Harbor Beach: Intracoastal canals or the lakes behind fixed spans
Harbor Beach is really two kinds of waterfront. On the city's water map the Lucille, Diane, Cordelia and Estelle canals reach in from the Intracoastal side of the neighbourhood, so a boat on one of them turns straight out into the Stranahan River.
Lake Sylvia and Mayan Lake are different. The Mercedes River leaves the Intracoastal at Mile 1065.7 and runs east to Lake Sylvia under a fixed bridge that Coast Pilot 4 puts at 7 feet. The Marietta River turns south off it under another fixed span, 8 feet, and the Marion River carries on from just below that bridge into Mayan Lake. The same edition notes a reported 8 feet of depth in the Mercedes River up to the bridge, from a 1983 survey.
A lake lot still has a buyer who boats. It is a smaller boat, and we price the lot for that boat rather than walking away.
Rio Vista's Spanish canals, north of the causeway
Rio Vista's canals carry Spanish names on the city map: Rio Alcazar, Rio Valencia, Rio Granada, Rio Carmena and Rio Cordova, with Lake Juanita and the Tarpon River at the western end. Lauderdale Harbours, across from Harbor Beach, has Cliff Lake and the Marcheta, Carlotta and Cerro Gordo canals, and Harbordale fronts the Seminole River.
All of that water opens onto the Stranahan River above the 17th Street Causeway, so the drawbridge is part of every run to the port. At 55 feet in the closed position, most boats clear it without waiting. A taller mast or tower waits for the half-hourly opening, and in the weekday rush for the top of the hour.
Seventy-six per cent Fort Lauderdale, the rest cargo docks
USPS calls all of 33316 Fort Lauderdale, but the Census Bureau's ZIP-to-place file splits the land four ways. Roughly a quarter sits in Hollywood, Dania Beach or unincorporated Broward, and on the Property Appraiser's plat map that quarter is Port Everglades: numbered port plats, warehouses and industrial parcels.
For a house lot this simplifies things. The homes are on the Fort Lauderdale side, so the city's land development code, including section 47-19.13 on seawall height, is the rulebook, with Broward's countywide standard setting the same 5-foot floor behind it.
A $2.18 million median on 69 sales
Miami Realtors counted 69 single-family closings across 33316 in 2025, the same number as the year before, at a median of $2,180,000. The average was far higher, at $3,422,728, which tells you a handful of very large sales pulled it up.
Sellers got 89.4% of their original asking price on average, and the typical home took 89 days to reach a contract. Those are ZIP-wide numbers for every single-family house. What sets a waterfront lot's price here is which side of the Mercedes River bridge it sits on, the width of the frontage and the state of the wall.