In Davis Shores, You Don't Buy the House. You Buy the Lot.
Two listings turned up in Davis Shores the same week this summer. One was a three bedroom home on South Matanzas Boulevard, just over 3,000 square feet, asking $3.5 million. The other sat a few streets over: a concrete block house with the interior gutted down to studs, marketed straight at investors, priced for what the waterfront lot underneath it was worth rather than what stood on top of it.
Same neighborhood. Same "Davis Shores" label on both listings. The gap between them has almost nothing to do with the houses themselves.
That is the thing a buyer needs to understand before comparing prices here. In most St. Augustine neighborhoods, square footage and finish level explain most of what you see on a price sheet. In Davis Shores, the lot does most of the talking, and the structure is often just what happens to be sitting on it.
Davis Shores exists because a Florida land developer named D.P. Davis decided a stretch of swampy lowland on the northwest corner of Anastasia Island could become something else entirely. In 1925 he ran a 1,500-acre dredge and fill operation to raise the ground, platted wide boulevards and curving streets named after Spanish explorers, and started selling lots for a planned resort with a casino and yacht club attached. The Florida land bust that followed ended that version of the plan, and Davis himself died in 1926. The neighborhood sat mostly quiet through the Depression and the war.
What actually got built came later, in the post war boom, and it got built cheap and consistent: small two and three bedroom concrete block homes, one after another, on the lots Davis had already laid out. That uniformity is part of why the neighborhood prices the way it does today. Most of the original housing stock arrived on the same rough timeline in the same rough form, on lots that were platted before anyone knew what would sit on them. Buyers today aren't really pricing architecture. They're pricing dirt that was shaped a century ago.
Davis Shores carries no deed restrictions and no CDD fees, which sets it apart from the newer planned communities filling in elsewhere in St. Johns County. That absence cuts two ways. It keeps monthly costs lower than a fee-bearing community. It also means there is no association design review standing between a vacant lot and whatever the next owner decides to build.
That has already been happening. A handful of vacant lots have sold in recent years and gone up as new, architect-built homes, sitting directly beside 1950s and 1960s block ranches that never got touched. Walk a single block and you can see both eras standing next to each other. That is not a flaw in the neighborhood. It is the market working exactly the way an unrestricted, infill-friendly neighborhood is supposed to work. The buyer's job is to price around that mix, not to be confused by it.
Pull up a portal search for "Davis Shores median home price" and you will get a single number back. That number is quietly blending at least three different markets.
| Segment | Median | Window |
|---|---|---|
| North Davis Shores, waterfront listings | $699,000 | Active listings, early August 2026 |
| South Davis Shores, waterfront listings | $604,000 | Active listings, early August 2026 |
| Davis Shores overall, all housing types | $753,376 | NeighborhoodScout dataset, January 2026 |
The overall figure is worth using with a caveat. It comes from a longer-run dataset compiled earlier this year, so it reflects a slower-moving average rather than this week's inventory, and it folds together interior lots with no water access, waterfront parcels on Salt Run and the Intracoastal, and homes built anywhere from the 1950s through today. The two waterfront numbers are narrower and current: they only count homes actually on the water, split by which side of Anastasia Boulevard they sit on. Even within that narrower slice, North and South aren't reading the same.
Anastasia Boulevard is the line that splits the neighborhood into North Davis Shores and South Davis Shores, and it matters more than a line on a map usually does. The north side runs along Salt Run and the inlet, closer to the Bridge of Lions and a short walk into the historic district. The south side stretches toward the Intracoastal with a longer trip back across the bridge. That difference in proximity shows up directly in the $699,000 versus $604,000 split above. It is not that north side homes are bigger or newer. It is that north side lots are closer to the bridge, and buyers are paying for the walk as much as the water.
Structure size tells you even less than it looks like it should. Across the full neighborhood, homes range from 832 square feet up to 7,269 square feet, which means a listing's square footage on its own predicts almost nothing about price until you know which lot it sits on and which direction that lot faces.
A buyer working from a spreadsheet of comps will get burned here if the comps are treated as interchangeable. The order to work through a listing looks more like this:
Skip step one and a renovated interior lot can look like a bargain next to a dated waterfront one, when the dated one is actually priced correctly and the renovated one is priced for a location it doesn't have.
That walkability isn't an abstract selling point. It's a specific five or ten minute route down Anastasia Boulevard past Chop Shop Butcher Shop, Blackfly, Osprey Tacos and Old Coast Ales, Hornsky's Vinyl Lounge, and Sarbez, ending at the Conch House Marina and Restaurant on the water or across the Bridge of Lions into the historic district. On Saturdays that same walk connects to the farmer's market at the Amphitheater. None of that shows up in a square footage count, and all of it gets priced into a lot whether or not the lot happens to touch water.
A dated house near the bridge can outprice a renovated one three streets inland, and the lot is the reason why, every time.
Does a renovated Davis Shores home always cost more than one that needs work? Not necessarily. A fully updated home on an interior lot with no water access can list below a gutted, unrenovated home on a Salt Run or Intracoastal lot. The renovation adds value to the structure. It doesn't change what the ground underneath is worth.
Is North Davis Shores always more expensive than South Davis Shores? Right now, yes, at least on the waterfront segment, where North sits at a $699,000 median against $604,000 for South. Both figures are built from a small number of active listings, so a single new listing or sale can shift either median quickly. Treat these as a snapshot, not a fixed rule.
Do I need to compare Davis Shores to other Anastasia Island neighborhoods before deciding? It's worth understanding what makes Davis Shores different from the newer, fee-bearing communities elsewhere in St. Johns County, and from neighboring areas on the island. The lack of an HOA or CDD, the mixed-era housing stock, and the Anastasia Boulevard walk are specific to this neighborhood and don't carry over automatically to comps drawn from somewhere else.
If you're weighing a dated lot near the bridge against a renovated one further inland, Karen Lindsey at Lighthouse Realty can walk the comps with you street by street, and help you figure out what you're actually paying for before you write the offer.
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