Fewer people move to Fla.

[kurth]

1/22/2008
Fewer people move to Fla.
By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Writer

CAPE CORAL, Fla. - When Eric Feichthaler became mayor three years ago, this town was booming. The city issued 800 permits that month to build single-family homes. Cape Coral still has thousands of empty lots, but last month, it issued just nine permits. A number of factors explain the downturn, and many of them are not unique to Florida. But it is becoming clear the Sunshine State is losing some of its luster.

Census figures show that in 2007, the number of people who moved to warm and sunny Florida from other states outnumbered those who left by just 35,301, down from 268,347 in 2005. It was just the second year since 1990, when the Census Bureau started keeping such records, that the state saw fewer than 50,000 net U.S. arrivals. For many years, Florida was like a stateroom in a Marx Brothers movie: more and more people kept arriving, and hardly anyone left. During the 20th century, Florida's population boomed, with growth rates ranging from 20 percent to 80 percent per decade. Florida is now the fourth-largest state, with about 18.1 million people.

Experts blame the recent slowdown on a combination of circumstances: The national mortgage crisis and the bursting of the real estate bubble, hurricanes, Florida's steep insurance rates and property taxes, and rising unemployment. The shift is felt most in places like Cape Coral, which went from barren southwestern Florida swampland to bustling bedroom community and one of the state's centers of a building and buying boom. But now there is a sea of unsold homes and undeveloped lots in this 115-square-mile city...

The slowdown is not just here along the Gulf Coast. Across the state, people tired of hurricanes and high housing costs are reconsidering Florida. Beth Mann, 27, lived in West Palm Beach until a year and a half ago, when her husband, Michael, was offered a teaching job in Georgia. He took it — at a higher salary than he was paid in Florida — and they moved to Buford, Ga. Their house is three times bigger. Their property taxes are 75 percent less. Their homeowner's insurance bill has been cut nearly in half. "We're like, `Why didn't we move sooner?'" she said. Eight other homes on the Manns' street are also occupied by former Floridians...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080122/ap_on_re_us/florida_population

[Bobbieo]

1. They are all coming to Southern Arizona.

[Coexist]

2. that would be nice. We are running out of room.

[Fed_Up_Grammy]

3. I'd miss the snow,ice,and hunkering down on a cold winter night.

I love New England and everything it has to offer-------would never move south.