Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club is the most valuable neighborhood in Boca Raton and the one that sets the city's price records: about 680 single-family estates on 450 acres between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Boca Inlet, next door to The Boca Raton resort, with deep-water canals that reach the ocean with no fixed bridges, a Jack Nicklaus Signature course and an optional private club. The median sale over the last 24 months was $9,000,000, a third of the homes sold were built in 2022 or later, and a spec estate on East Maya Palm Drive sold for $75 million in May 2026, the highest price ever paid for a home in Boca Raton. This guide covers the history, which streets are on the water and which are on the course, the club and what it costs, how homes traded over the last 24 months (85 closed sales from BeachesMLS), schools and taxes, and how to buy or sell here well.
At a glance
| Location | East Boca Raton, ZIP 33432, between the Intracoastal and Federal Highway south of Camino Real; gates on East Camino Real (opposite The Boca Raton) and Federal Highway, 24-hour armed patrol |
| Developed | 1959 by Arvida (Arthur Vining Davis) on the Boca Raton resort's old polo grounds; South Florida's first planned unit development and the first U.S. community with buried utilities |
| Size | About 450 acres; about 740 platted lots and 680 homes (roughly 300 interior, 220 golf, 230 waterfront); single-family only, many estates on double lots |
| Water | Deep-water canals and Intracoastal frontage; no fixed bridges to the Boca Inlet (the Camino Real bridge opens); seawalls take yachts to about 165 feet |
| Club (optional, by nomination) | Jack Nicklaus Signature course (2003, re-renovated 2014; 7,116 yards), yacht club and marina ($30M rebuild 2014–16, yachts to 130 feet), 6 Har-Tru tennis courts, 4 pickleball, croquet, fitness, spa, pool, five dining venues |
| Association | Royal Palm Improvement Association (RPIA): roads, landscaping, standards, patrol; about $4,150 a year |
| Schools (public) | Boca Raton Elementary, Boca Raton Community Middle, Boca Raton Community High |
| Record sale | 2500 E. Maya Palm Drive, $75 million, May 2026 (spec estate by SRD Building Corp. on a 292-foot Intracoastal point lot) |
History and setting
Arthur Vining Davis, the chairman of Alcoa, bought the land south of the Boca Raton resort in 1956 and his company Arvida broke ground on Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club on March 21, 1959, on what had been the resort's polo grounds and a nine-hole course where Tommy Armour taught. It was sold as South Florida's first planned unit development and the first community in the country with every utility buried, including natural gas; Sam Snead was the first golf professional and a 21-year-old Jack Nicklaus played here as an amateur in 1961. The first Commodore's Ball was held in March 1960, and the yacht club has anchored the social life of the neighborhood since. The adjacent resort is Addison Mizner's 1926 Cloister Inn, which is where Royal Palm's Mediterranean roots come from, though Mizner himself never owned this land.
The streets are laid out as a loop, Royal Palm Way, with the palm-named streets running east to the water: East Alexander Palm, East Coconut Palm, East Key Palm, East Silver Palm and East Maya Palm reach the deep-water canals and the Intracoastal, with East Maya Palm holding the point lots where the records are set. Thatch Palm and Sabal Palm run along the Nicklaus course; the West Alexander, West Coconut, West Key, West Maya and West Silver Palm streets, Cherry Palm and Areca Palm are mostly interior and golf lots. The community is guard-gated but not closed: two staffed guardhouses and a 24-hour armed patrol, and Forbes has listed it among America's most exclusive gated communities.
The streets and what they sell for
Royal Palm has no subdivisions; it has lot types, and the lot type decides the price more than the house does. The 85 sales of the last 24 months broke out this way.
| Price band | Sales (24 mo) | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| $3.3M to $5M | 14 | Interior and golf-front homes from the 1960s to 1990s, renovated or bought for the lot; the entry to the neighborhood and where most teardowns start |
| $5M to $10M | 36 | Renovated interior and golf estates of 5,000 to 7,000 sq ft, 2000s-built homes, and new construction on interior lots; some smaller canal lots |
| $10M to $20M | 24 | New and nearly new contemporary estates of 7,000 to 10,000 sq ft on canal lots with docks, and the best golf-front double lots |
| $20M to $75M | 11 | Intracoastal and point lots with 150 to 300 feet of water and yacht dockage, 10,000 to 24,000 sq ft; the $75M record on E. Maya Palm |
The median home sold was about 6,597 square feet with five bedrooms on a third of an acre, built in 2016; 32% of sales were homes built in 2022 or later, and homes built since 2015 sold at a median of $11.2 million against $6.45 million for homes built before 2000. Royal Palm is a teardown market: the lots are worth more than most of the older houses on them, and a small group of spec builders, SRD Building Corp. (Steve and Scott Dingle), Albanese & Sons and others, buy, raze and rebuild to a contemporary standard with interiors by firms such as P&H and Zelman Style. SRD set the city record four times, at $17.2 million, $25.6 million, $28 million (372 E. Alexander Palm, 2023) and $75 million (2500 E. Maya Palm, May 2026, after paying $36 million for the old house in 2024).
Boat owners: see the twelve restaurants you can reach by boat from Royal Palm, with dock details, bridge schedules and cruising times.
The club
The Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club is a separate private club, and membership is optional and by nomination with two sponsors; you can own a home here without joining, which no mandatory-membership club in west Boca allows. Golf. The course was Robert Trent Jones Sr.'s in 1960, redesigned by Jack Nicklaus as a Signature course in 2003 and renovated again by Nicklaus in 2014: 7,116 yards, par 72, inside the neighborhood. Yacht club and marina. A $30 million rebuild from 2014 to 2016 with floating docks, slips for yachts to 130 feet, a full-time dockmaster and fuel, a few minutes from the Boca Inlet and the ocean. Racquets and the rest. Six lighted Har-Tru tennis courts, four pickleball courts, two croquet lawns and a pavilion, fitness and spa, a pool, five dining venues including the 1959 restaurant, Harbor Grille and Farenheit, a grand ballroom and children's programs. Cost. Reported 2026 figures put golf membership at roughly $125,000 to $210,000 to join with $18,000 to $30,000 a year, and social membership at $50,000 to $75,000 with $12,000 to $22,000 a year; against a $9 million median sale, the club is the smallest part of the budget of any community in Boca. All 15 Boca and Delray clubs are compared here.
The market: 24 months of closed sales
| Metric (closed MLS sales of $1M+, Oct 17, 2024 to October 17, 2026) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Closed sales, 24 months | 85 |
| Last 12 months vs. the 12 before | 49 vs. 36 |
| Median sale price | $9,000,000 |
| Median, last 12 months (prior 12) | $10,244,000 ($8,950,000) |
| Average sale price | $11,007,579 |
| Lowest and highest sale | $3.31M to $75.0M |
| Median price per square foot | $1451 |
| Median living area / bedrooms / lot | 6,597 sq ft / 5 / about 0.34 acre |
| Median year built (share built 2022 or later) | 2016 (32%) |
| Homes with a private pool / on water | 96% / 32% |
| Median days on market (average) | 98 (134) |
| Sold price vs. final list / original list | 92% / 89% |
| Cash buyers | 79% |
| Median annual property tax on homes sold | $70,395 |
| Median HOA reported in listings | $346 a month |
Source: BeachesMLS closed sales, compiled by Ricky Estera on October 17, 2026; every Royal Palm sale in the period was above $1 million. Figures exclude transactions not reported to the MLS, including some builder-to-buyer sales.
What the numbers say. Volume and price both rose: 49 closings in the last 12 months against 36 the year before, with the median up from $8,950,000 to $10,244,000. Thirty-seven of the 85 sales were $10 million or more; none were under $3.3 million. Homes closed at 92% of final list and 89% of original asking after a 98-day median and 134-day average on market, longer than the west Boca clubs because trophy waterfront estates and new specs are shown to a small, global pool of buyers; the $75 million record went to contract in about 20 days, which shows what a correctly priced, finished estate does. 79% of buyers paid cash. With about 24 homes listed in October 2026 and 49 sales in the prior year, supply is about six months, more than any other community on this site.
Who sells, and why. Royal Palm owners sell for three reasons: a builder has offered lot value for an older house, the boat and the house have become more than they want to run, or an estate is being settled. Buyers are the most varied of any Boca community: families relocating from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, entrepreneurs and executives moving from Palm Beach or Miami for the privacy and the inlet, boat owners who want ocean access without a bridge, and second-home buyers from the Midwest, Canada and abroad. Almost none of them are deciding between Royal Palm and a west Boca club; they are deciding between Royal Palm, the Sanctuary, Boca Harbour and the ocean condominiums.
Location, commute and schools
Royal Palm is in the 33432 ZIP directly south of Camino Real and The Boca Raton resort, whose beach club, golf, marina and restaurants are across the street for resort members. Mizner Park and downtown are five minutes north, South Beach Park and the ocean about a mile east over the Camino Real bridge, Boca Raton Airport about 12 minutes, I-95 about 2.5 miles via Camino Real or Palmetto Park Road, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood 18 miles and Palm Beach International 24 miles.
Public schools are Boca Raton Elementary, Boca Raton Community Middle and Boca Raton Community High; confirm zoning with the Palm Beach County School District. Most Royal Palm families use Saint Andrew's School (PK–12, IB) or Pine Crest Boca (PK–8, with the upper school in Fort Lauderdale); Grandview Preparatory and Boca Christian are also nearby.
What it costs to own here
- Association: the Royal Palm Improvement Association assessment, about $4,150 a year, due July 1, for roads, landscaping and the patrol; listings report HOA at about $346 a month. There is no mandatory club fee.
- Club (optional): roughly $125,000 to $210,000 to join for golf with $18,000 to $30,000 a year, or $50,000 to $75,000 social with $12,000 to $22,000 a year, as reported in 2026.
- Property tax: the median bill on homes that sold was $70,395; Florida reassesses to the purchase price after a sale, so a $9 million purchase carries roughly $160,000 a year. No state income tax, which for buyers leaving New York or New Jersey often covers it; see the cost-of-living comparison.
- Insurance and seawalls: waterfront homes carry wind and flood coverage priced on elevation, roof and impact openings; new construction is built to current flood elevations and insures far more cheaply than a 1970s home. Seawall and dock condition are inspection items with real numbers behind them.
Buying in Royal Palm
Decide on the water first. If you keep a boat, you need a canal or Intracoastal lot, and the questions are frontage, water depth, the dock, the seawall and whether the lot sits on a no-wake canal or the open Intracoastal. If you do not, a golf or interior lot buys the same neighborhood for a third to a half the price. Then decide between finished and lot: new construction at $8 million to $12 million on an interior lot and $15 million and up on the water is close to what a ground-up build costs today, so a teardown only makes sense on a lot you could not otherwise get. Everything here is bought with cash or a jumbo loan arranged before the offer; have proof of funds ready and expect a short inspection period on new specs. Ricky lives in the area, tracks every sale, pending contract and builder project in the neighborhood, and will tell you what a specific lot and house are worth against the sales on that street.
Selling in Royal Palm
Know what you are selling: the house, or the lot. If the house is from the 1960s to 1990s and unrenovated, your buyer is a builder or a buyer who will rebuild, and the price is the lot value on your street. If the house is renovated or new, your buyer is an end user and the price is the comparable finished sales on the same kind of lot, not the record on East Maya Palm. The homes that closed at 89% of original asking were the ones priced to their lot type on day one. Marketing here is international and visual: aerial and water-side photography, the dock and the view first, and a quiet introduction to the buyers and builders who are already looking. Ask Ricky for a current valuation based on the latest sales on your street.
Market figures are compiled from BeachesMLS closed sales and are believed accurate but not guaranteed. Lot counts, marina capacity and street-by-street lot types are from public sources and listings and are approximate; confirm a specific lot's water and dock rights before you offer. Club figures are as reported in 2026 and change without notice. General information, not legal, tax or financial advice.
