Homes for Sale in Coconut Grove, Miami FL & Neighborhood Guide

Horace P. Porter named the place in 1873 while renting a house on the Beasley homestead, 160 acres of bayfront. Isabella and Charles Peacock opened the Peacock Inn in 1882 on the site of today's Peacock Park, the first hotel on the South Florida mainland, and settlers from the Bahamas who worked there built one of the earliest communities in what is now the West Grove. Ralph Munroe, a yacht designer, finished The Barnacle in 1891; it is the oldest house in Miami-Dade County still on its original site.

The Grove incorporated as its own city in 1919 and was annexed by Miami in 1925, a decision residents have tried to reverse in court without success. Its Village Council still meets at Miami City Hall, and a Business Improvement District has run the commercial core since 2009. The neighborhood covers 5.607 square miles between US-1 and Biscayne Bay, from Brickell Avenue south to North Prospect Drive, with 20,076 residents in the 2010 census. The Goombay Festival, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival and the King Mango Strut are the calendar's fixed points.

The Miami 21 code splits the Grove into four sub-districts: North Grove between US-1, the Rickenbacker Causeway, the bay and SW 27th Avenue; Center Grove west to SW 32nd Avenue; the Village Center around Main Highway and The Barnacle; and South Grove down to Le Jeune Road and Battersea Road. Detached houses on lots of unusual sizes and shapes fill all four, from Bahamian-era wood cottages and 1920s Mediterranean houses to new builds that must differ from their neighbors in massing and detail.

The NCD-3 rules keep houses to 25 feet at the roof midpoint, require green space equal to 0.3 times the lot, push garages 20 feet behind the front wall and forbid re-platting that erases a median or green easement. Condominiums sit on the water: Grove Isle's three towers, completed in 1982 on a 20-acre man-made island, the towers along South Bayshore Drive, and Two Park Grove. The 1914-1922 Vizcaya estate at 3251 South Miami Avenue marks the northern edge on 50 acres.

Metrorail runs beside US-1 along the Grove's northern edge. Coconut Grove station at 2780 SW 27th Avenue and Douglas Road station at 3100 South Douglas Road both opened May 20, 1984 on the Green and Orange lines; the Orange Line reaches Miami International Airport. Metrobus route 22 runs on SW 27th Avenue and Tigertail Avenue, and route 12 on South Miami Avenue.

The City of Miami's Coconut Grove trolley links both stations with Armbrister Park and Douglas Park, Monday through Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Coral Gables' free Grand Avenue trolley reaches Douglas Road too. By car the spine roads are US-1, Main Highway, South Bayshore Drive, Ingraham Highway and Grand Avenue. rome2rio lists 6.8 miles to Downtown Miami, 7 to the airport and 11.8 to Miami Beach.

The commercial core sits where Grand Avenue meets Main Highway. CocoWalk at 3015 Grand Avenue opened in 1990 and reopened in 2021 after a full redesign, with The Streets of Mayfair across the street. Peacock Park, David Kennedy Park and Alice Wainwright Park line the bay, and The Barnacle's five acres at 3485 Main Highway are a state park.

Dinner Key, an island until it was filled in 1914, became Pan Am's seaplane base; the 1934 terminal at 3500 Pan American Drive has been Miami City Hall since 1954 and joined the National Register in 1975. Vizcaya, a National Historic Landmark since 1994, sits at the north end near Mercy Hospital, founded in 1950 with 488 beds and run as HCA Florida Mercy Hospital since 2022.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools runs Coconut Grove Elementary and Frances S. Tucker Elementary inside the neighborhood. George Washington Carver Middle at 4901 Lincoln Drive admits most students by application but keeps minimum quotas for Coconut Grove addresses. Many Grove addresses are zoned to Coral Gables High School at 450 Bird Road, just across US-1; confirm the assignment for a specific address with the district.

Two private schools sit on Main Highway: Ransom Everglades, founded in 1903, with its grades 6-12 upper campus on the bay at 3575 Main Highway, and Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart at 3747 Main Highway, PK-12 since 1961 around the 1918 El Jardin estate. Mercy Hospital handles emergencies at the north end.

Read the NCD-3 before you plan a renovation. Any demolition permit requires a waiver, review under the Tree Preservation Ordinance and a tree survey by a certified arborist, and lots that held one house before September 24, 2005 cannot be split without a warrant. Pull the City of Miami permit history and look for open violations; older Grove houses often carry additions that were never closed out.

On the bay side, get the elevation certificate and a flood insurance quote before you set your number. For condos, Florida requires a milestone inspection for buildings three stories or taller and Miami-Dade requires recertification at 25 years for coastal buildings, then every 10 years; ask the association for its reserve study and budget. A wind-mitigation report on the roof and windows will move the insurance quote more than anything else.

Grove buyers are paying for canopy, lot shape and the walk to the Village Center, so those belong at the top of the listing, with the tree survey and the permit file ready before the first showing. A house that clearly complies with the NCD-3 removes the buyer's biggest unknown.

Bayfront and South Grove listings run on a longer clock and draw cash buyers, so price against closed sales on the same side of Main Highway rather than a neighborhood average. Condo sellers should have the milestone report, reserve study and budget in hand, because lenders and buyers now ask for them first.