Dunnellon Is 2,022 People. The Mailing Address Often Is Not.

Dunnellon’s official resident count on April 1, 2025, is 2,022 people inside the incorporated city. The University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research, in *Florida Estimates of Population 2025*, puts the city 94 people above the April 1, 2020 Census count of 1,928, a gain of 4.9 percent. From April 1, 2024, to April 1, 2025, the same city line moved from 2,015 to 2,022, a gain of 7 people, or 0.3 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2025 Gazetteer places Dunnellon city on 8.816 square miles of land and 0.298 square miles of water. Those figures describe the city limit. They do not describe every house that uses a Dunnellon mailing address.

That distinction is the useful fact for a buyer, a seller, or an owner. Marion County’s April 1, 2025 resident total is 433,765. Dunnellon’s 2,022 is 0.47 percent of that county. The five incorporated cities together are 80,086 people, 18.5 percent of the county, and Dunnellon is 2.5 percent of that city total. Unincorporated Marion is 353,679. A house with a Dunnellon ZIP code can sit inside the city of 2,022, or it can sit in the unincorporated balance that holds most of the county’s people. The property-appraiser card, the tax district, and the city-limit line answer which one.

The county population briefing on this site is Marion’s April 1 count is 433,765. The cities are the small share.. Statewide context stays on Florida markets. Purchase and sale work sits on residential.

The April 1 scoreboard for Dunnellon

BEBR’s Table 1 prints Dunnellon with the same columns used for every Florida city:

• Population estimate, April 1, 2025: 2,022.
• Change, 2020–2025: 94.
• Census count, April 1, 2020: 1,928.
• Inmate population, April 1, 2025: 0.
• Estimate less inmates: 2,022.

The first three columns reconcile on their own. 2,022 minus 1,928 is 94. Because the inmate column is zero, the revenue-sharing population equals the resident estimate. Ocala’s inmate column is 290. Belleview’s is 6. Dunnellon’s is blank on that sheet. A formula that uses the revenue-sharing column for Dunnellon is using the same 2,022 the resident column prints.

The FDOT county-by-city population sheet that carries the same April 1, 2025 estimates also prints the one-year change: Dunnellon moved from a final April 1, 2024 estimate of 2,015 to 2,022, up 7, or 0.3 percent. The five-year percent change on that sheet is 4.9 percent. The city’s growth since 2020 is real and small. It is not the county’s growth story. Of Marion’s 57,857 people added since April 1, 2020, Dunnellon added 94. That is 0.16 percent of the county gain. Unincorporated Marion added 49,615, which is 85.8 percent of the county gain. Ocala added 7,426. Belleview added 708. The river city is on the population book. The added residents of the county mostly are not inside its limit.

Dunnellon does not appear on BEBR’s top-100 city lists by size or by percent change. Its line in the estimates volume is the Table 1 count: 2,022. Belleview, at 6,121 and a 13.1 percent five-year gain, is on the percent-change ranking. Ocala, at 71,017, is 42nd among Florida cities. Dunnellon’s usefulness to a household is not a ranking. It is the city-limit number and the tax and park map around it.

City hall, land area, and the density that follows

The City of Dunnellon’s municipal address is 20750 River Drive, Dunnellon, FL 34431. The city phone is 352-465-8500. The city’s own home page describes Dunnellon as a place where two of Florida’s most treasured rivers meet. That sentence is the city’s branding of the Withlacoochee and Rainbow River geography. It is not a population figure, and it is not a substitute for the BEBR count.

The Census Bureau’s 2025 Gazetteer place file for Florida prints Dunnellon city, GEOID 1218675, with land area 8.816 square miles and water area 0.298 square miles. Divide the April 1, 2025 population of 2,022 by the Gazetteer land area of 8.816 and the result is about 229 people per square mile. Marion County on BEBR’s Table 17 is 273 people per square mile across 1,588 square miles. Dunnellon’s city density sits near the county figure even though the city headcount is tiny, because the Gazetteer land area is also small. A large lot outside the city can sit in a much thinner part of the same county map.

The estimates book uses the Census usual-residence rule. A person is counted where they live and sleep most of the time. Temporary and seasonal residents whose usual home is elsewhere are outside the 2,022. Peak weekends at Rainbow Springs and peak winter months on the rivers can feel fuller than the April 1 resident line. The resident line is still the official city population for revenue sharing and for any sentence that claims to count how many people live in the city.

The Dunnellon address that is not the city

Hills of Ocala is the clearest official example. Marion County’s Municipal Services page describes the Hills of Ocala MSTU as a recreation taxing unit for the Hills of Ocala / Rolling Hills subdivision. The county’s About page prints a current millage of 0.18 and says there are over 5,100 lots inside the unit, created by a referendum in 1983. The advisory board meets at 6 p.m. on the first Monday of each quarter at the Hills of Ocala Clubhouse, 10475 SW 136th Terrace, Dunnellon. The clubhouse address uses Dunnellon. The taxing unit is a Marion County municipal service taxing unit, not the City of Dunnellon’s corporate limit.

On the Department of Revenue’s 2025 final millage sheet for Marion County, Hills of Ocala is district 5072, and that column carries the Hills of Ocala MSTU millage of 0.1800. District 1001 is the Ocala city column used in the homestead property-tax briefing. A parcel in district 5072 is read on the Hills of Ocala column. A parcel inside the City of Dunnellon is read on the Dunnellon municipal column. The mailing city on an envelope does not choose the column. The appraiser’s tax district does.

The county MSTU page lists the recreation facilities the millage supports: basketball, tennis, and racquetball courts, walking trails, picnic pavilions, and a clubhouse. The rental page says the clubhouse holds gatherings of up to 50 people. Those sentences describe the MSTU’s recreation program. They are not a homeowner-association fee schedule, a CDD assessment, or a closed-sale median. A buyer looking at a Rolling Hills or Hills of Ocala listing confirms the parcel’s district on the Marion County Property Appraiser card, then reads the millage that column actually carries.

The southwest Ocala neighborhood briefing on this site, homes for sale in Cala Hills, Ocala, walks property-appraiser cards inside district 1001 and separates that subdivision from Hills of Ocala by name. The same discipline applies on the west side of the county. “Dunnellon” in ordinary speech can mean the city of 2,022, the river corridor, or a subdivision whose clubhouse prints a Dunnellon street address. The card keeps those meanings apart.

The rivers, the spring, the trail, and the greenway

Rainbow Springs State Park sits at 19158 S.W. 81st Place Road, Dunnellon, FL 34432. The Florida State Parks page lists the park phone as 352-465-8555, hours from 8 a.m. to sunset, every day of the year. The park page describes Rainbow Springs as one of Florida’s first-magnitude springs and says the spring’s flow is the fourth highest among all springs in Florida. A day-use reservation program began April 29, 2026. Parking-lot renovations run from September 9, 2026, through February 4, 2027, with limited parking during that window. Those are park-operations facts. They are not a promise about any private lot’s view, dock rights, or flood zone.

The Dunnellon Trail is a separate Florida State Parks file. The trail page describes a 2.4-mile paved multi-use trail along a historic railroad bed, with trailheads on Bridges Road on the Marion County side of the Withlacoochee River and on County Road 39 just east of U.S. 41 on the Citrus County side. The trail opened in May 2015. The Withlacoochee River bridge is the connector between the two counties. A buyer who wants river recreation and a buyer who wants a house inside the city limit are answering different questions that can share the same weekend map.

The Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway is the long public corridor through this geography. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s unit management plan describes a corridor of 110 miles from Yankeetown on the Gulf to south of Palatka on the St. Johns River. The counties on that corridor are Citrus, Levy, Marion, and Putnam. The communities the plan names along it include Yankeetown, Inglis, Dunnellon, Ocala, and Belleview. The corridor ranges from a few hundred yards wide to about a mile wide. The west-side equestrian briefing on this site, equestrian locations on Florida’s west coast, places that greenway next to the Withlacoochee River’s roughly 70-mile run from the Green Swamp to the Gulf at Yankeetown. Dunnellon’s 2,022 residents sit on the Marion side of that river system. A farm that can reach a greenway trailhead and a house inside the city limit are different products that can share a Gulf-side map.

Jobs, rates, and the tax line that uses the city name

A city population does not set a mortgage coupon, and a mortgage survey does not count city residents. Freddie Mac’s October 22, 2026 survey put the 30-year fixed at 7.32 percent and the 15-year fixed at 6.68 percent. On $300,000, principal and interest is $2,060.79 a month on the 30-year and $2,643.10 on the 15-year, before taxes, insurance, and dues. That is the national conforming average for the week ending October 22. A Dunnellon purchase still needs a written quote on the specific borrower and the specific house.

Florida’s September 2026 employment and unemployment briefing puts Marion County’s not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate at 5.4 percent. The statewide seasonally adjusted rate on that release is 4.4 percent. Citrus County, on the other side of the Withlacoochee from parts of this river town, prints 6.3 percent on the same county table. A household shopping Dunnellon lives in the Marion labor-market line and in the national rate survey at the same time. Neither file prints a Dunnellon median sale price, and this briefing does not invent one.

The tax side of the city name already appears in the homestead file. The Revenue Estimating Conference’s authority-level workpapers for Amendment 3 print a first cash-year non-school impact of $165,568 for Dunnellon if voters approve the larger homestead exemption. Belleview’s figure on the same sheet is $491,065. Ocala’s is $6,937,734 in the first cash year, then $11,245,325 in the next. Reddick’s line is zero. Those are conference estimates of municipal revenue the cities would not receive against the conference’s baseline. They are not a tax bill on one house. The parcel math, the school line that stays, and the buyer’s reset to just value are in the Florida homestead property-tax briefing. A Dunnellon owner reads the Dunnellon municipal millage column on the Department of Revenue sheet for the district the card prints, then confirms the current notice with the Marion County Property Appraiser at 501 SE 25th Avenue, Ocala, 352-368-8300.

How a buyer, a seller, or an owner uses the city file

For a buyer, start with the line the house sits on. Inside the City of Dunnellon, the official resident estimate is 2,022 on 8.816 square miles of land. Outside the city limit, a Dunnellon mailing address can still be unincorporated Marion, including the Hills of Ocala MSTU whose clubhouse address is 10475 SW 136th Terrace, Dunnellon, and whose millage is 0.18 on more than 5,100 lots. Ask for the property-appraiser card, the tax district, and whether the parcel is inside the city before you treat “Dunnellon” as one market. The price still comes from that house and from current sales of similar houses. Residential is the service layer for a purchase. Nearby public recreation includes Rainbow Springs State Park at 19158 S.W. 81st Place Road and the 2.4-mile Dunnellon Trail across the Withlacoochee. Park access is the park’s access. It is not a private dock right.

For a seller, the sentence a buyer can check is the official one. Dunnellon’s April 1, 2025 population is 2,022, up 94 from 2020. The city is 0.47 percent of Marion County’s 433,765 residents. The county’s growth since 2020 landed mostly in the unincorporated balance. A showing that treats the river town as if it were a mid-size city is describing a different place. Lead with the parcel’s district, the city-limit fact, and the comparable sales that match that district. The financing backdrop buyers bring in October 2026 includes the 7.32 percent Freddie Mac average linked above. The labor backdrop includes Marion’s 5.4 percent county unemployment rate on the September jobs briefing.

For an owner who is staying put, the 2,022 figure is the city’s official resident input for revenue-sharing formulas that use the estimate less inmates. For Dunnellon that figure equals the resident total. The Hills of Ocala MSTU millage of 0.18 is a separate recreation levy on parcels inside that unit. The city’s Amendment 3 conference impact of $165,568 is a later-year municipal revenue estimate if the ballot measure passes; it is not this year’s notice. Millage rates for the next roll are still adopted by the taxing authorities. Confirm the card and the notice before treating any illustration as your bill.

For a commercial user, the household base and the city limit are different screens. A site that must be inside the City of Dunnellon is aimed at 2,022 permanent residents on the April 1 estimate, with seasonal visitors left out of that count on purpose. A site that serves the wider river corridor is aimed at a geography that includes unincorporated Marion, the Hills of Ocala MSTU’s more than 5,100 lots, and visitors to Rainbow Springs and the greenway. A rent, a vacancy rate, and a cap rate are not in the population book. Commercial is the service layer when the question is a building. The I-75 auxiliary-lane job from SR 200 to SR 326 remains the separate Marion construction calendar on that briefing.

The through-line

Dunnellon’s April 1, 2025 population is 2,022. That is 94 above the April 1, 2020 Census count of 1,928, and 7 above the April 1, 2024 estimate of 2,015. The city covers 8.816 square miles of land and 0.298 square miles of water on the Census Gazetteer. Inmate population on the BEBR table is zero. Marion County around that city is 433,765 people, and unincorporated Marion is 353,679. Dunnellon is 0.47 percent of the county and 2.5 percent of the five-city total of 80,086.

A Dunnellon mailing address is not always the city. The Hills of Ocala MSTU carries a millage of 0.18 across more than 5,100 lots, meets at 10475 SW 136th Terrace, Dunnellon, and sits in tax district 5072. Rainbow Springs State Park is at 19158 S.W. 81st Place Road, Dunnellon, with a first-magnitude spring whose flow ranks fourth among Florida springs. The Dunnellon Trail is 2.4 paved miles across the Withlacoochee between Marion and Citrus. The Cross Florida Greenway runs 110 miles from Yankeetown through Dunnellon and Ocala. City hall is at 20750 River Drive. The phone is 352-465-8500.

Sources: University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research, *Florida Estimates of Population 2025*, Table 1 for Dunnellon and Marion County; Florida Department of Transportation, County by City/Place Population Estimates, April 1, 2025, for the 2024-to-2025 Dunnellon change; U.S. Census Bureau, 2025 Gazetteer places file for Florida, Dunnellon city GEOID 1218675; City of Dunnellon, dunnellon.org, for 20750 River Drive and 352-465-8500; Marion County, Hills of Ocala MSTU and About Hills of Ocala, for millage 0.18, more than 5,100 lots, the 1983 referendum, and the clubhouse at 10475 SW 136th Terrace, Dunnellon; Florida State Parks, Rainbow Springs State Park and Dunnellon Trail; Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway unit management plan, for the 110-mile corridor naming Dunnellon; Revenue Estimating Conference authority-level workpapers for Amendment 3, Dunnellon municipal impact $165,568, as reported in the homestead briefing on this site.

For help reading a Dunnellon or Marion County parcel against this city-limit clock — or a property in Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Hillsborough, or Pinellas — contact Bridge Point Business & Real Estate Advisors at 352-515-0226 or request a consultation.