Delray Beach impact fees jump to $12,758 on a 2,000 sq ft house

Delray Beach votes Tuesday on an ordinance that would take a single $500 parks impact fee, untouched since 1992, and turn it into seven separate fees on new development. The city has published its own worked examples, and they are the number every builder in Palm Beach County should be pricing into a 2027 pro forma.

Why it matters

Impact fees are the part of the cost stack a developer cannot value-engineer. They land at building permit, in cash, before a unit is sold. Delray Beach has been an outlier among Palm Beach County municipalities in charging almost nothing, which quietly subsidized every deal underwritten there in the last three decades. Ordinance No. 34-26 ends that, and it does so with a study-backed schedule that is hard to litigate: Florida’s Impact Fee Act requires a rational nexus, and the city hired DTA Public Finance to build one, with a final report delivered January 28, 2026. The Planning and Zoning Board recommended approval 6 to 0 on June 15.

The numbers

The ordinance creates fees for municipal, police, fire rescue, water, wastewater and stormwater facilities, and moves the parks fee into a new Article 8.1. The staff report’s first example, a new 2,000 sq ft house on a vacant lot with 2,500 sq ft of impervious surface, totals $12,757.50: municipal $2,780, fire $2,440, water $3,380.50, stormwater $1,375, police $1,220, wastewater $1,000 and parks $562.50. The second example, a 267-unit building with 309,734 sq ft under air plus a 9,581 sq ft clubhouse, replacing a 29,488 sq ft industrial structure, carries $2,124,464 gross, less $47,318.75 in demolition credits, for $2,077,145 net. That is roughly $7,780 per unit.

Note the gap the state created. DTA’s analysis supported a parks fee of $6,741 per dwelling unit and $3,790 per hotel room, but recent state legislation caps how fast an existing fee can rise, so parks goes to $562.50 and steps up over time. The brand-new fees carry no such ceiling. A 2 percent administration charge applies, and additions of 1,000 sq ft or more trigger fees. Land vacant 10 or more years gets no demolition credit.

What’s next

Tuesday’s item is a first reading and public hearing, so the schedule can still move before adoption. Two things to model now: whether pulling permits ahead of the effective date is worth accelerating, and how the credit rules treat any existing structure on your site, because the industrial-demolition credit in the city’s own example offset only 2.2 percent of the bill. The same commission meeting also takes up Ordinance 33-26, which rewrites how long an approval stays alive. Track the market at the South Florida hub.