Best Neighborhoods & Areas on Singer Island, Florida

Almost everything written about Singer Island housing is about towers. This isn't, because the more interesting question for a lot of buyers is the one nobody answers: can you get a house on this island, and what is it actually like?

You can. There's exactly one place to do it, and it's a town most people drive through without registering.

Palm Beach Shores — the island's single-family town

The southern tip of Singer Island is not Riviera Beach and not a condo district. It's the Town of Palm Beach Shores, a separate incorporated municipality of roughly a thousand-odd residents, with its own government, its own police, and a housing stock that is overwhelmingly single-family and low-rise.

It is, in effect, a small beach village that happens to sit on the same barrier island as a wall of high-rises — and the contrast when you cross into it is immediate.

What's actually there: modest to substantial single-family homes on real streets, a scattering of low-rise buildings, a marina, and a scale that lets you walk to the beach, the water and a restaurant. Streets are short, the town is a few blocks deep, and you're never far from either the ocean or the Intracoastal.

The setting is the unusual part. You're at the mouth of the Lake Worth Inlet, looking across at Palm Beach, with Peanut Island offshore and the working port traffic passing through. Very few residential streets in Florida have that view.

Who it suits: buyers who want the island's water access and beach proximity but want a house, a yard, a garage and a front door onto a street rather than a corridor. It's also one of the genuinely walkable pockets on this stretch of coast.

What to check, in order:

• Flood zone and elevation certificate. This is the most exposed residential land on the island. Get the certificate, not an assumption.
• Wind mitigation and a real insurance quote, before you're emotionally committed. On an oceanfront-adjacent lot at an inlet mouth, the premium can decide the purchase.
• Roof age, construction type and impact protection, which drive both insurability and comfort.
• The municipality on the deed. The Riviera Beach / Palm Beach Shores boundary matters for taxes, permitting and services — confirm which one you're buying into.
• Evacuation zone, which will be among the first called.
• Dockage, if that's part of the plan — whether the property has it, what depth, and what the inlet proximity means for your particular boat.

The honest constraint: supply. This is a small town on a finite piece of land, so inventory is thin and competitive. Buyers who want a house on Singer Island generally have to wait for the right one rather than choose from several.

What the island's scarcity actually means

A structural point that shapes every purchase here: this is a finite barrier island with essentially no developable land left.

Nothing new is being built except by replacing something old, and the single-family stock in the southern town is fixed at roughly what it has been for decades. That scarcity is the strongest long-term argument for buying here and the reason inventory moves quickly when the right property appears.

It also means patience is a strategy. Buyers who set a narrow specification — a house, a particular exposure, a specific building — should expect to wait rather than to choose, and should have financing and diligence ready when something surfaces.

The north end

Approaching the state park at the northern end, the island's density drops and the character changes — quieter, closer to protected land, and a calmer stretch of beach.

The trade is distance from the Blue Heron Boulevard crossing, which is the main route to the mainland for most errands.

Reading a listing here

Two words do a lot of heavy lifting in island listings and both are worth pinning down.

"Oceanfront" can mean directly on the sand, or in a building that has beach access across a road, or simply with an ocean view from a high floor. These are materially different properties at materially different prices.

"Water view" can mean the Atlantic, the Intracoastal, or an angle of one glimpsed past another building. Ask which, and ideally stand in the room before deciding.

Neither term is misused deliberately — they're just imprecise in a place where the differences are worth a great deal of money.

The condominium corridor

The middle of the island is the tower corridor, and it's the majority of the housing here — oceanfront buildings ranging from newer luxury construction to established mid-century blocks, plus Intracoastal-side buildings with sunset views at more attainable prices.

We're not the right resource for choosing among them, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Buying a condo on a barrier island of ageing towers is a building-by-building exercise: milestone structural inspection status, reserve funding, assessment history, master insurance scope, and rental rules vary enormously between buildings that look identical from the road, and those documents are the actual purchase.

That analysis is what our sister site CondoWPB.com does — building by building, in the detail the decision deserves. If a tower is what you're weighing, start there.

What we'll say here is the general shape: newer buildings cost more up front and carry less surprise risk; older buildings are the attainable entry to oceanfront and shift the diligence burden onto you; and Intracoastal-side units trade the sunrise for a sunset and a lower price.

Choosing

1. House or unit? This is the whole decision, and it narrows the island instantly. A house means Palm Beach Shores, a wait, and a competitive market. 2. If a house: how exposed? Elevation, flood zone and insurance shape what's actually affordable more than the asking price does. 3. If a unit: go and read building financials, and use a resource built for that. 4. Ocean or Intracoastal? East for sunrise and premium, west for sunset and value.

Whatever you choose, verify flood zone, elevation, municipality, evacuation zone and insurance for the specific parcel. On a barrier island these vary within a few hundred feet, and our cost breakdown explains why they matter more here than almost anywhere.