What Nobody Tells You About Star, Palm & Hibiscus Islands
Some facts about these three islands are real, sourced, and specific enough that they change how a buyer should think about the purchase -- but they don't fit neatly into a glossy listing description or a standard relocation guide. This page collects them.
Historic Landmarks Here Have No Automatic Protection From Demolition
Al Capone's mansion at 93 Palm Avenue on Palm Island stood for very close to a century -- built in 1922, purchased by Capone in 1928, occupied by his family until 1952, and one of the most historically documented single properties anywhere on these three islands -- before it was demolished in August 2023 despite documented preservation efforts. That's a real, recent, specific example that a home's historic and cultural significance carries no automatic legal protection here: Florida and Miami Beach landmark-designation processes exist, but they require an affirmative designation action, and a historically notable private home can be purchased and torn down like any other property absent that specific protection. A buyer drawn to this market partly for its documented history should not assume that history is preserved by default -- if a specific property's historic character matters to a purchase decision, confirm its current landmark or historic-district status (if any) directly with the City of Miami Beach's Historic Preservation office rather than assuming age or fame equals protection.
The Market's Own Pricing Data Doesn't Fully Make Sense -- and That's the Point
A February 2026 neighborhood snapshot for the combined Star, Palm, and Hibiscus Islands market reported a $24 million median sale price against a $14.7 million average sale price -- an unusual pairing, since a median exceeding the average is atypical in a right-skewed luxury real estate market, where a handful of ultra-high sales normally pull the average above the median, not below it. The same snapshot reported a trailing-12-month median of roughly $9.4 million, down about 20% year-over-year, alongside a reported 233-day median time on market against a 54-day national average. This page states this plainly rather than smoothing it over: when a market trades perhaps a dozen or two homes a year, monthly and even trailing-annual statistics can behave in ways that don't match how a larger, more liquid market would -- and a buyer or seller relying on any single statistic from an automated market-tracking site here should treat it as a rough directional signal, not a precise, stable figure.
Nearly No Home Here Qualifies for Florida's State-Backed Insurance Programs
Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, Florida's insurer of last resort, is legally barred from writing coverage on a home valued at $700,000 or more anywhere in the state, or $1 million or more even under its higher Miami-Dade/Monroe County exception. Given the roughly $5.7 million-to-$99 million sale price range documented for this market, essentially every home here sits above even the higher exception -- meaning the insurance safety net most Florida coastal buyers researching other markets on this site are told to understand (how Citizens works, what it costs, how to qualify) simply doesn't apply here. The National Flood Insurance Program's $250,000 residential building-coverage cap runs into the same wall from a different direction. Both of these facts push essentially every buyer here into the private, surplus-lines insurance market by default -- worth knowing before assuming general Florida coastal insurance guides, including some published elsewhere on this site for other markets, describe what insuring a home here actually costs or how it's actually placed.
A Single Gate Means a Single Point of Failure, Not Just a Prestige Feature
Star Island's staffed guardhouse and Palm/Hibiscus's shared access bridge are usually described in marketing material as a privacy and security amenity, and they genuinely are -- but the same structural fact that keeps out uninvited visitors also means every one of these roughly 300-plus homes shares exactly one route on and off its island. That has real, practical implications beyond the obvious security benefit: contractor and delivery scheduling requires advance gate coordination in a way an open street doesn't; a mechanical failure, security incident, or simply heavy traffic at a single gate can, in principle, affect access for an entire island's worth of residents at once; and evacuation ahead of a hurricane funnels through that same single point before even reaching the causeway. None of this makes these islands impractical to live on -- thousands of residents across South Florida's other gated communities manage the same trade-off -- but it's a genuine structural fact worth weighing consciously rather than encountering for the first time during a move-in or a storm.
The Doc Stamp Rate Is Genuinely Lower Here Than for Most of Miami Beach
Florida's documentary stamp tax on a Miami-Dade deed runs $0.60 per $100 of sale price for single-family residences, but a meaningfully higher $1.05 per $100 for condos and other non-single-family property, because of a discretionary county surtax that only single-family residences are exempt from. Since every home on Star, Palm, and Hibiscus Island is single-family -- unlike Miami Beach's broader inventory, which is majority condo -- every transaction here qualifies for the lower rate. On a $10 million sale, that's the difference between roughly $60,000 and roughly $105,000 in stamp tax alone. It's a genuinely favorable, sourced fact about this specific corner of the Miami Beach market that a buyer comparing costs against a Miami Beach condo purchase should actually factor in.
Short-Term Rental Income Is Essentially Off the Table
Every lot on these three islands is single-family zoned, and Miami Beach bans short-term rentals -- stays of less than six months and a day -- in single-family and most multifamily residential zones citywide, with legal short-term hosting confined to specific commercial and mixed-use districts elsewhere in the city that don't include these islands. A buyer arriving with an assumption that a trophy waterfront estate here could double as a high-yield vacation rental is working from a premise that doesn't match the applicable zoning -- this page's Vacation Rental Investment page covers the enforcement mechanics in more depth, but the short version belongs here too: this is not a short-term rental market, by law, not just by informal community norm.
'Palm and Hibiscus' Isn't One Island, Even Though It's Often Described That Way
Marketing copy and even some real estate research sources frequently describe 'Palm and Hibiscus Islands' as if they were a single combined destination, and while they do share an access bridge off the MacArthur Causeway and a joint HOA with Star Island, they are two separate, distinctly platted islands with different acreage (roughly 82 acres versus roughly 69), different home counts (roughly 136 versus roughly 145), and, per this page family's Neighborhoods Guide, a different documented waterfront-to-interior-lot mix. A buyer researching 'Palm Island' listings specifically should confirm which of the two islands a given address actually sits on rather than assuming interchangeable inventory.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Data sourced from: Miami-history.com's (Casey Piket) detailed research on Al Capone's Palm Island villa, cross-checked against Yahoo News reporting on its August 2023 demolition; a February 2026 Redfin neighborhood snapshot for "Star, Palm and Hibiscus Islands" for the median/average sale price and days-on-market figures; Florida statute and industry/news reporting on Citizens Property Insurance's $700,000/$1,000,000 dwelling-value caps and FEMA/NFIP's $250,000 residential building-coverage cap; multiple real estate research sources on the staffed-guardhouse structure documented for Star Island's single entrance and the shared access bridge for Palm and Hibiscus Islands; Florida Department of Revenue guidance on the single-family-residence documentary stamp tax rate; and Miami Beach short-term rental ordinance summaries (as also used on this site's Miami Beach hub page) describing the citywide zoning-based ban applicable to single-family residential zones, which covers all three islands. Facts not independently confirmed and not invented here include: any documented protocol for gate access during an emergency or utility outage; the specific current landmark or historic-designation status of any individual property on these islands; and island-by-island (as opposed to combined) pricing statistics. Confirm current facts directly with the City of Miami Beach, the PHS Home Association, and a local buyer's agent before making a purchase decision. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, or insurance advice.