterfront estate planned with 75 feet of water frontage and ocean access via fixed bridges, listed near $6.39 million for a 5-bedroom home just over 5,600 square feet, closer to $1,140 per square foot.
Foster Banyan's founder built his reputation in custom home construction before bringing that background to northern Palm Beach County, and the difference in price per square foot between his waterfront product and a condo at Old Port Cove is the clearest evidence that "North Palm Beach price per square foot" isn't a number so much as a range with several peaks.
The Estate Tier: Lost Tree Village and What Sets the Ceiling
Lost Tree Village is where the village's price data stops behaving like a normal market at all. Developed in 1959 on 450 acres bordered by the Atlantic to the east, the Intracoastal to the west, Seminole Golf Club to the north, and MacArthur Beach State Park to the south, it's built around a private championship course originally laid out by Mark McMahon and later refined by Jack Nicklaus. Sales activity there has averaged as high as $2,612 per square foot in one 12-month stretch through April 2026, and separately around $1,173 per square foot in another recent sample, a spread that itself shows how much a handful of transactions can move the number in a low-inventory enclave.
The tier's real ceiling showed up in a reported $97.5 million sale of a 2.5-acre Intracoastal assemblage on Old Harbour Road, tied to the Wrigley family and finalized in December 2025. That works out to roughly $39 million per acre, a figure that has nothing to do with square footage and everything to do with waterfront access, dock potential, and the fact that assemblages of that size almost never come open in Lost Tree. Low turnover is part of the story here too. When a tier this exclusive only trades a handful of times a year, one closing can swing its average more than any real shift in value.
"This was my way to give a little something back to the community and the people who have given me so much."
That's Jack Nicklaus, talking about donating the redesign of the Village-owned North Palm Beach Country Club, whose Jack Nicklaus Signature course sits at the center of the community and reopened with a new 37,000-square-foot clubhouse. The club is open to the public year-round, with dining handled by Lessing's Hospitality Group, a detail that matters because it means the golf-course lifestyle in North Palm Beach isn't gated off from every buyer the way Lost Tree Village is.
What This Means If You're Pricing a Home Here
If you're selling a condo at Old Port Cove and a headline says North Palm Beach's price per square foot jumped nearly 50 percent, that number almost certainly isn't describing your building. It's being pulled upward by whatever Lost Tree or new-construction sales closed in the same window. Pricing your unit off a village-wide average rather than actual Old Port Cove comps will overshoot the market.
If you're buying a new-construction home in the $2 to $6 million range, the opposite risk applies. A report showing price per square foot falling for the village overall might be driven by a run of condo closings, not by softening demand for the product you actually want.
The fix isn't a better average. It's asking which tier a comparable sale actually belongs to before using it to justify a number, whether that number is a listing price or an offer.
FAQ
Why does North Palm Beach's price-per-square-foot data look inconsistent across different sites? Different reporting windows catch different mixes of condo, new-construction, and estate sales. A quarter heavy on Lost Tree closings pushes the average up. A quarter heavy on Old Port Cove condo closings pulls it down. The underlying value of any single home doesn't have to move at all for the blended number to swing.
Is North Palm Beach actually appreciating right now? The honest answer depends on which tier you mean. The village's overall median sale price was down 4.7 percent for the three months ending May 2026, while homes were taking slightly longer to sell, 96 days on average compared with 91 days the year before. That's a different story than what's happening inside Lost Tree Village, where a handful of trophy transactions set records independent of the broader market.
How should I price a listing here without getting misled by the village-wide average? Start with sales inside your specific tier and building or subdivision rather than the village median. A condo at Old Port Cove, a new build on a standard lot, and an estate in Lost Tree Village are effectively three different markets that happen to share a zip code.
North Palm Beach rewards buyers and sellers who know which of its markets they're actually standing in. If you want help pricing against the right comps instead of a blended average that may not describe your home at all, Tyler Cameron can walk you through what's actually closing in your tier right now. Schedule a consultation with Tyler to get a read on your specific corner of the village.
