Weston, FL

What Weston is actually like

Weston did not grow up organically the way most Broward cities did — it was master-planned from the start. Industrialist Arthur Vining Davis had assembled roughly 15,000 acres on the county’s western edge, and Arvida/JMB Realty, the development firm also known for its role in building Walt Disney World, planned and built the community beginning in the early 1980s under the working name Indian Trace before renaming it Weston; the first homes in the Arvida-built section were completed in 1984 (Wikipedia). Residents voted to incorporate as the City of Weston on September 3, 1996, with roughly 90% approval, largely to gain local control and keep tax revenue in the community; the separately developed Bonaventure section voted to join the new city on April 1, 1997, by close to a two-to-one margin (Wikipedia).

Growth was extraordinarily fast once it started: the population went from 9,829 in 1990 to 49,286 by 2000, a 401% increase in a single decade, then to 65,333 by 2010 as the master plan filled in (Wikipedia). Unlike cities that grew block by block, Weston was built with its parks, bike-lane network, and neighborhood structure planned in from the beginning; the city maintains 15 parks today (Wikipedia). The Weston Town Center mixed-use district, a roughly 32-acre downtown built around City Hall with an amphitheater and bell tower, was developed starting in 1999 at a cost of about $42 million and gave the planned city a civic and commercial core it hadn’t had before (Wikipedia).

The city’s 2020 Census population was 68,107, and Weston has become one of Broward County’s wealthier cities: median household income reached roughly $122,774 in 2021, and as of 2010 only about 2.3% of residents lived below the poverty line (Wikipedia). The city also developed a distinct demographic character — as of the 2000 Census, Weston had the highest number and highest percentage of Venezuelan residents of any city in the United States, at 9.4% of the population, a wave of migration that gave rise to the city’s local nickname “Westonzuela” and shaped much of its retail and restaurant scene (Wikipedia). Major employers with a significant Weston presence today include Cleveland Clinic, UKG, DHL, Royal Caribbean, Rockwell Automation, and American Express (Wikipedia).

Home values in Weston

Redfin put Weston’s median sale price at roughly $763,500 in the most recent month reported, up about 15.7% year over year, with a median of about $376 per square foot — noticeably higher than most other Broward suburbs, reflecting Weston’s newer, larger master-planned housing stock; check Redfin directly for the current month’s figure, since it moves (Redfin). Zillow’s Home Value Index put the typical Weston home value at about $724,378 as of its most recent update, down roughly 2.3% over the preceding year, with homes going to pending in around 46 days (Zillow). RentCafe puts the average Weston apartment rent at around $2,805 a month (down about 2.8% year over year), with one-bedrooms averaging roughly $2,200, two-bedrooms around $2,668, and three-bedrooms around $3,248 (RentCafe did not report a citywide studio average) (RentCafe). One cost structure that’s genuinely different in Weston versus most other Broward suburbs: much of the city was built and is still maintained through the Indian Trace Community Development District (CDD), a special taxing district that issued bonds to build the original infrastructure and collects a non-ad-valorem assessment on the property tax bill to repay them — a different and often longer-lived cost than a simple monthly HOA fee, and on top of any separate HOA dues a specific gated community charges; always pull both the CDD assessment schedule and any HOA budget before making an offer, and note that the Bonaventure section of the city has its own separate utility-billing arrangement (see Utilities below).

Getting around

Walk Score rates Weston as Car-Dependent citywide, with a city-average Walk Score of just 15 out of 100 — meaning almost all errands require a car — and a Bike Score of 39 (Somewhat Bikeable), reflecting the city’s extensive built-in bike-lane network even though it wasn’t designed around walkable retail; a citywide Transit Score was not published (Walk Score).

Weston FAQ