MADEIRA BEACH — It’s part of the Florida dream for many: living on — or near — the beach.

But is the price of paradise out of reach for the average person these days? Are there any beach bargains left in Pinellas County?

From Clearwater Beach to St. Pete Beach, vacant beachfront property will cost you at least $1-million, more if it includes a house.

So how about a single family home on the water not far from the sand?

Maybe, but only if it’s on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Ken Hurley with Frank T. Hurley Associates recently scanned homes on the Multiple Listing Service, about 630 in all.  (Those being sold by owners were not included.)

Among the cheapest homes he found — “the last great deal on Madeira Beach,’’ says the listing — is a 1937, 676-square-foot rundown bungalow on the Intracoastal.

It can be yours for $475,000.

And if that seems too much, consider: Just a couple of blocks away, a three-bedroom, 3,300-square-foot newer home, also on the Intracoastal, is for sale at $1.25-million.

 Records show Simon Amar, a 48-year-old computer consultant from Manhattan, bought the Madeira Beach property, and a vacant lot next door, two months ago for $648,000.

Amar makes no apology for the home’s ramshackle state. The land is what matters.

“That’s why I bought it,’’ he says.

Its value has skyrocketed in the last 20 years. In 1984 the house sold for $85,000. In 1979, $40,000. The Pinellas County Property Appraiser puts the home’s market value at $428,100.

The wood frame house, with grayish siding, sits on a circular street, less than a block from four-lane Gulf Boulevard and a walkway that offers access to the beach.

The rickety front porch is covered in peeling blue paint with two crumbling concrete steps leading to it.

Its small front yard is mostly weeds. Attached to the left of the house is a roughly constructed wooden carport, where nails poke through the roof.

Amar opens the front door, which reveals the living room, where the home’s only window air conditioner hums. The wall beneath the unit is stained yellow from water leaks.

A tour?

“There’s not much really,’’ Amar says. “Here’s the living room. There’s the dining room,’’ he says pointing.
It would be hard for a family of much size to live here.

The walls are whitish, as they are in every room. They have decorative molding in the living room, and the floors are carpeted in a beige, worn berber.

Most of the rooms have no lighting fixtures; only single light bulbs screwed into wall outlets. But all the wiring, Amar says, is new.

The floor plan is open: The kitchen/dining room is adjacent to the living room. Its off-white linoleum and formica-covered counters are scratched and stained. An old refrigerator and stove sit just to the left of the single row of fake wood cabinets.

One of the kitchen sinks is stopped up.

Just to the left of the living room, a curved entry way leads to a short hall where the two bedrooms are divided by a bathroom.

The bathroom features (a word used loosely here) black and white tiled floors, a cruddy white toilet with a gold lid and a bathtub shower. The words “Open’’ in black magic marker are written by the crank-style window above the tub.

The back door in the kitchen leads to a screened porch with plywood flooring. Beyond the back yard, past two pines is the view of the water and homes across the waterway.

“The view, that’s what it’s all about,’’ Amar says. “I’m from New York. To get that view, it’s like, oh my god. This is like heaven to me.’’

Amar is giving the house three months to sell. If no one buys the quarter-acre property, he and a partner plan to tear it down and construct a triplex on the two lots.

Price and size are relative, especially to a man from New York City.

Amar says a 700-square-foot apartment there sells for $900,000, twice that of this Madeira Beach house.
Houses near the beach that aren’t on the water are cheaper than waterfront houses. But if you’re still holding out for that classic beach house, with sand just outside your doorstep, get out your wallet.

The highest priced home on the beach the day Hurley searched?

A 6,664-square-foot five-bedroom gulf front house with six and a half bathrooms in Belleair Shore where property values in the last year soared by 40 percent, higher than anywhere else in Pinellas County.

The home’s price: $7.5-million.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Melanie Ave can be reached at (727) 893-8813 or mave@sptimes.com.