Avoid Moving to Florida – Unless you can Handle these Negatives

So, you're thinking about moving here to the beautiful sunshine state, moving here to Florida. And, your kind of apprehensive and you're not sure exactly if you want to move here. Well, I'm going to go through and give you 12 points of the negatives that you may have to consider when moving here to this state. So, if you're moving here, especially to the Northwest part of Florida, you better stick around just in case this may make or break your decision. 

So, what are the big things here in Florida that you need to be aware of? What are the negatives? Like, let's get the negatives out of things that, if you aren't from here, what is it that's going to hold you back? Now, I'm not a Florida-born and raised person either. I'm actually from New York. And, like most New Yorkers, we end up down here in Florida. Maybe not necessarily here on the Panhandle, but this is where I was at. All right. 

So, what are some things that are negatives to hear about living here?

1. LOTS OF TOURISTS

Well, first things first is, people love this place. They love to visit it. That means that there are a lot of tourists. That's right. There are a ton of tourists in this area. And, if you don't like seeing a lot of out-of-state plates, and deal with people that don't necessarily know where they're going half the time, and bring a certain different culture in here that makes you want to just, yeah, this may not be the place for you. People love coming down because of the beaches because of the shopping. Of course, Orlando, you've got all the amusement parks down there. All the great things that come down from Miami. There are tons of cruise ports all throughout Florida. So, people are constantly coming in bringing Commerce into this area. If you don't like that and you rather be left alone, Florida may not be the best place for you. Although, there are places here that are completely rural that you can live, but by and large that's what you got to deal with.

2. TRAFFIC

Next thing, because of the tourist is traffic. And, not only traffic but locals as well, they're just as bad. Traffic can get rough, especially here in the Destin Fort Walton Beach area is just a thing we live in. And, because we're here on the coast and you've got bays and intercoastal waterways, there's only so many ways to get somewhere. So, you have to go up and around and everybody's filtered into one. And you got one person trying to take a left when you did your like, you can't take a left here and it backs traffic up for like, seven blocks. Yeah, that's what you get to do with here, and traffic is rough. But, my favorite friend is getting on my phone and looking at Google Maps and then seeing what the traffic is, and then, adjusting accordingly. Of course, as a local, I've figured out different ways to get around. So, I at least have one, maybe, two, three alternate routes if I need to get somewhere, especially as a real estate agent, I need to know that info. So, traffic can be a little rough.

3. IT'S HOT & HUMID

Alright, the next bullet point we have, is this hot. It's really hot and the hot isn't so bad because our friends out there in like, Arizona, it's like everything is hot. Yeah. Well, this humidity, this humidity that kills us. I'm an avid Runner and I run in Florida, and that, it takes it out of you. It will be 81 degrees, you know like that's not so bad with 95% humidity. It's rough. So, it does get really really hot here. We're talking sometimes in the 90s. The further south of course that you get, it gets a little rough. The good news is, that most of the year, it's nice and hot. So, if you like that heat, it's good. If you get more to the Northwest Florida where we're at, it actually does get kind of cold where it will get down to like 40 mid-40s to 50s, which for Floridians is ice-cold. Which, I mean, doesn't make sense with the science, but whatever. We do not necessarily have four seasons here either. I mean technically we do, but we'll get it where it gets cold and then we'll have about a week of transition, and then it's just hot. The same thing, we'll get down there towards the fall. We're like, oh it's going to be fall and you walk out and you're drowning in sweat and just like there's no sweater that you're going to wear, you just going to sweat right through it. The fall time, it's maybe again like a week or two or transitions from being 80 to 40. We have seen especially up here in Northwest Florida, like every four years it gets down into the 20s. So, just be aware of that.

4. HOME PRICES

Okay, some other negatives for this area is home prices. Depending on where you're from could be pretty high in comparison to the overall national average. Now, the national average of the date of this video, for a single-family home, the medium price is around $270,500. Now, most of the homes, especially up here in Northwest Florida, are going to be looking somewhere around, especially here in 2021, somewhere around 230 to 280, for like a three-bedroom, two-bath, depending on the area that you're moving to. Nothing is going to be less than $200,000 unless you're looking to do a lot of work to it. However, there are different places a little bit more rural, maybe not so close to the beach that you'll find a little bit better deals. As you move further south into the city centers, they start to go up quite a bit. And, when I mean up quite a bit, we're talking several hundreds of thousands of dollars when it comes to the average price. So, be ready for that. Although if you are moving from some place like, California or New York, it's going to be a nice little discount.

5. INSURANCE IS HIGHER

Okay, we also live in Florida, so we have storms and things that come through here. So, the insurance is a little bit higher. It's a little bit higher than you're going to find out and say Ohio. Most of our insurance for single-family homes up here in Northwest Florida as the date of this video for a single-family home, somewhere around, $2,300 or more per year for your premium. Now, that does adjust depending upon what sort of roof you've got on it, how old the property is, and so on and so forth. But, you're going to pay a pretty premium in comparison to the rest of the country because of the insurance flooding, things like that. That could potentially happen. They don't always and most likely they don't or nobody would live here.

6. TAXES

Okay, some other things are taxes. Now, there's no state income tax. So, that being said, you're going to have a higher personal and property taxes, depending on where you end up living. Certain city centers, certain counties may have higher taxes just based on where you're going to be. However, depending on big States like New York and California, it's going to be significantly less because I don't know they're just taxing the heck out of them. And, if you're from those areas, because I am, I know that from personal experience. And, if you are, and you want to tell me how bad they are, please leave it in the comments below or smash that like button, that lets me know that you guys are paying attention.

7. PEOPLE ARE TOO FRIENDLY

All right, again, moving from places where people just say it straight, don't talk to anybody and leave you alone. People here are super friendly, especially when you get closer to Alabama and in the South which isn't necessarily part of Florida. We start to see a lot more friendly people, a little bit more traditional, especially in our area. We've got a lot of military influencers, four military bases around here. So, that really goes into the community, there's a lot of diversity. There are a lot of just really nice and just friendly people around here and helpful. Really. We actually had one of our neighbors, we just moved into a new house in Fort Walton Beach that just came down. Never met him before helping us load trash into the back of a pickup. Like, it's incredible how nice people are around here, and a lot of them in our area are military influence, your military background, veterans like myself. It just really phenomenal and very accepting of everything and people are very, very friendly. So, if you don't want people in your business knocking on your door, like, hey, here's some, here's some baked goods sort of thing. I don't know if it's that bad, but you may have an issue with that. You may want to reconsider coming to this area. Now, I want to let you know, that the closer you get to big city centers, like Miami and places like that. It's not going to be as prevalent because there's a bunch of people from the states like California and New York, like myself. They may come down and just kind of take that culture with them and just leave you alone. So, it really just depends on where you move.

8. THERE'S NOT A LOT OF ELEVATION CHANGE

Okay, another maybe negative of Florida is, there's not a whole lot of elevation change. So, if you like the mountains, you like hills, you like these rolling landscapes, Florida does not have that. It's pretty flat. If you take a plane over it, you know, it reminds me of the Dumb and Dumber where they're just going down and be like, the Rocky Mountains aren't so Rocky. That John Denver guy. Yeah. So, anyway, there's not a lot of changing in the landscape. Although, once you get down to a certain point, it turns into beautiful white sand beaches, especially here on the gulf coast. So, it's definitely worth it, at least to this guy, in my personal opinion.

9. NOT A LOT OF COFFEE SHOPS

All right, and we mentioned that it does get pretty warm here and because of that, we don't see a lot of, like coffee shops. Now, in certain places that I've been, there are definitely places that you can go hang out. It's kind of a like a big big coffee shop areas where you can sit down, comfortable couches, you know, interact with people, it's a nice little social meeting center. Doesn't really exist too much around here. Now, towards your city centers, there's a little bit more of that. By and large, you're not going to see what you see, say in the Northwest part of our country. There's just not a lot of that and I think it's because of the heat and people don't come here for that. They come down here for the beaches and for all the fun things that exist here.

10. SAND IS EVERYWHERE

Another negative is, well, I'd mention the beaches, it's the sand, it gets everywhere. So, every house that's built close to the water is typically built on sand. So, no matter where you go, it's going to get in your shoes, it's going to get in the car, it's going to get in the house. A dog is going to drag it in, it's going to be everywhere. So yes, the beautiful white sand is awesome, but it does get into everything. So, just make sure that you keep that in the back of your mind if you're kind of a neat freak.

11. GATORS

Alright, the next point I have for you is, Gators. And, I'm not talking about the ones in Central Florida. We're talking about the alligators that are around here. Now, depending on where you move to, there could be more Wildlife than less. Here in Northwest Florida, we don't see too much of that. So, they're more like in those areas where you have fresh water to saltwater. That's more or less where we start to see them. But in certain different parts of Florida, there are a lot more prevalent. But we do have that sort of, like, I wouldn't call it aggressive, but we do have certain Wildlife on here that's a little bit different than the rest of the country. And, surprisingly enough, we have Bears here as well. So, this is one other thing that you should be aware of.

12. HURRICANES

All right, the last point that I have for you, which you're probably waiting for, like, hey Tim, why haven't you said this yet, it's hurricanes. Yeah, we get those. We get those big storms that roll through here from tropical storms to Cat-1 through Cat-5, big hurricanes that come in here. Well, you pay for that. Now, this is the Sunshine State, so it does have tons of sunshine all the way throughout the year. But, we do have that season which is in the summer into the fall, where we have our hurricane season. Now, depending on where you end up in Florida, you could get a little bit more than other different parts here in Northwest, Florida. I don't know what it is, but we seem to avoid all those storms that come up this way, they either shoot off to Louisiana or they go up to Central Florida. So, we're pretty lucky where we're at. But even still, when you think of hurricanes, it's not that terrifying so much as you become a Floridian if it's a cat-1, cat-2, even a cat-3. Most people are just going to wait it out. A lot of my friends will throw hurricane parties, you know, we'll have our portable ACs or whatever we need to get through it and everything else and just have a good old time as the storms rolling through here. A lot of the infrastructure is built to withstand it and the ones that have sat here for a while, well, it's been through a couple of hurricanes. So, you know that it's good. When you do move here, if you are looking to purchase a place, make sure to check the flood maps or ask your real estate professional, hey, is this in a flood zone? And if so, how much is that flood insurance going to be, and is it mandatory? We have different areas called surge areas where or when the storm comes through that we're going to have the excess water in there. You definitely want to take a look at that and be aware prior to coming in. However, it's a rarity that these things do come through. And when they do, most people if they're big enough storm, they'll just board up and evacuate, which is, you know, pretty normal for people out here. And if not, you'll just sit there and wait it out, which is why our insurance is higher. 

All right, well, that's all I have for you to avoid moving to Florida. So, if any of these are big, big No-No's, then you should avoid moving down here. Now, if you still like it, you know, like, yeah Tim, we're good with that and you're thinking about coming here in Northwest Florida, contact us, contact our team. We're more than happy to help in any way that we possibly can. Please feel free to call/text us at 850.320.7757 or email us at Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com