Belleair Shore, Florida

If you want a private, beach-front stretch of the Gulf coast with almost no through traffic and very few neighbors, it's hard to beat. It's a small residential town of single-family homes rather than a place with its own shops, so you'll lean on the surrounding Belleair area and the wider Pinellas County for daily errands and dining.

Yes — it's one of the most exclusive addresses on the Pinellas coast. The single active listing is priced at $13,985,000, and the one home sold in the past year closed at $6,750,000, so this is firmly a luxury market.

Right now there is one active listing at $13,985,000, a new-construction, Gulf-front home with a pool. Over the past 12 months just one sale closed here, at a median price of $6,750,000, which tells you how narrow and high-end this market really is.

Inventory is essentially a single home, so it's a market driven by scarcity rather than volume. Homes that are priced right move fast — the recent activity showed a median of 6 days on market — but sellers took about 84% of asking on average, so there's still room to negotiate on the right property.

There's no meaningful HOA data for this small town, so expect to budget independently for a coastal home rather than for community dues. Property taxes run around $12,404 per year at the median, though a home in this price tier will carry a considerably larger bill.