Martin County, Florida: A Local Guide for Home Buyers and Homeowners

Stuart

Stuart is the county seat, on the St. Lucie River near the Indian River Lagoon. It was called Potsdam from 1893 to 1895, incorporated as a town in 1914 while it was still part of Palm Beach County, and became a city in 1925.

Downtown, you’ll find the 1927 Lyric Theatre, the 1926 Stuart Welcome Arch, the 1925 Golden Gate Building and the 1937 Old Martin County Courthouse, and the city runs a downtown tram to get around them.

Palm City

Palm City sits west of Stuart across the St. Lucie River and is the largest community in the county. It’s unincorporated, and the Tax Collector keeps an office at 3001 SW Martin Downs Blvd.

Jensen Beach

Jensen Beach is an unincorporated community with the Indian River Lagoon on its east side; its main public beach is across the water on Hutchinson Island. After John Lawrence Jensen’s 1888 land grant, it became the Pineapple Capital of the World, and the annual Jensen Beach Pineapple Festival keeps that history going.

Hobe Sound and Jupiter Island

Hobe Sound sits on US 1 in the south end of the county, with Jonathan Dickinson State Park at 16450 SE Federal Highway, a guarded public beach at 1 SE Beach Road, and branch offices of the Property Appraiser and Tax Collector.

On the barrier island at the county’s south end, the town of Jupiter Island holds The Nature Conservancy’s Blowing Rocks Preserve and part of Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge.

Indiantown

Indiantown is an incorporated village in western Martin County. Its landmark is the 1926 Seminole Inn, and both the Property Appraiser and Tax Collector keep branch offices on SW Warfield Blvd.

Port Salerno and Sewall’s Point

Port Salerno is a waterfront community south of Stuart, and the jumping-off point by boat for St. Lucie Inlet Preserve State Park. Sewall’s Point, an incorporated town, runs down the peninsula between the St. Lucie and Indian rivers.

Hutchinson Island

Hutchinson Island is the barrier island east of Stuart and Jensen Beach. Bathtub Beach, Stuart Beach and the Jensen Beach ocean park are all here, along with the 1876 Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge, the Elliott Museum and the Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center.

Martin County SHIP purchase assistance

Martin County’s SHIP plan has carried purchase assistance, with and without rehab, as a 0% deferred loan that’s reduced in steps over its term. Buyers have had to be first-time buyers, qualify for a first mortgage and finish a HUD-approved homebuyer course, and the plan caps the purchase price.

Whether purchase help is on the menu, and what it pays, depends on the plan Martin County has in force. Call us before you write an offer and we’ll check with Human Services at 435 SE Flagler Avenue on whether Martin SHIP is taking purchase applications for the home you want.

Martin County SHIP plan

Martin County SHIP help for owners and renters

Martin County SHIP also runs owner-occupied rehabilitation, rental move-in assistance, and water and sewer hookup assistance. Help is first-come, first-completed, first-served, with income limits set by household size.

Buying a house that’s still on septic? The county hookup help can matter, and it opens and closes with SHIP funding, so call us and we’ll find out where it is before you count it in your plan. Human Services: 435 SE Flagler Avenue, Stuart, (772) 288-5785, appointments (772) 320-3169.

Official program page

Florida Hometown Heroes (statewide)

Florida Hometown Heroes pairs a Florida Housing 30-year fixed first mortgage with a 0% second for the down payment and closing costs. There’s no monthly payment on that second, and it isn’t forgiven; you pay it back when you sell, refinance or pay off the home, or stop living in it.

At least one buyer must work full time for an eligible Florida-based employer in health care, K-12 schools, first response, public safety, the courts or licensed child care, which covers staff at the Cleveland Clinic hospitals in Stuart and the Martin County School District. Active-duty members in Martin County qualify with any employer, and veterans and Reserve or National Guard members qualify when they work full time for a Florida-based employer.

Florida Housing assistance can be used once in a lifetime, so it should go on the right home with the right lender. Limits vary by county and household size and funds are reserved loan by loan, so call us first and we’ll check what Hometown Heroes covers on a Martin County price.

Official program page

FL Assist and HFA Preferred / HFA Advantage (statewide)

FL Assist gives Martin County buyers a 0% Florida Housing second for the down payment and closing costs; it has no monthly payment and is repaid when you sell, refinance, transfer the home or move out. It rides behind a Florida Housing first mortgage: FHA, VA, USDA or Conventional HFA Preferred or HFA Advantage.

HFA Advantage PLUS matches a Freddie Mac Conventional first with a second forgiven over 5 years as long as you live in the home, and FL HLP is a second carrying a small fixed monthly payment over 30 years. All of them go through a participating lender.

Florida Housing adjusts these seconds during the year. Call us with the Stuart, Palm City or Hobe Sound address and we’ll tell you which one does the most for that price.

Official program page

Schools and colleges

Public schools are run by the Martin County School District, headquartered at 1939 SE Federal Highway in Stuart.

Indian River State College has its Chastain Campus at 2400 SE Salerno Rd in Stuart.

Getting around

US 1, A1A, SR 76 (Kanner Highway) and SR 714 are the main roads around Stuart. MARTY, Martin County Public Transit, runs the county buses, and Stuart’s downtown tram covers the core.

Witham Field, a county-owned general aviation airport, sits about one mile southeast of downtown Stuart, and Indiantown Airport serves the west county.

Jonathan Dickinson State Park

The park covers more than 10,000 acres and 16 natural communities on the Loxahatchee River. Rangers lead tours of the 1930s homestead of Trapper Nelson, the Wild Man of the Loxahatchee, and it’s the only south Florida state park where you can hike to the top of an ancient sand dune. The grounds also hold the site of a secret World War II training camp.

Blowing Rocks Preserve

This 73-acre Nature Conservancy preserve on Jupiter Island has the largest Anastasia limestone shoreline on the Atlantic coast, and at rough high tides waves push spray up to 50 feet.

Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge

The refuge protects 3.5 miles of Atlantic beach and nearly 10 miles of Indian River Lagoon mangrove. It’s the largest contiguous undeveloped beach in southeastern Florida and one of the Southeast’s most productive sea turtle nesting areas.

St. Lucie Inlet and Seabranch

St. Lucie Inlet Preserve State Park is boat access only, with a boardwalk through the mangroves to an Atlantic beach and an offshore reef that marks the northern end of Florida’s Coral Reef. Seabranch Preserve State Park, at 6093 SE Dixie Highway, protects rare sand pine scrub and carries a stretch of the East Coast Greenway.

Guarded beaches

Bathtub Beach at 1585 SE MacArthur Blvd. is a guarded county beach. Stuart Beach (889 NE Ocean Blvd.), Jensen Beach (4191 NE Ocean Blvd.) and Hobe Sound Beach (1 SE Beach Road) are guarded too and all lend beach wheelchairs.

On the island and around town

Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge, built in 1876, is the oldest structure in the county and one of ten U.S. Life-Saving Service houses built on Florida’s Atlantic coast to shelter shipwreck survivors. The Florida Oceanographic Society, founded in 1964, runs a 750,000-gallon saltwater gamefish lagoon, and the Stuart Boat Show has filled downtown every January for more than 50 years.

Out west to the lake

Martin County’s land runs west to the shore of Lake Okeechobee, where the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, part of the Florida National Scenic Trail, passes through. Of the county’s 753 square miles of total area, 209 are water, and Savannas Preserve State Park reaches into the county too.

Buying a home

FHA is the loan most of our buyers use, at 3.5% down with a 580 or higher credit score, and Martin’s FHA limit is in the table above. Past that, Conventional loans reach higher. We also close VA loans with no down payment for eligible veterans, Hometown Heroes, FHA 100% financing and DSCR loans for rental property.

We’ve been a licensed Florida mortgage broker since 1997, lending statewide in all 67 Florida counties, from Indiantown to Jupiter Island here in Martin. We shop your loan across multiple wholesale lenders and line up FHA and Conventional side by side, so you know which one wins on the house you want.

Refinancing the home you have

A refinance on your Martin County home can lower the monthly payment, take cash out for a roof, hurricane shutters or a dock, pay off higher-interest debt, or buy out a co-owner. It lets the equity you’ve built go to work.

Call 888-601-8344 and we’ll set your current payment next to the new one, with the cash you’d take out and the closing costs, before you commit to anything.