Realtor.com recently did an analysis of a broad range of data to come up with the most desirable beach house locations in the U.S. Miami ranks in several categories.

  • Realtor.com evaluated a variety of data to find best spots to purchase a rental property.
  • Florida cities were far and away the most favored.
  • When separately evaluated for vacation activities, Key West and Key Largo ranked highly.

Now that the January malaise has set it, it’s time to start dreaming about summer plans.

If you rent out your property, you are probably looking at renting out your last few available weeks for Summer 2016.

So if you’d like to end up on the the side of the rentee, rather than the renter, where’s the best beach location for you to begin your shopping?

[Tweet “Buy your rental in one of these hot spots “]

Realtor.com recently did an analysis of a broad range of data to come up with the most desirable beach house locations in the U.S. Miami ranks in several categories. 

To find the nation’s hottest beach towns, their researchers checked out cities and towns with a population of less than 100,000 and within two miles of a coast, removing those that are on inlets or lacking direct beach access. That left about 1,000 beach towns along the country’s 6,020 miles of beaches.

To narrow the pool further, they looked at page view data on their own site to see how many people were actually checking out these beach locales.

So, drumroll, please: here is the full list of the hottest beach markets and median list prices:

  1. Sarasota, FL: $339,000
  2. Naples, FL: $479,000
  3. Myrtle Beach, SC: $168,950
  4. Delray Beach, FL: $248,950
  5. Vero Beach, FL: $309,000
  6. Miami Beach, FL: $569,000
  7. Jupiter, FL: $489,000
  8. Lake Worth, FL: $210,000
  9. Venice, FL: $265,000
  10. Palm Harbor, FL: $235,000

But that was not enough for the number-crunchers at realtor.com.

best-beach-town-012

A beach house don’t only mean a house. On a beach. There have to be other factors that attract potential renters to a property. So diving a little further, (no pun intended) four other categories were explored. Out of the four, South Florida locales did exceptionally well once again.

For those who love to get on all that water, the analysts ranked cities for the best in water sports. They turned to TripAdvisor to rank towns that have a proliferation of outdoor watersports.

The Florida Keys is the place to get it all outdoors. Adventurous tourists can choose from a variety of activities which include piloting a jet ski on a 28-mile guided round trip around Key West.

That key ranked no.1, and Key Largo came in at no. 4. Naples ranked no. 2, and Miami Beach was no. 5.

best-beach-town-042

For those who do prefer a day camped out on the sand, rankings for the greatest number of sunny days plus average water temperature were also ranked. Key West again came out a winner, ranking no. 2. Naples was third, and Miami Beach was fourth. 

Only sun and sand might not be everyone’s idea of the ultimate beach vacation, so the analysts turned to Yelp to check out night spots, finding almost 300 in Miami Beach. That town came out on top of that list, with Key West coming in fifth.

best-beach-town-033

Of course, all those towns on the individual lists are far more expensive than the towns on the hottest markets rankings, but all still put South Florida in a positive light. Pun intended.

Email Kimberley Sirk.

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