Coral Springs fills the northwest corner of Broward, about 20 miles from Fort Lauderdale, with Parkland to the north, Coconut Creek to the east, Margate to the southeast, Tamarac to the south and the Everglades to the west. It was laid out from scratch in the 1960s by Coral Ridge Properties and then built neighborhood by neighborhood over four decades until it ran out of residential land in 2003, so most homes here come from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, few are older, and very few are newer than 2010. That timeline puts much of the city's air conditioning in a familiar position: ducts from the original construction, equipment on its second or third replacement, and some 1990s systems still running on R-22. Multi-unit housing adds its own twist, because thousands of apartments became condominiums in the mid-2000s with equipment chosen by a former landlord.
Coral Springs was chartered in 1963 as a master-planned city by Coral Ridge Properties, the company of Fort Lauderdale builders James S. Hunt and Joe Taravella, which Westinghouse bought in 1966. The founders wanted homes on ample lots and a strict city code to protect the look of the place, and the city still enforces rules on paint colors, roofing materials and landscaping. The first 536 lots sold in 1964; the city then added more than 35,000 residents in each of the next three decades and reached residential build-out in 2003. Census estimates date about 81% of today's homes to 1970–1999 and fewer than 5% to anything earlier.
More about homes in Coral Springs
About half the housing is detached houses, and roughly four in ten homes are in buildings of three or more units. Many of those multi-unit buildings changed form in one wave: the state condominium registry lists about 3,800 Coral Springs apartment units converted to condominiums between 2003 and 2007, in complexes such as Visconti, Palms Point and Edgewater. In a converted unit, the cooling equipment may have been chosen by the former landlord, and it can be older than the condo paperwork suggests.
The eye of Hurricane Wilma passed directly over Coral Springs in 2005, and the city estimated that the 2004–05 storms cut its tree canopy by about a third, which means less shade over many roofs and outdoor units. Average rainfall peaks at about 7.3 inches in June, at the start of a long, humid cooling season.
When most homes were built
- Before 1970
- 1970s–80s
- 1990s–2000s
- 2010s +
Salt-air exposure
- Inland
- Near tidal water
- Oceanfront
Inland, with no direct salt-air exposure
Typical buildings
- Single-family homes
- Condos
- Ramblewood East
- Eagle Trace
- Cypress Run
- Country Club Tower
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