Malabar, Florida Demographics Guide

Two Malabar demographics guides go deeper than this hub: the Malabar census profile, on people, ages, incomes and households, and the Malabar housing growth and home values guide, on homes, values and owner costs.

The census profile guide covers population, age, household income, household makeup, work and commuting, and how Malabar compares with Palm Bay, Brevard County and Florida. The housing guide covers how fast Malabar has added homes, how old the homes are, what they are worth, the kinds of homes, monthly owner costs, a Palm Bay comparison and how long owners have stayed. This hub answers six questions about who lives in Malabar from the same Census Bureau tables and points to the guide that holds the detail.

3,066 people, plus or minus 17, live in the Town of Malabar according to the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate, up from 2,949 counted in the 2020 Census (Census Bureau DP05).

The decennial counts show steady, modest growth for Malabar: 2,622 residents in 2000 (Census 2000 P001), 2,757 in 2010 (Census 2010 P1) and 2,949 in 2020 (Census 2020 P1). That is a gain of 327 people over twenty years, about 12 percent, in a town that by its charter limits single-family zoning to one home for every one and one-half acres (Malabar Town Charter).

Malabar covers 10.711 square miles of land and 2.572 square miles of water in the Census Bureau's 2024 place gazetteer (Census 2024 Gazetteer). The comprehensive plan places Malabar in the southeast section of Brevard County, with its eastern border along the Indian River Lagoon (Malabar Comprehensive Plan).

The town's own land inventory shows room to grow: vacant residential land made up 1,987.30 acres, or 23.90 percent of Malabar's 8,315.59 acres, in the existing land use table of the comprehensive plan, a table dated December 2019 and drawn from Brevard County Property Appraiser data (Malabar Comprehensive Plan, page 2). Land use changes after December 2019 are not in that table.

Malabar's estimated median age is 53.1 years in ACS 2020-2024 estimates, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8.2 years, against 46.7 for Brevard County, and 19.2 percent of Malabar residents are 65 or older (Census DP05, Malabar).

Brevard County as a whole has 24.5 percent of residents 65 and over and 18.1 percent under 18 (Census DP05, Brevard County). Malabar's estimates are 15.2 percent under 18, plus or minus 5.6 points, and 19.2 percent 65 and over, plus or minus 6.6 points, so the published margins for Malabar overlap the county figures on median age, children and older residents alike.

Next door, Palm Bay has a median age of 41.0, plus or minus 0.8 years, among its 130,132 residents, with 22.1 percent under 18 (Census DP05, Palm Bay). The Malabar census profile guide breaks the age structure into finer bands.

The median household income in Malabar is $128,698 in ACS 2020-2024 estimates, well above the Brevard County median of $78,476 (Census DP03, Malabar).

Per capita income in Malabar is $62,511, plus or minus $12,129, compared with $44,108 for Brevard County (Census DP03, Brevard County), and 3.0 percent of Malabar residents, plus or minus 3.0 points, live below the poverty level, against 10.2 percent countywide. In Palm Bay the median household income is $72,614 (Census DP03, Palm Bay).

The Census Bureau publishes a margin of error of plus or minus $46,983 on the town's median household income (Census DP03, Malabar), so the published range runs from $81,715 to $175,681. Even the low end of that range sits above the Brevard County median of $78,476, which carries a margin of plus or minus $1,054 (Census DP03, Brevard County).

Malabar has 1,215 households, plus or minus 140, in ACS 2020-2024 estimates, and married-couple households make up 67.6 percent of them, plus or minus 12.9 points, against 48.3 percent in Brevard County (Census DP02, Malabar).

The average Malabar household holds 2.52 people, slightly more than the county average of 2.42 (Census DP02, Brevard County). Among Malabar adults 25 and over, 40.1 percent hold a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 34.2 percent countywide. Civilian veterans make up 9.2 percent of Malabar's civilian adults, plus or minus 5.3 points, against 12.6 percent in the county.

Malabar workers average 25.9 minutes to work, plus or minus 6.0, against the Brevard County mean of 25.4, and 16.0 percent of Malabar workers, plus or minus 9.0 points, work from home, against 14.6 percent countywide (Census DP03, Malabar). The town comprehensive plan, dated December 2019, describes Malabar Road as an arterial road whose connectivity to U.S. 1 and I-95 has drawn small clusters of commercial development, and notes no new homes directly on Malabar Road since the mid 1980s (Malabar Comprehensive Plan, page 9).

Malabar is a town of owner-occupied detached houses: 98.9 percent of its 1,286 housing units are one-unit detached homes and 98.8 percent of occupied homes are owner-occupied, plus or minus 1.9 points, in ACS 2020-2024 estimates (Census DP04, Malabar).

The median Malabar owner-occupied home is valued at $451,100, plus or minus $22,318, against $339,600 for Brevard County (Census DP04, Brevard County). The vacancy estimate for Malabar, 5.5 percent, carries a margin of plus or minus 6.5 points. The town charter states that, to preserve the rural character of the Town of Malabar, single-family zoning may not exceed one unit per one and one-half acres (Malabar Town Charter, Section 3.06).

The town's fiscal year 2026/2027 budget item puts Malabar's gross taxable value at $467,810,775, a figure provided annually by the Brevard County Property Appraiser's Office (Town of Malabar budget agenda). The Malabar housing growth and home values guide covers the age of homes, value bands and monthly owner costs in detail.

Malabar's figures differ by source because the decennial census is the every-10-year count while the American Community Survey is an ongoing survey that releases new data every year in the form of estimates (Census Bureau, About the ACS).

For example, the 2020 count of 1,359 housing units (2020 Census H1) sits above the ACS estimate of 1,286, plus or minus 148 (Census DP04, Malabar).

The ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates draw on 60 months of data collected between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2024, and the 5-year series is the only ACS release with data for all areas and the one with the largest sample size (Census Bureau, ACS estimates guidance). The Census Bureau lists 5-year estimates as the choice when precision is more important than currency and for analyzing very small populations. Every ACS figure on this hub is from the 2020-2024 5-year release.

Margins of error matter at Malabar's size. The town's population estimate carries a margin of plus or minus 17 (Census DP05, Malabar), while the median household income margin is plus or minus $46,983 and the median age margin is plus or minus 8.2 years. A large gap, such as 98.8 percent owner-occupied homes in Malabar against 76.7 percent in Brevard County (Census DP04, Brevard County), stands well outside the margins; a small one, such as the 25.9 and 25.4 minute average commutes, does not.