Palm Bay is essentially a large bedroom community for Melbourne in Bevard County. Generally, Palm Bay is a middle class community with nice houses and low crime. Most people live there and work somewhere else. Because of the similarity of the lot sizes and the restriction of how large a house can fit on that lot, most of the houses are be similar in size and price.
Palm Bay has some advantages over Port St. Lucie and other similar communities because it's close to Melbourne, which is a larger city and has some nice amenities, like the King Center for the performing arts. Brevard Community College has almost as good a reputation as Indian River CC in Fort Pierce; some would argue better.