Space Coast rents and vacancy: Brevard County by submarket

Space Coast rents are flat to slightly down across most of Brevard County, with a wide spread between submarkets. Zumper's October 2026 listing data puts the median for the Palm Bay, Melbourne and Titusville metro at $2,450, down 10% from a year earlier, while Zillow's rent index for the county sat at $1,887 as of October 16, 2026. Underneath those headline numbers, Merritt Island rents are up 9.5% in a year and Titusville rents are down 8%. Where your home sits on the map now matters more than the county average.

What are rents doing across Brevard County right now?

Two sources, two different pictures, and both are useful. Zillow's Observed Rent Index, which tracks asking rents across all home types, put Brevard at $1,887 as of October 16, 2026, according to the Momentum Research county scorecard. Zumper, which reports the median of listings posted in the prior 30 days, put the Palm Bay, Melbourne and Titusville metro at $2,450 in October 2026, down 10% year over year. Zumper's number leans toward single-family homes and fresh listings, so it runs higher and swings harder than the Zillow index.

The direction is the same in both: rents on the Space Coast peaked, cooled, and are now settling. For an owner, that means last year's rent is not a safe starting point for a renewal or a new listing. The right number is the one the current listings in your submarket support, not the one you got in 2024.

How do the submarkets compare?

Here are Zumper's medians by city, with the date each page was pulled. The houses column is the single-family median where Zumper breaks it out.

A few things stand out. The beachside and island markets, Cocoa Beach and Merritt Island, hold the top of the range, and Merritt Island is the only large submarket with a clear year-over-year gain. The mainland cities, Melbourne, West Melbourne and Palm Bay, cluster between $1,850 and $1,960 and have all given back some rent in the past year. Titusville sits well below everything else at $1,500. Viera is split: Viera East looks steady, while the Viera West figure comes from a small sample and should not be read as a real 37% drop.

Key point: The Brevard average rent does not exist for pricing purposes. A single-family home on Merritt Island and a comparable one in Palm Bay are roughly $700 a month apart in Zumper's fall 2026 data, and they moved in opposite directions over the past year.

What does the sales market tell a landlord?

Rents and home prices in Brevard are moving in different directions, which is unusual and worth understanding. The Space Coast Association of REALTORS' September 2026 report put the single-family median sale price at $380,000, up 0.5% from $378,000 a year earlier, with the third quarter median also at $380,000, up 1.3%. Condo and townhouse medians rose 6.9% to $272,500. Supply tightened: 3.5 months of single-family inventory versus 4.4 a year ago, and 5.9 months for condos versus 7.6.

Closings slipped 2.5% to 818 single-family sales, pending sales fell 16%, and new listings rose 2.2%. Zillow's typical home value for the county was $342,346 as of October 16, 2026, down 0.5% year over year, per Momentum Research, and Realtor.com's October 2026 figure for days on market in Brevard was 68.

Here is what that means for an owner deciding what to do with a house. Prices are holding, but they are not running away from you, so there is no urgency to sell to catch appreciation. Rents are soft, so there is no windfall in holding either. The decision comes down to your mortgage rate, your equity, and the gap between what the house rents for and what it costs to carry. The rent it or sell it framework walks through that math.

How much vacancy should a Space Coast owner budget for?

There is no reliable public series for single-family rental vacancy by Brevard submarket, so be skeptical of anyone who quotes one. What you can do is budget for it honestly. LandlordStudio's guidance is a vacancy allowance of 5% to 10% of potential rent, which on a $2,300 home is $115 to $230 a month set aside for the weeks between tenants. One vacant month costs 8.3% of annual rent before you spend a dollar on paint or marketing.

Across Sea Dog's Space Coast portfolio, a well-priced home typically leases in three to five weeks. Homes priced at last year's rent, or at the rent the owner needs rather than the rent the market supports, sit longer, and in a softening market every week of waiting costs more than the price cut would have. The post on how long a rental should sit vacant covers the weekly math and when to adjust.

What this means on the Space Coast

Three practical takeaways from the October 2026 numbers.

First, price to your submarket, not the county. If you own on Merritt Island or in Cocoa Beach, the data supports holding or modestly raising rent at renewal. If you own in Melbourne, West Melbourne, Palm Bay or Titusville, plan for flat to slightly lower rent at renewal and listen to the market during the first two weeks of a listing.

Second, renewals are worth more than they look. In a market where Zumper shows most mainland cities down 1% to 8%, keeping a paying tenant at a flat rent beats a vacancy followed by a lower rent from a new tenant. Do the turnover math before you push for an increase.

Third, carrying costs are not cooling with rents. Citizens' average Brevard premium was $2,348 in April 2026 across 6,986 policies, the highest of any county in Sea Dog's footprint, and that lands on the owner, not the tenant. When rent is soft and insurance is not, the net number shrinks faster than the gross one. Owners across the Space Coast should re-run their numbers at least once a year, and the Orlando rent data shows the same pattern inland.

Next step

If you own a rental anywhere in Brevard County and are not sure where it sits against its submarket, a free rental analysis pulls the current comps for your street rather than the county and gives you a number you can price to. It takes a few minutes to request and there is no obligation.