Starke, Lawtey, Hampton, Brooker and the rural acreage in between — with the numbers behind them. Every figure on this page is footnoted to a named source with an as-of date, because a county this small gets written about carelessly and buyers pay for it.
Bradford County is a working rural county of 28,307 people1 packed into 294 square miles — the third-smallest county in Florida by land area38. It runs on three engines: the state corrections complex, government and school employment, and a cattle-and-hay agricultural base spread across 418 farms and 61,282 acres, about a third of the county's land25. And it runs on US-301, the highway that made Starke a town in the first place and still carries every through-trip between Jacksonville and Tampa past the county seat's front door39.
For a buyer, that adds up to a real-money market with real friction. You can still find a house here in the low $200,000s5 when Duval and Clay have largely priced that out. But half the workforce, 50.6%, drives outside the county to earn a living, with a mean commute of 32.4 minutes2, and about 21 homes change hands countywide in a typical month3. That thin volume is the single most important thing to understand about this market: it makes pricing, appraising and forecasting genuinely harder here than it is 45 minutes east.
My honest read for August 2026: this is a patient buyer's market with a long tail of overpriced acreage, and a fair-value market for well-prepared sellers under about $275,000. Inventory sits around nine months, days on market has widened from 34 to 56 year over year3, and unemployment has drifted from a 3.2% annual average in 2023 to 4.5% in 2025 and 5.5% in April 202626. Nothing is collapsing. But nothing is bailing out a bad price, either.
Bradford County is small enough that national data sources disagree with each other badly — and small enough that nobody bothers to check. On this page you will see me show you the disagreement instead of picking the most flattering number. If a figure has no source I trust, I say so rather than making one up. That is the whole standard here.
Camp Blanding Joint Training Center is the Florida National Guard's primary training base, roughly 73,000 acres of ranges, education facilities and simulation platforms built to host brigade-sized elements3334. It carries a Starke mailing address. It is in Clay County33.
I cannot overstate how often this costs buyers money. A soldier or contractor searches "homes near Camp Blanding," lands on a Starke-addressed listing, and assumes Bradford County taxes, Bradford County schools and Bradford County zoning. Some of those parcels are in Clay. Roughly half of Kingsley Lake's shoreline lies inside the Camp Blanding boundary35 — and Kingsley Lake itself, the near-perfectly round 2,000-acre "Silver Dollar Lake" that reaches 82 feet deep on Trail Ridge, is a Clay County lake with about 180 private docks, no public boat ramps and no public beach35. When a listing advertises "Kingsley Lake access," I make the seller show me exactly what that means in writing. Usually it means "you can see it from the road."
Florida State Prison sits at 23916 NW 83rd Ave in unincorporated Bradford County with a Raiford mailing address, carries a capacity of 1,492, and houses one of Florida's two male death row cell blocks along with the state's execution chamber36. Florida State Prison West Unit and New River Correctional Institution are also in the county38. Union Correctional Institution — the facility everyone calls "Raiford," founded in 1913 with a maximum capacity of 2,172 — is across the line in Union County, not Bradford37. Buyers conflate the two constantly.
Two practical consequences. First, this is a stable, recession-resistant employment anchor, and it is a big part of why government makes up 25.3% of county employment2. Second, it distorts the statistics: at the 2020 Census, 4,319 of Bradford's 28,303 residents were in group quarters — over 15% — producing a 55.9% male to 44.1% female split that skews nearly every per-capita number published about this county2. When you see a per-capita income figure for Bradford, remember that the denominator includes several thousand incarcerated people.
The Bradford County Strawberry Festival has run in Starke for nearly three decades and is a genuinely good spring weekend48. But strawberries do not appear among the county's leading commodities in the 2022 Census of Agriculture. Today's Bradford agriculture is 58% livestock and poultry, 42% crops, led by 7,506 head of cattle and 6,408 acres of forage and hay25. Total market value of products sold was $22.4 million, up 71% since 2017 but ranking only 49th among Florida's counties, and the farm count fell 15% over the same stretch even as the average farm grew 22% to 147 acres25. Fewer, bigger operations. Cattle, hay and timber. That is the working reality behind the festival branding, and it matters when you are valuing a 40-acre parcel.
The Bradford County Agricultural Fair ran February 26 through March 8, 2026, returning after a controversy involving allegations of financial mismanagement, land-ownership schemes and Sunshine Law violations. The county appointed twenty-one new board members, hired Harlee Hutchinson as fair manager, opened board meetings to the public and contracted a new midway company47.
US-301 runs straight through the center of Starke. The town became a travel hub in the early 1900s because 301 was the fastest route from Jacksonville to Tampa for northeastern travelers, and it still runs 26 miles north from Starke to Baldwin and I-1039. Practically, that means 301 frontage is a pricing factor in both directions: commercial visibility on one hand, constant truck traffic and noise on the other. I price 301-frontage residential differently from a house two streets back, every time.
SR-16 is the one I watch. It runs northwest to southeast from SR 121 in Raiford, past the correctional facilities, into downtown Starke where it meets US 301, then curves around the northwest shore of Kingsley Lake, past Camp Blanding, through Penney Farms to Green Cove Springs and on to St. Augustine40. That matters because the First Coast Expressway — SR 23, a planned 46.5-mile toll route across Duval, Clay and St. Johns counties at roughly $2 billion — opened its US 17 to SR 16 segment on June 29, 2026, putting the current terminus on SR 16 east of Green Cove Springs41. That is the same SR-16 that runs into downtown Starke. Phase 3 to I-95, including a new St. Johns River bridge replacing the two-lane Shands Bridge, is expected 2031-203241. I am not going to tell you that has moved Bradford prices yet, because the data does not show it. I am telling you it is the single structural change most likely to matter here over a ten-year hold.
Here is everything I can source, with the as-of date attached. Read the dates carefully — several of these are months apart, and I have flagged where that makes a derived figure unreliable.
| Metric | Figure | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median sale price (county) | $283,000, up 10.8% YoY | Oct 2025 (latest county month Redfin publishes) | 3 |
| Homes sold per month (county) | 21, up from 15 a year earlier | Oct 2025 | 3 |
| Median days on market (county) | 56 days, up from 34 (+65%) | Oct 2025 | 3 |
| Price per square foot (county) | $155, down 2.5% YoY | Oct 2025 | 3 |
| Home value index, 32091 Starke | $219,876, down 1.3% over the year | Through Jan 31, 2026 | 5 |
| Median list price, 32091 Starke | $282,333 | Through Jan 31, 2026 | 5 |
| Median sale price, 32091 Starke | $230,000, down 17.9% YoY | Most recent month shown, 2026 | 4 |
| Days on market, 32091 Starke | 33.5 days; Compete Score 70 ("Very Competitive") | Most recent month shown, 2026 | 4 |
| Price per sq ft, 32091 Starke | $165, down 12.7% YoY | Most recent month shown, 2026 | 4 |
| Active listings, county | 188 (Zillow) / 225 (Homes.com) — a 20% spread | Aug 3, 2026 | 67 |
| Months of supply (my derivation) | ~9 months — mismatched periods, directional only | Aug 2026 inventory ÷ Oct 2025 sales pace | 36 |
| Long-run appreciation (FHFA index) | 292.80 in 2025 vs 288.25 in 2024 (+1.6%); 209.71 in 2021 (~40% over four years) | 2025 annual, updated Mar 31, 2026 | 8 |
| Median value, owner-occupied homes | $212,500 | ACS 2020-2024 | 1 |
| Median gross rent (Census) | $863/month | ACS 2020-2024 | 1 |
| Median asking rent (Zumper listings) | $1,499 — calculated from about 20 listings on a rolling 30-day basis | Aug 3, 2026 | 51 |
| Total housing units | 11,143; 73.3% owner-occupied | Jul 1, 2025 / ACS 2020-2024 | 1 |
| New private housing units permitted | 66 in 2025, down from 90 in 2024 (-26.7%) | 2025 annual, updated May 28, 2026 | 9 |
| 30-year fixed mortgage rate | 6.66% (15-year 6.04%) | Week of Jul 30, 2026 | 17 |
| Unemployment rate | 5.5%; annual averages 3.2% (2023) → 3.7% (2024) → 4.5% (2025) | Apr 2026 | 26 |
Three honest caveats on that table. First, the county median sale price and the ZIP-level figures disagree by roughly $50,000 to $60,000, and both are computed off tiny samples — at 21 sales a month, one lakefront closing moves the county median. Second, the "months of supply" line divides August 2026 inventory by an October 2025 sales pace because that is the latest county sales month published; it is a reasonable directional read, not a clean absorption rate. Third, I do not publish a percent-of-listings-with-price-cuts figure for Bradford County, because I could not verify one from any primary source. The competitor page you may have read shows one. I would rather have a hole than a guess.
What I also will not publish: a foreclosure rate. The one aggregator carrying a Starke ZIP foreclosure count also states that figure as roughly 12% of all properties in 32091, which would imply a denominator of fewer than 500 homes in a county with 11,143 housing units1 — and the same page contradicts itself on sales volume and listing counts elsewhere. A number that wrong is not a small error on a real estate page; it is a slander on somebody's neighborhood. If you want distressed-property data for a specific street, call me and I will pull it from the MLS and the Clerk of Court records.
No score widget. Here is what I actually tell people on the phone.
You have leverage right now that you did not have two years ago. Nine-ish months of supply, days on market up 65% year over year, and a mortgage rate at 6.66% that has kept casual buyers on the sidelines317. Sellers here are not fielding multiple offers on anything that has been sitting. Ask for repairs. Ask for closing costs. Ask for a price that reflects 56 days on market.
The discipline part: affordability is genuinely tight for local incomes. Run the arithmetic below and you will see a $250,000 purchase requires roughly $79,100 a year at a 30% housing ratio, against a $63,050 county median household income1. If you are buying with a Jacksonville or Gainesville salary, Bradford is a value play. If you are buying on a Bradford County wage — average annual wage countywide is $48,9002 — you need a bigger down payment or a lower price point, and USDA financing is worth checking hard.
The county is still up: FHFA's index rose 1.6% in 2025 and about 40% over four years8. Redfin's county median was up 10.8% year over year3. So there is equity here. But the ZIP-level numbers moved the other direction — 32091's home value index down 1.3% and its median sale down 17.9%54 — which tells me the mix of what is selling shifted more than values themselves.
What that means in practice: an accurately priced, clean, move-in-ready home under about $275,000 sells in a reasonable window. An aspirational price does not get discovered here the way it does in a deep market, because there simply are not enough buyers cycling through. With 21 sales a month countywide, a stale listing does not "reset" — it just sits and teaches every buyer's agent that you are not serious. Price it at market on day one.
This is where I want you to be careful. The Census ACS median gross rent for Bradford County is $8631. Zumper's median asking rent for Starke is $1,499 — but that is calculated from roughly 20 listings on a rolling 30-day window51. Those two numbers are 74% apart, and the truth for a specific 3/2 on a specific street is somewhere in between and depends on condition. I do not publish the year-over-year percentage moves Zumper shows, because a swing computed off twenty listings is noise, not a market signal. Do not underwrite a Bradford County rental off a $1,499 assumption. Underwrite it off actual signed leases for comparable properties, which I can pull.
The genuine investor case here is land and long holds, not yield chasing: 66 permits countywide in 20259, essentially no new supply, and a road network that is slowly getting better with the First Coast Expressway pushing toward SR-1641. That is a patient-capital story. It is not a cash-flow story.
Some sellers here genuinely need speed — inherited property, out-of-state owners, a house that will not pass a financed appraisal. A cash offer trades price for certainty and timeline. On a market with 56-day median days on market and financed buyers who may hit appraisal trouble on acreage, that trade is sometimes worth it and sometimes not. I will run both numbers side by side for you before you decide. See the cash offer comparison, or use the seller net sheet to see what each path actually puts in your pocket.
Starke recorded 5,796 residents at the 2020 Census with a 2025 estimate around 6,000, incorporated April 4, 1870, and covers 7.18 square miles at 167 feet of elevation39. Downtown is the Call Street Historic District, a National Register district with locally owned restaurants and antique shops; the Andrews Center, the Romanesque 1902 former county courthouse, is also on the National Register; and the Florida Twin Theatre has been showing movies since 194139. That is a genuine small-town core, not a strip.
The number that matters for buyers: Starke's total millage is 20.0351, the highest in the county, driven by a 4.3879-mill city levy on top of the county's 10.0000 and the school district's 5.366010. Cross the city limit into unincorporated Bradford and total millage drops to 15.545310. On a $250,000 homesteaded house that is about $75 a month, every month, forever. I check the jurisdiction line on every Starke-area showing.
Lawtey sits north of Starke on US-301 with a total millage of 17.898410. AAA designated Lawtey a speed trap in 1995 after concluding that profit rather than safety drove ticket-writing on 301 — and AAA removed that designation in 2018, citing significant improvements43. People still bring it up. It has been resolved for eight years. What has not changed is the 301 traffic itself, which is the real consideration for anything with highway frontage.
Hampton's total millage is 17.709510, and it has a county boat ramp on Hampton Lake at SW 101st Street45. It is also the town that, at a population of 477, annexed a 1,260-foot strip of US-301 a mile outside its limits and ran what CNN called one of the nation's most notorious speed traps, with one officer per 25 residents. A 2014 state audit found 31 violations of local, state or federal law including misuse of public funds, cronyism and nepotism; the mayor was arrested in an oxycodone sting, all city employees resigned, and the Legislature moved to dissolve the city charter before ultimately sparing it44. I bring that up not to knock Hampton — that was twelve years ago and the town is quiet now — but because buyers deserve to hear it from their agent rather than find it themselves after closing.
Brooker sits in the southwestern corner near the Alachua County line, and its city millage is just 0.2370, giving it a total of 15.8842 mills — barely above unincorporated county and more than four full mills below Starke10. Its median effective property tax rate is 0.81% with a median annual bill of $1,002, the lowest of the county's four municipalities13. It is small and agricultural, and it is closer to Gainesville than Starke is. For a buyer who wants land, a low tax bill and a Gainesville commute, Brooker is the most underrated address in Bradford County.
Most of the county's land and much of its housing is unincorporated, at 15.5453 mills in the St. Johns River Water Management District or 15.6472 in the Suwannee River district10 — and which district you are in is a parcel-level question, not a town-level one. Graham, Theressa, Sampson City and Heilbronn Springs are unincorporated communities you will see in listing addresses38. Sampson Lake and Rowell Lake are connected by a canal passable by small boat and are known locally for fishing, with a shared county ramp at 14300 SW 75th Avenue in Starke4546. Crosby Lake lies west of Starke46.
Want the subdivision-by-subdivision detail? That is in the Bradford County subdivisions and acreage guide.
Explore active homes, country acreage, and commercial land in Bradford County with direct local due diligence and true cost calculations from Chris Moore.
Bradford County School District, headquartered at 501 West Washington Street in Starke, enrolled 2,848 students PK-12 in 2024-25 across 11 school entities, with 148.97 FTE classroom teachers, a 19.12 student-teacher ratio and 421.54 total FTE staff27. Florida's EDR counts six traditional public schools for 2025-26: four elementary, one middle, one senior high2. The district also operates North Florida Technical College as its postsecondary arm.
Bradford High School, 581 N Temple Avenue in Starke, enrolled 785 students in grades 9-12 in 2024-25 with 33.0 FTE teachers and a 23.79 student-teacher ratio. 389 students — roughly half — qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. NCES classifies the school's locale as "Town, Distant"28.
On the Florida school grades listing for district 04: Bradford High School B; Bradford Middle School C; Starke Elementary C; Southside Elementary C; Lawtey Community School (K-6) C; Hampton Elementary C; Brooker Elementary C29. The high school is the only one grading above a C.
Two things I could not pin down, and I am not going to paper over them. The Florida school grades page does not state which school year those grades cover. And the published school counts do not reconcile — NCES lists 11 school entities, EDR counts 6 traditional schools, and the grades page shows 7. If schools are driving your decision, call Bradford County School District directly at (904) 966-6860 and confirm the current open-school roster, grade spans and the grade year before you write an offer. I will make that call with you.
Context worth having: 83.4% of county residents 25 and older are high school graduates, but only 15.2% hold a bachelor's degree or higher — roughly half the Florida rate — which is both a cause and a consequence of the local wage base1. Families who want a wider set of school options generally look at the Clay County side of SR-16 or the Alachua County side toward Gainesville, and I work both.
This is the most consequential set of numbers on the page, so read the caveat first: the Bradford County Property Appraiser posts these as "current millage" and the page does not state a tax year10. Given that the County Commission only set the FY2026-27 county rate on approximately July 22, 2026, and Florida millage is not certified until the fall TRIM process, these are most likely the 2025 certified rates. Confirm the current year by phone with the Property Appraiser at 904-966-6216 before you rely on them.
| Taxing district | Total millage | Median effective rate | Median annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of Starke | 20.035110 | 0.84%13 | $1,07413 |
| Lawtey | 17.898410 | 0.80%13 | $1,01513 |
| Hampton | 17.709510 | 0.89%13 | $1,14313 |
| Brooker | 15.884210 | 0.81%13 | $1,00213 |
| Unincorporated (SJRWMD) | 15.545310 | — | — |
| Unincorporated (SRWMD) | 15.647210 | — | — |
| Countywide median | — | 0.85% (FL median 1.10%)13 | $1,17613 |
By authority, the components are: Bradford County 10.0000, Public Schools 5.3660, City of Starke 4.3879, Lawtey 2.2512, Hampton 2.0623, Brooker 0.2370, St. Johns River WMD 0.1793 and Suwannee River WMD 0.281210. The gap between a 0.85% effective rate and a nominal 1.55%-2.00% millage is entirely explained by homestead exemptions and Save Our Homes caps on long-held homes13. Which means a newly purchased, newly assessed home pays much closer to the nominal rate than the "median bill" suggests. Do not budget off the median bill.
The county held its operating rate at 10 mills for FY2026-27, unchanged from the prior year — but because property values rose, the flat rate still captures roughly $1.1 million more in revenue, as Finance Director Dana LaFollette briefed the board11. Longer view: the operating millage was 9.1104 in FY2021 and rose to 10.0000 by FY2024-25, with a 2025 rolled-back rate of 9.5178, and ad valorem revenues grew from $34.16 million in FY2021 to $40.48 million in FY2024 — an 18.5% increase12. That is the trend line a buyer should be pricing into a ten-year hold: rates flat, assessments climbing, bills rising.
Bradford applies Florida's standard homestead exemption: the first $25,000 applies to all property taxes including school district taxes, and a second $25,000 applies to assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000 and does not apply to school taxes. Applications are due March 1 of the tax year, with late filing accepted through the 25th day after TRIM notices are mailed if justified. You must be a Florida permanent resident who owns and occupies the home14.
Save Our Homes caps annual assessment increases on homesteaded property at 3% or the change in CPI, whichever is lower. For 2026 that cap is 2.7%, down from 2.9% in 2025. Non-homestead residential and investment property is capped at 10% annually, and that 10% cap excludes school district levies15.
The one people get wrong: you have three tax years, not two, to port your accumulated Save Our Homes savings to a new homestead, and you can port up to $500,000 of it. Florida Amendment 5, passed November 3, 2020 by 74.49% to 25.51%, extended that window from two years to three16. If you are moving into Bradford from a long-held homestead in Clay or Duval, that portability is often worth more than any concession you will negotiate at the closing table. My Florida homestead exemption guide walks the filing steps.
Business owners: Bradford requires an annual tangible personal property return, but a $25,000 exemption applies, so many small businesses owe no TPP tax14.
Bradford County sits in wind Zone 1 with a 100-110 mph design wind speed, and is characterized as very low hurricane risk, low flood risk and low sinkhole risk; catastrophic ground collapse coverage is mandatory in Florida policies19. Structurally, this is one of the cheapest places in Florida to insure a house. For scale, Insurify estimates a Florida statewide average of $6,060 a year for a home with $300,000 in dwelling coverage, and separately Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation reported that home insurance rates decreased in 51 counties so far in 202618. (Those are two different findings from two different organizations; the $6,060 is Insurify's estimate, not an OIR figure.)
The Bradford-specific number is the problem. The only county-level premium range I could find, $1,700 to $2,400 a year for $300,000 dwelling coverage, comes from a broker guide with no publication date, no methodology, no carrier sample and no named publisher19. I am not comfortable presenting that as a market average, and I use it below only as a clearly labeled placeholder so the arithmetic is transparent. Get a real quote on the specific address before you write an offer. On a rural parcel, roof age, distance to a fire hydrant and the ISO fire district rating can swing your premium more than the county average ever would.
Below is an illustration, not a market median. I picked $250,000 because it is a round number in the middle of the working range — it is not the median sale price from any source I cite. Every input is shown so you can substitute your own.
| Assumption | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase price (illustrative) | $250,000 | Chosen for illustration |
| Down payment | 10% ($25,000); loan $225,000 | Assumption |
| Interest rate, 30-year fixed | 6.66% | Week of Jul 30, 202617 |
| Homestead exemption applied | Full $50,000 | 14 |
| Millage — unincorporated SJRWMD | 15.5453 total (5.3660 school) | 10 |
| Homeowners insurance | $2,000/yr — UNVERIFIED PLACEHOLDER | Midpoint of an undated, unattributed range19 |
| PMI | ~$94/month | Assumption at 90% LTV |
| Monthly line | Unincorporated Bradford | Inside Starke city limits |
|---|---|---|
| Principal & interest | $1,446 | $1,446 |
| Property tax | $270 ($3,243/yr) | $345 ($4,141/yr) |
| Insurance (placeholder) | $167 | $167 |
| PMI | $94 | $94 |
| Estimated total PITI | ~$1,977/month | ~$2,052/month |
The tax math, shown so you can check it: school taxable value is $225,000 (price less the first $25,000 exemption) at 5.3660 mills = $1,207; non-school taxable value is $200,000 (price less the full $50,000) at 10.1793 mills = $2,036; total $3,243 a year unincorporated1014. Inside Starke, the non-school rate is 14.6691 mills, producing $2,934 plus the same $1,207 school portion, or $4,141 a year10. That $898-a-year difference is the Starke city levy, and it is the single largest swing factor in Bradford County cost to own.
Income needed. At $1,977 a month and a 30% housing-to-income ratio, you would need about $6,590 a month, or roughly $79,100 a year. Bradford County's median household income is $63,0501. So the median household here cannot comfortably afford a $250,000 home without a larger down payment, a lower price point, or income from outside the county. That is not a knock on Bradford — it is the same math in most of Florida right now — but it explains the commuting pattern and it explains why USDA financing matters so much here. Run your own numbers on my mortgage calculator.
This is a land county. 418 farms occupy 61,282 acres, about a third of Bradford's total land area, at an average farm size of 147 acres25. Roughly 10,349 acres — 5.5% of the county — is state or regionally owned conservation land2. If you want acreage within an hour of Jacksonville, this is one of the last places you can still shop.
Pricing. Bradford County land listings show a median asking price of about $19,999 per acre, with an average listing price of $769,983, a median listing price of $500,000 and an average lot size of 41.7 acres across roughly 129 listed properties20. Read that carefully: those are asking prices, not closed sales, and per-acre pricing collapses fast as parcel size grows. A 2-acre homesite near town and a 60-acre timber tract are not remotely the same product at the same per-acre number.
Bradford's agricultural classification must be applied for by March 1 each year, with January 1 the statutory assessment date, meaning the land must already be in bona fide commercial agricultural use on January 1. Critically, the classification is not transferable — a new application is required whenever the property changes ownership or use. Agricultural zoning alone does not qualify a property21.
I have watched this cost buyers thousands. You tour a parcel, the seller's tax bill shows a tiny greenbelt assessment, you assume that carries over, and then your first full tax bill arrives at market assessment. Ask the Property Appraiser at 904-966-6216 what the parcel would assess at without the classification, and what you would need to do to requalify. The office does not publish minimum acreage, minimum income thresholds or per-use assessment tables, so this is a phone call, not a website lookup.
Outside the town limits, most homes are on well water and septic. I recommend a well flow test and a septic scope on every rural closing, without exception. On the build side, Bradford County requires a septic number before you can submit plans22 — which surprises people who assume they can start the permit process and sort out the drainfield later.
The county's minimum building permit cost is $54.00 ($50 permit plus a $4 state surcharge). Permits are required for new structures, additions, re-roofing, garage conversions, water heater and electrical work, HVAC, fences 8 feet or taller, and moving a used mobile home. Mobile home installers pay a one-time $50 county registration fee plus proof of workers' comp and general liability. Farm buildings with an agricultural exemption, temporary construction sheds and hunting structures under 1,000 square feet are exempt. A Notice of Commencement is required for work over $5,000. Zoning Department: (904) 966-621322. The county's building FAQ does not publish zoning district names, minimum lot sizes or setbacks — that is a call to the Zoning Department before you buy land you intend to split or build on.
Bradford County is rural by any definition, and most of it should map as USDA eligible — but eligibility is determined address by address on the official USDA Rural Development map, and I check it for every client rather than assuming23. Income is rarely the binding constraint here: the 2026 USDA guaranteed loan standard income limits are $122,800 for a 1-4 member household and $162,100 for a 5-8 member household, and Bradford is not on the list of counties with elevated limits24. Against a $63,050 county median household income1, the large majority of local buyers qualify on income. For a first-time buyer with limited cash, zero-down USDA financing is frequently the difference between renting and owning in this county.
Bradford has substantial inventory of manufactured and modular homes on land, single-wide and double-wide. I want to be straight with you about a limit here: I could not verify a current, citable figure for what percentage of Bradford County's 11,143 housing units1 are manufactured, so I am not going to quote one. What I can tell you from working the market is that financing rules differ sharply from stick-built, that whether the home is titled as real property or as chattel changes your loan options entirely, and that you need a loan officer who has actually closed manufactured-home deals in North Florida before you go under contract. Ask them directly. "I think we can do that" is not a yes.
Bradford County authorized 66 new private housing units by building permit in 2025, down from 90 in 2024 — a 26.7% decline9. The recent run: 66 in 2021, 107 in 2022, 69 in 2023, 90 in 2024, 66 in 202592. Going back further, Florida EDR shows 59 units in 2000 and just 31 in 20102.
That works out to 2.33 permits per 1,000 residents against the county's 28,307 population91. For perspective on how small that pipeline is: even the 2022 peak of 107 units would take more than a century to replace the county's existing 11,143 housing units1.
What that means for you. If you are buying, you are almost certainly buying resale, and you should not expect a builder incentive war to reset local pricing the way it has in Clay and St. Johns. If you are selling, you are not competing against a new-construction community down the road — which is a real advantage Bradford sellers have that sellers in Middleburg and Green Cove Springs do not. If you are investing, essentially no new supply plus a slowly improving road network is the entire structural bull case for this county.
One data note in the interest of honesty: I could not source a single-family versus multifamily split of those 66 permits — the federal single-unit series for this county was unavailable — so the figure above is all structure types combined9.
This is a good example of why I show my work. The Census Bureau's July 1, 2025 estimate puts Bradford County at 28,307 residents across 293.96 square miles of land, with a 2020 Census density of 96.3 people per square mile1. Florida's own Office of Economic and Demographic Research shows a lower trajectory: 28,303 at the 2020 Census, then 27,955 in 2021, 27,013 in 2022, 27,389 in 2023 and 27,335 in 2024 — a 3.4% decline from 2020 to 2024. EDR projects 28,334 by 2030 and 29,713 by 20502.
So: is Bradford growing or shrinking? Honestly, roughly flat, with the direction depending on which series you trust and on prison-population swings that move a county this small. Anyone who tells you Bradford County is booming is selling something. Anyone who tells you it is emptying out is also selling something.
Bradford recorded a net domestic migration rate of 12.35 per 1,000 mid-year population in 2024 — meaning it was a net importer of domestic movers even while EDR's population count fell, with the difference driven by group-quarters changes and natural decrease49. I quote the rate rather than a headcount because only the rate is published; multiplying it out would be my arithmetic, not a source's.
Who is actually arriving? Mostly Floridians. 81.6% of Bradford residents lived in the same house one year earlier. Of the 18.3% who moved within the U.S., 12.0% came from a different county in Florida, 5.2% moved within Bradford, and only 1.2% came from another state2. This is not a Zoom-town. It is fed by people moving out from Alachua, Clay and Duval looking for land and a lower payment. Statewide context: Florida added 201,191 residents through migration in 2025, about 551 a day, down sharply from the 2022 peak of 598,737 — and the named gainers were Polk, Pasco and Marion, not small rural North Florida counties50.
Median household income is $63,050, median family income $76,923, and per capita income $27,4341. Per capita personal income rose from $37,499 in 2020 to $46,074 in 2024, a 22.9% four-year gain with 4.8% growth in 2024 alone2. (The two per-capita figures differ because they measure different things — the ACS figure divides all income by all residents including those in group quarters; the BEA-style figure is a different construction. Another reason to treat Bradford per-capita numbers carefully.)
The harder numbers: 18.2% of Bradford residents live in poverty, rising to 26.4% for those under 18 and 28.4% for related children ages 5-17 in families2. And personal bankruptcy filings doubled, from 0.62 per 1,000 population in the twelve months ending September 30, 2024 to 1.23 per 1,000 in the twelve months ending September 30, 2025, ranking 33rd in the state2. 87.2% of residents under 65 have health insurance2. I include this because a buyer deciding where to raise a family deserves the whole picture, and because it is context for why the affordability gap above matters here more than it would in a higher-income county.
Bradford County's 2024 average annual employment was 6,314 jobs across 565 establishments, with real GDP of $729.4 million in 2024, up from $699.2 million in 2023 — about 0.1% of Florida's economy2.
| Sector | Share of county employment (2024) |
|---|---|
| Trade, Transportation & Utilities | 30.2%2 |
| Government | 25.3%2 |
| Leisure & Hospitality | 12.8%2 |
| Education & Health Services | 8.9%2 |
| Construction | 5.3%2 |
| Natural Resources & Mining | 4.7%2 |
| Manufacturing | 4.2%2 |
Average annual wage across all industries was $48,900; government paid $53,814; leisure and hospitality paid $23,2462. That government share — one job in four — is the corrections complex, the school district, the county and the municipalities. It is why Bradford's employment base is more stable than a county this small usually gets, and it is also why the county's fortunes are tied to state budget decisions it does not control.
On named employers, I have to be straight with you: I could not find a published Bradford-only top-employer list with headcounts. The regional workforce board publishes one for Alachua County, not for Bradford. I know from working here that Florida State Prison and the other corrections facilities, the Bradford County School District, the county government and the Starke-area retail corridor are the big ones — but I am not going to attach invented employee counts to them. Sector shares above are verified; headcounts are not available.
The commute is the real economy. 50.6% of Bradford County workers aged 16 and older work outside their county of residence, with a mean travel time of 32.4 minutes2. That is a genuine bedroom-community pattern feeding Gainesville, Jacksonville and the Clay County corridor. Practically: Starke to Gainesville is 26 miles and about 37 minutes via SR-24 with Waldo at the halfway point; Starke to Jacksonville is 46 miles and about an hour via US-301 with Baldwin roughly midway at 27 miles; Starke to Lake City is 37 miles and about 50 minutes northwest via SR 100 through Lake Butler; Starke to Palatka is 40 miles and about 55 minutes southeast via SR 100 through Grandin; and Starke to Keystone Heights is just 13 miles and about 17 minutes southeast on SR 10042.
Broadband is the good news. Comcast is extending multi-gigabit symmetrical internet to more than 3,500 homes and businesses in Hampton, Lawtey, Starke and surrounding areas, with completion expected by Fall 2026, supported by a public-private partnership with Florida's Broadband Opportunity Program and the federal Capital Projects Fund; County Manager Scott Kornegay is quoted in the announcement32. That matters because 90.4% of county households currently have a broadband subscription and 94.2% have a computer1 — meaning about one household in ten had no broadband before this build. For a county where remote work is the most plausible path to importing higher incomes, this is the most concrete piece of good news for rural Bradford property values right now.
Public water access. Bradford County Parks & Recreation maintains boat ramps at Hampton Lake (SW 101st Street, Hampton), Sampson and Rowell Lakes (14300 SW 75th Avenue, Starke), Little Lake Santa Fe (3858 SE 20th Avenue, Keystone Heights) and Santa Fe Lake (42500 NE State Road 26, Melrose). County parks include Pleasant Grove Park, Speedville Park and Lincoln City Park45. Santa Fe Lake is the largest in the area and borders Alachua County to the south46.
Hunting and public land. Two wildlife management areas: Santa Fe Swamp WMA at 7,272 acres off SE 11th Avenue in Starke, with fishing, wildlife viewing, horseback riding, hiking and biking; and Raiford WMA at 9,141 acres along the New River off NW County Road 125 near Lawtey, with hunting in season45.
In town. The Call Street Historic District, the Andrews Center and the Florida Twin Theatre anchor downtown Starke39. The Eugene L. Matthews Historical Museum is in Starke. Elsewhere in the county you have the FIRM — Florida International Rally and Motorsports Park, a European-style rally and road-racing driver training facility — plus Starke Golf and Country Club, Bradford Sportsmen's Farm for shooting sports, and Shady Oak Butterfly Farm. The Camp Blanding Museum and Memorial Park, the WWII museum on base, is one of the area's real visitor draws.
The calendar. The Bradford County Agricultural Fair at the fairgrounds on N Temple Ave in Starke47; the Bradford County Strawberry Festival in late March or early April48; and the Starke Bike Festival, an August motorcycle event with a swap meet, live music and contests. Two cycling routes worth knowing: the 32-mile Santa Fe Lake Loop through the southern county, and the 61-mile Starke-to-Lake Butler Loop through Hampton and Brooker.
Healthcare — read this carefully, because it is commonly misstated. Emergency care in Bradford County is provided by HCA Florida Starke Emergency at 922 E Call St, a 24/7 freestanding emergency room that operates as an extension of HCA Florida North Florida Hospital in Gainesville. It offers CT, digital radiography, a full-service lab, and stroke and pulmonary embolism treatment — but it is not a full inpatient hospital campus. Phone 904-368-230030. Primary care includes UF Health Family Medical Group – Starke at 1550 S. Water Street, open Monday through Friday 8:00 to 5:00 and closed weekends; that is an outpatient family medicine clinic, not a hospital — there is no "UF Health Starke" hospital31. Plan on Gainesville, 37 minutes away, for anything requiring admission or specialty care42. If a healthcare need is central to your move, verify current facility licensure yourself before you buy.
What's actually within reach — groceries, food, healthcare, parks, and everyday services around the county seat.
Listings pull live from the MLS. If the Starke feed is thin, we widen to the rest of Bradford County. Want a saved search set up? Just ask.
I would rather lose a deal than have you find these out after closing.
Before you fall in love with anything carrying a Starke, Raiford or Keystone Heights mailing address, confirm which county the parcel is in. Camp Blanding is Clay. Kingsley Lake is Clay. Union Correctional is Union. Florida State Prison is Bradford. Mailing addresses in this corner of Florida lie about county lines routinely, and county determines your millage, your schools, your zoning and your permitting office. I check the parcel ID on every single one.
This is my reasoning, not a third-party projection. No national forecaster — Zillow, CoreLogic, NAR — publishes a twelve-month price forecast for a county this small, and I am not going to dress up a guess as somebody else's model. Here is what I am weighing and where I land.
Pushing prices down: permits fell 26.7% in 20259, which signals builders reading soft demand. Unemployment climbed from a 3.2% annual average in 2023 to 4.5% in 2025 to 5.5% in April 202626. Days on market widened from 34 to 563. Supply sits near nine months36. The 32091 home value index is down 1.3% over the year5. And at 6.66%, financing is still doing real damage to buying power17.
Holding prices up: almost no new supply is being added9. The FHFA index still rose 1.6% in 2025 and roughly 40% since 20218. Net domestic migration into the county was positive in 202449. Government employment gives the local wage base a floor2. Multi-gig broadband lands this fall32. And the First Coast Expressway now reaches SR-1641, which over time shortens the practical distance between Bradford and the Jacksonville job market.
Where I land: roughly flat nominal prices over the next twelve months, plus or minus a few percent, with continued softness at the top of the market and in acreage, and continued reasonable liquidity for clean, correctly priced homes under about $275,000. I expect days on market to stay elevated rather than snap back. I would be surprised by a double-digit move in either direction, and I would treat any single monthly median that shows one as a small-sample artifact rather than a trend. If mortgage rates break meaningfully below 6%, revise this upward; if county unemployment pushes past 6%, revise it down.
I will update this section as the data does. If you want the current read rather than the published one, call me — I look at this market every week.
Prices by town, acreage buying tips, schools, commutes, and the honest local trade-offs — all in the long-form guide.
Bradford sits on the US-301 corridor in Northeast Florida. From Starke: about 26 miles and 37 minutes to Gainesville via SR-24; 46 miles and an hour to Jacksonville via US-301 through Baldwin; 13 miles and 17 minutes to Keystone Heights; 37 miles and 50 minutes to Lake City; 40 miles and 55 minutes to Palatka42. Half the county's workers, 50.6%, commute outside the county, with a mean travel time of 32.4 minutes2.
Depends which source you use, and they disagree. Redfin's most recent published county month, October 2025, shows a median sale price of $283,0003. Zillow's home value index for 32091 Starke was $219,876 through January 31, 20265. Redfin's 32091 median sale was $230,0004. The Census ACS median value of owner-occupied homes is $212,5001. With about 21 sales a month countywide3, any single monthly median is noisy. I treat roughly $210,000-$285,000 as the honest working range and price individual homes off comparables, not a county median.
It leans buyer. Active inventory in early August 2026 was 188 on Zillow and 225 on Homes.com67. Against Redfin's October 2025 pace of about 21 sales a month, that is roughly nine months of supply, past the six-month buyer's-market threshold — though the inventory and sales figures come from different periods, so treat it as directional3. Median days on market rose from 34 to 56 year over year3. Well-priced, move-in-ready homes under $250,000 still move. Overpriced acreage sits.
No. Camp Blanding Joint Training Center carries a Starke mailing address, but the roughly 73,000-acre installation is in Clay County33. If a listing says Starke and mentions Camp Blanding, check the parcel's actual county before assuming Bradford millage, Bradford schools or a Bradford tax bill applies.
Florida State Prison at 23916 NW 83rd Ave is in unincorporated Bradford County with a Raiford mailing address, capacity 1,492, and holds one of Florida's two male death row units plus the state execution chamber36. Florida State Prison West Unit and New River Correctional Institution are also in the county38. Union Correctional Institution — the one people call "Raiford" — is across the line in Union County37. The complex is a major, stable employer, and it is why 4,319 of the county's 28,303 residents at the 2020 Census were in group quarters, over 15%2. Buyer sensitivity to proximity is real and varies by person. Drive the route before you commit.
Total millage depends entirely on jurisdiction. As currently posted by the Property Appraiser: City of Starke 20.0351, Lawtey 17.8984, Hampton 17.7095, Brooker 15.8842, unincorporated 15.5453 (St. Johns River WMD) or 15.6472 (Suwannee River WMD)10. That page does not state a tax year, so confirm the current certified rate at 904-966-6216. Because of homestead exemptions and Save Our Homes caps, the county's median effective rate is about 0.85% of market value with a median annual bill of $1,176, below Florida's 1.10% median13.
Get a real quote, because I do not have a county average I trust. Bradford is inland, in wind Zone 1 (100-110 mph design wind speed) with low flood and sinkhole risk19, so premiums should run well under Florida's coastal-weighted numbers. Insurify estimates a Florida statewide average of $6,060/year for $300,000 of dwelling coverage, and separately Florida's OIR reported rate decreases in 51 counties in 202618. The only Bradford-specific range I found, $1,700-$2,400, comes from an anonymous, undated broker guide with no methodology19, so I do not publish it as fact.
Very likely, but it must be checked address by address on the official USDA Rural Development eligibility map23. Bradford is rural and Starke's population is well under USDA's small-town thresholds, so most of the county maps as eligible. Income rarely disqualifies people here: the 2026 USDA guaranteed loan standard limits are $122,800 for a 1-4 person household and $162,100 for 5-824, against a county median household income of $63,0501. Verify the specific parcel before relying on it.
Modest, and I will not dress that up. The district enrolled 2,848 students PK-12 in 2024-25 with a 19.12 student-teacher ratio27. On the Florida school grades listing for district 04, Bradford High School is the only school above a C, at a B; Bradford Middle, Starke Elementary, Southside Elementary, Lawtey Community School (K-6), Hampton Elementary and Brooker Elementary are all C29. That page does not state which school year it covers, and published school counts do not reconcile across sources — so confirm the current roster, grade spans and grade year directly with the district at (904) 966-6860 before making a school-driven decision.
Five things. (1) Well flow test and septic scope — outside town limits that is your water and sewer. (2) Flood zone, if there is any creek, swamp or lake edge; see my flood zones guide. (3) Survey, easements and legal access — deeded access is not the same as a maintained road. (4) Agricultural classification: it is not transferable, so if the seller has greenbelt you must reapply by March 1 and the land must be in bona fide commercial agricultural use as of January 121. (5) Appraisal risk — with about 21 county sales a month3, there may be no clean comparable for a 20-acre parcel, which can delay or kill a financed deal.
Buying, selling, or just curious about what's out there — free 15-minute call.
What I could not verify, and therefore did not publish: a county-level Zillow Home Value Index for Bradford County; a Zillow Observed Rent Index for the county; the percentage of active listings with price cuts; new listings per month; sale-to-list ratio; IRS county-to-county migration and net AGI flows; a primary-source Bradford County average homeowners insurance premium; the manufactured-home share of county housing stock; FEMA flood-zone acreage; FDOT traffic counts for US-301; named major employers with headcounts; and any foreclosure rate expressed as a share of housing stock. Where the benchmark data for a section did not exist from a source I trust, I said so in the text rather than estimating. Figures verified and page last reviewed August 3, 2026 — market data changes; verify with primary sources before acting.
Chris Moore · The Moore Group at Momentum Realty · Licensed Florida Real Estate Sales Associate SL3389080 · 904-606-9163 · cmgroup904@gmail.com. This page is general information, not legal, tax, insurance or lending advice. Tax and insurance estimates shown are illustrations built from the cited inputs and assumptions stated inline; your actual figures will differ by address, exemption status and carrier.