Thinking of moving back to Florida

The more good the better here. Real estate is crazy here. Moves fast.

event, Good luck and enjoy! I'd love to live there too, have lots of friends there in FL, all over the state, but they say that it's getting crowded in some areas (the Tampa area), don't know really about the other areas but I hung around Miami, Fort L., Key West before, in the early 80s, I'm sure that's it nothing like it was then, now.

Sure aren’t anywhere near me. Maybe Steinhatchee - Cedar Key area.

The weather has been terrific all winter. Many sunny, low-humidity days.

In the summer, all the snowbirds go home. So, more for me!

The summers are not much hotter than NY or NC. I've lived in both places.

Seems like there was a two year boom on the Gulf Coast. Maybe you're looking a bit inland?

Go through realtor dot com a lot and impressed by the prices. Prices here are insane

...flood insurance adds to your condo fees. They can be brutal depending on your area.

don't know what he paid. After a year he decided he didn't like Florida and sold the house for a $100,000 profit.
Another person I worked with bought a condo in St. Pete for around $130k about five years ago he got an offer from
someone in California for double that a couple months after he bought it. He loves it their though. I could have bought
a place in Florida dirt cheap when I retired in 2009 but my IRA was in the crapper at the time.

And where did he move to? Just curious as I am considering leaving (but probably not).

farm in Ohio. He got a good bit of money for drilling rights. His brother talked him into moving to Florida
he said he would give it a year but he sold out and moved back to the farm. Now his brother and his wife live
in Venice and love it there. My parents moved to West Palm Beach in 1974. They liked it for a while but missed
the seasons and were priced out by HOA fees. They built a house in Ohio and moved back in 1980.

Right now we are going through a cold spell, but it's still much warmer than in North Carolina.

How long ago did you leave here? Do you have a time frame as to when you will be moving back?

You probably already know that we are having a housing boom here so condos have gone up considerably, but it sounds like they're still cheaper than in your area. I don't look for them to keep going up in price, but possibly doing a bit of dropping in the near future. I live in the greater Tampa Bay area and the housing in this area could use a bit of adjusting.

There are a lot of positives for you to come back home. Nicer weather, more sunshine, no state income tax, etc. Just keep in mind that we do have a crazy governor in office right now, but hopefully that will change in November.

Housing prices have gone up, taxes have also taken quite a jump and so have HOA fees. But as a trade off, you already know you don't have to pay a state income tax or much of a heating bill. HOA fees can be ridiculous, but also get a bad rap because they generally include water sewer and trash and upkeep of the grounds and insurance on the building and sometimes even cable tv. Many associations have it a bit elevated so they have reserves.

The job market is good here right now so that is another one for the positive side. Keep us updated!

Here and my lawyer is handling my appeal. I got my first turndown. I'll probably wait until that settles down. Don't want to move in the middle of that.

A 1-bedroom nice ( but not luxurious) condo up the road is now 169k. That is crazy

then DeSantis turned into a raving asshole. We're still contemplating, will probably go for a month or so in November or December, then make a decision. We do love it there and it is a bit um, different from the rest of Florida. We lived in South Florida during the 80's. It was it's own kind of crazy back then...

Grew up in the 70s and 80s in Miami.

The cops were on dealers' payroll in the Miami River case. How Miami!

Love the Keys!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/24/florida-keys-climate-change-sea-level-rise

‘The water is coming’: Florida Keys faces stark reality as seas rise
The neighborhood of Stillwright Point in Key Largo, Florida.
Officials prepare to elevate streets despite financial shortfalls, amid recognition that not every home can be saved
Oliver Milman
Oliver Milman
@olliemilman
Thu 24 Jun 2021 07.00 EDT
Long famed for its spectacular fishing, sprawling coral reefs and literary residents such as Ernest Hemingway, the Florida Keys is now acknowledging a previously unthinkable reality: it faces being overwhelmed by the rising seas and not every home can be saved.

Following a grueling seven-hour public meeting on Monday, held in the appropriately named city of Marathon, officials agreed to push ahead with a plan to elevate streets throughout the Keys to keep them from perpetual flooding, while admitting they do not have the money to do so.

The string of coral cay islands that unspool from the southern tip of Florida finds itself on the frontline of the climate crisis, forcing unenviable choices upon a place that styles itself as sunshine-drenched idyll. The lives of Keys residents – a mixture of wealthy, older white people, the one in four who are Hispanic or Latino, and those struggling in poverty – face being upended.

If the funding isn’t found, the Keys will become one of the first places in the US – and certainly not the last – to inform residents that certain areas will have to be surrendered to the oncoming tides.

“The water is coming and we can’t stop it,” said Michelle Coldiron, mayor of Monroe county, which encompasses the Keys. “Some homes will have to be elevated, some will have to be bought out. It’s very difficult to have these conversations with homeowners, because this is where they live. It can get very emotional.”


Once people are unable to secure mortgages and insurance for soaked homes, the Keys will cease to be a livable place long before it’s fully underwater, according to Harold Wanless, a geographer at the University of Miami. “People don’t have a concept of what sea level rise will do to them. They just can’t conceive it,” he said.

On Monday, the county gave details of its plan to spend $1.8bn over the next 25 years to raise 150 miles of roads in the Keys, deploying a mixture of new drains, pump stations and vegetation to prevent the streets becoming inundated with seawater. The heightened roadways are eagerly anticipated by residents who told the meeting of cars being ruined by the salt water and of donning boots to wade to front doors.


“The roads are shot, they’re full of cracks, the water is permeating up,” said Kimberly Sikora, who lives in a vulnerable neighborhood of Key Largo called Stillwright Point that is still awaiting a full road elevation proposal. “I’m just looking for some kind of relief.”

Another resident, Robert Schaller of Twin Lakes, an area further along in the planning process, muttered that he “should’ve done my due diligence” when buying his house last year. “I literally stand on my balcony and watch the water come up through my street,” he said. “It’s coming up right through the pavement.”

But Monroe county’s budget will not cover the raising of all the roads, nor any mass buyout of homes, and an appeal to Florida state lawmakers to levy a new tax to cover these mounting costs has been rebuffed. Further costs will pile up as the county grapples with how – and who pays - to keep critical infrastructure such as sewers and power substations, as well as people’s homes, from being flooded along with the roads.

“If we can’t raise additional money then we will have to look at prioritizing,” said Rhonda Haag, Monroe county’s chief resilience officer.

“For example, should we spend money on raising roads if people aren’t paying to raise their yards? We are blazing trails here. We are ahead of everyone in having to think about this.”

The pancake-flat Keys are in jeopardy from rising seas that are, as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) scientist told the county commissioners in the Monday meeting, accelerating upwards as the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica melt away. Human-caused global heating means an extra 17in of sea level rise by 2040, according to an intermediate Noaa projection used by the county.

Compounding this problem, the islands’ porous limestone allows the rising seawater to bubble up from below, meaning it just takes high tides on sunny days to turn roads into ponds, while global heating is also spurring fiercer hurricanes that can occasionally crunch into the archipelago.

“The Florida Keys are one of the most vulnerable places to flooding in North America,” said Kristina Hill, an environmental planner at the University of California, Berkeley, who warned that the islands would face growing road and pipe maintenance costs, more pollution leaks and harmful algal blooms.

“Without a change in strategy, parts of the Keys will become accessible only by boat,” said Hill, adding that the islands could have to resort to floating structures and navigable canals to remain viable. “The islands will gradually disappear into a higher ocean, potentially leaving a ruined landscape of leaky underground storage tanks, old pipes, and flooded road segments behind to pollute the water.”

The threats faced by the Keys are shrugged off by some of its wealthy retirees who view the situation with a certain fatalism, while others in this Republican-voting bastion openly question the science. Eddie Martinez, one of the county’s five elected commissioners, challenged the Noaa scientist, William Sweet, on his sea level rise projections on Monday.

The sea level rise to date is “really a nothing number”, said Martinez, who told Sweet: “You’re a little bit more on this CO2 side, I’m more on the actual measurement side.” Another commissioner, David Rice, said that “predicting the future is probably best done with a crystal ball” and speculated that global temperatures could change following several volcanic eruptions.

“There are people who don’t want to sell because they love it here, others who want to get out while they can and those in complete denial who call you a troublemaker who is driving down property values by talking about it,” said George Smyth, a retiree who moved to Key Largo a decade ago for the quiet, slow-paced lifestyle. In 2019, his neighborhood spent 90 days partially submerged in water.

The nature of the Keys has changed in this time. While the islands still include pockets of poverty, an influx of affluent second-home owners has caused new properties to sprout up around Smyth. “It used to be pretty rough and tumble, you’d see a few fights on a Saturday night,” he said. “Now everyone looks like they’ve just come from the cosmetic dentist.”

Other new realities are more laborious – Smyth has to wash his car continually to rid it of salt water and has to pay for trucks to unload piles of crushed-up rocks around his property as a buffer against the encroaching tides. While Smyth doesn’t class himself as particularly wealthy, these protections are beyond the means of low-income Keys residents, many of whom live in exposed mobile homes dotted along the islands.

Smyth fears that the county will require poorer residents to stump up the money for the roads, rather than put a levy on the tourists that flock to the Keys. “We feel we are being held hostage,” he said. “I feel sorrow for what is coming and the loss of what is a wonderful community.”

But the mayor defiantly insists the Keys can be saved, even if it is currently unclear how. “We know we live in paradise and we want to keep it that way,” said Coldiron.

It always seems like they were much more expensive than the rest of the state, but prices, especially housing prices, have taken quite a jump the last 2 years, especially from Orlando south.

but our goal is to die broke...and living there would ensure that...

The insurance won't pay to rebuild after Hurricane Andrew unless they rebuild to new codes of resilience which the homeowners can't afford. And they can't afford to move because they owe mortgages. The government is buying up some property to destroy rather than raise the roads. The Keys residents are leading the charge of climate refugees.

Lots of real estate lost to Hurricane Irma. Never rebuilt due to new building codes and The Keys opting for abandonment & relocation versus resilience and rebuilding.

The Keys are doomed. Happening NOW!

Good luck. I've had enough of this banana republic.

For God's sake stay out of Miami-Dade...the capital of corruption.

I'm in NC and it's not that great here

I came here after my father died to help out my mother so now that she's passed away I'm settling up her estate etc...

Best scenario...I'm out of here in 18-20 months. The Batistas are running this end of the state and the racistas are running Tallahassee.

In less than 20 years, 25% of Jacksonville will be underwater. Other cities in similar situation. Flori-duh is dying! All barrier islands will be under water. Can't swim in half the beaches due to sewage and pesticide runoff from big Agra.

Read about the Champlain Towers collapse! And all the environmental disasters due to climate change.

 
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But here's a recent article about the threat of salt water rising from underground.

Worry about massive sinkholes, rising seas, red tide, green algae, salinization of entire aquifer jeopardizing drinking water, droughts with Big Agra using up the water supply, intensifying hurricanes, leaking septic tanks and overflowing sewers, sunny day flooding, coral bleaching, nuclear power plant leakage, beach erosion, higher heat indices, climate refugees from the island's overwhelming the current infrastructure... and I would not discount the collapse of inland condos. Inspectors and government officials are being paid to look the other way.

but the cut taxes crowd has whittled the building departments to the point there are 1 or 2 inspectors to do multi inspections on large scale projects.

it's a physical impossibility to do the job and do it correctly when you're looking at 15 condos in a 30 minute span.

be re-elected. Choose wisely, there are many places to live other than Florida.

Good places to live outside Florida. I'm looking.

And our justice system needs a correction, I will stay here.

I love to watch weather across the nation and the world and after seeing places hit 40 below wind chills and other places getting hit with a tornado, followed by an ice storm, I feel pretty good at getting up early in the morning and seeing 60°. You also can't beat the Flora and the fauna. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to hear a flock of parrots passing through and I can always tell what it is like up north because the pelicans are here. I love our palm trees and the tambouias are now in full bloom and are beautiful. I get to see flowers year round and most of the trees don't lose their leaves and there are always some bushes that are blooming. I get to hear birds every morning and throughout the day.

I don't like cold weather and it affects me both physically and emotionally. I don't even like it when we get a few days of it. I don't like to be trapped inside with all the beauty around me. Perfect? Absolutely not, but it works for me.

I have wondered about other places like New Orleans, maybe.

I love bright sunshine. Great post. Took me back to the good things

and the greenzone that once existed is.....gone.

The developers have gotten their way and the U.S. 27 co route will be constructed along with condos/apartments/Chili's/Storage unit companies/dicks sporting goods and all those other wonders of modern capitalism.

And it hasn't rained any significant amount in St Petersburg since November 2021 but condos are being built everywhere a piece of land exists.

We've been here 48 years come Sept 2022 and have seen the changes.

If you do move here be prepared to be following those other folks from Ohio/michigan/california/texas/montana/kentucky/tennesssee/maine and mass that are also looking to plant their asses here.