Moving to Destin – Insider Secrets

So, you’re moving here to the Destin area and you are wondering, what do I need to know prior to making the decision to move to this area? Well, me and my team came up with The Insider Secrets that you'll need to know prior to making that decision to come down here to the beautiful Emerald Coast.

 Let's get into it. Why do we even want to move to the Destin area? And if you haven't been here before, man you're going to be wowed.

1. There's a lot going on

There's always things going on. Of course, you've got the HarborWalk downtown, you've got the Destin Commons, there's always great fishing. Now get me started on Crab Island, there is always some great things always happening in the Destin area. You've got great shopping besides the Destin Commons. You got the outlet malls, you've got tons of places to go. Restaurants? Even us locals come from out of the other areas to come dine in the Destin area. Of course, can't beat the bars that are down there down on the HarborWalk that just kind of work their way through Destin, great watering holes with delicious libations just enjoying the weather. There's the gorgeous, gorgeous outdoor area. Of course, as I mentioned before, we do have HarborWalk which is always constantly evolving with more and more stuff for you to go out and do a little mini-concerts, they've got different events, there were tacos and tequila, like couple months ago, there's a lot of cool things that are happening downtown. And people travel, as I said before doing anywhere around the area's, us locals included to do things in Destin. That's just where it's happening. If you want to be where things are happening, you're going to move to Destin. Okay, so some things you need to know Insider Secrets.

Okay. So let me just give you a little bit of an area overview of where to move to. So you may have been out here to go to some restaurants or vacation down here. But where do you want to live? Now, what we have is East Destin, East Destin North is generally what I'm going to refer to it as that's where we're going to see a lot of some of the older housing some since mostly single-family homes. And it was saying is really really old may be built in the seventies, but who's been through some renovations in there, most of them have, and that's kind of the more affordable area of Destin to live in. As you head out on South, we have Holiday Aisle. That's the most expensive place to live in Destin, but that's right there on the golf kind of goes into Noriega point and got a lot of condos, and the single-family homes are pretty pricey, but they probably got the best view in Destin. We do have Indian Bayou, now that's kind of in the mid to center part of Destin, and you Bayou's really really nice area to move into. It is regulated by an HOA, but there's nice homes, most of them have been renovated. A really kind of laid-back community. It's just a really, really nice place to live, it's probably one of my favorites. Of course, getting up there and into the more affluent areas, we're talking Kelly Plantation. Kelly Plantation as some of the most gorgeous houses in all of Destin, in my personal opinion. The amenities and everything else that you see in Kelly Plantation are just something to check out and maybe even dream about moving to. If we move further on East, we do have Regatta Bay. Regatta Bay's got one of the best boating clubs in almost the entire State of Florida. It's in boating magazine. Regatta Bay does have some really pricey houses. It's not as pricey as Kelly Plantation, but it's pretty much up there depending on what you're looking for. And of course if you head south, if you've been in an Airbnb, VRBO, and one of those great beach houses in the Destin area, you were probably in Crystal Beach. And Crystal Beach is down there by the crab shaft of Destin like that area down there, just to the east of Henderson Beach. A lot of places down there, may not be full-time homebuyers, a lot of them do rent a lot of that out. But there's still a good amount of residential people. Okay, when we think about moving to Destin, I typically think of it in two different lifestyles, and it's not more affluent to last one. I'm going to talk about is condo life versus single-family homes because that's kind of what we look at and single-family homes will throw townhomes in there too. But the condo life, what's that going to cost you? Well your median condo price, without putting on so many bedrooms, so many baths so what to say, maybe a two-bedroom at least one bath is going to be around $390,500. That doesn't sound so bad, but I want you to be aware that all these condos have HOA fees or condo association. So, those can get pretty pricey especially in Destin. So if you are thinking about purchasing a condo there to live full time or even part-time, please do contact your real estate professional or us, to get that information to know how much that's going to cost you because that's going to make a significant difference as far as what it's going to cost to live there. Okay, but it has a high all the way up to $2.8 million here in 2021 and a low of about $70,000. Now granted that probably did not have a water view. Okay, moving on the single-family, single-family homes you've got a median house price of around $729,450. So yeah, it's definitely getting up there, you can still find homes around the three, four hundred thousand, but you're probably not going to find much less than that. If you do, it's going to be going in a blanket, a lie. So that's what it is overall from your 4.9 mil, which was the highest all the way down to your $175,000. So that's what most things are selling for somewhere around $700,000. Okay, and some other things about single-family homes. You're going to live in different communities note that each one's going to kind of have its own little personality to it. Some of this area does have some personality, even in Destin, there wasn't a whole lot of zoning when they put these different things out here. So you could have 1.4 sitting on the water million-dollar house on the water across the street from a 400,000 and a couple blocks from the trailer park. That's just cut Okaloosa County, that's just what we get. But a lot of those have been getting up and we're starting to see more develops and developing in there, but just to let you know. And your condos, of course, you are going to be surrounded by a good amount of vacationers for most of the time will be very transient but it depends on what sort of lifestyle you want which leads me to the vacationers. Now, vacationers, a lot of them are going to be from about spring break time all the way until about late mid to late fall. There's a small wall in the season, which we call the snowbird season where we have mostly just long-term people in the condos, the streets, you can actually drive on that unless locals actually get it back. But once school lets out for the spring break, it's packed until about the fall.

2. Shopping

Number two is where is all the day-to-day shopping? Because, yeah these restaurants and things are cool, but I still want to, I still need to cook. I still want to cook and do all these other things and live my normal life. Where am I going to go for that? So in Destin, most of your grocery shopping is going to be at the intersection of route 293, which is that bridge that goes up to Niceville and Highway 98. That's where most of your shopping centers are going to be the big grocery store in the Destin areas public's, very close to that just a couple blocks down on the other side of the Destin Commons. You can have whole foods. Of course, you got a Walmart that's down there, your Home Depot, and of course the Destin Commons for all your outdoor mall shopping.

3. Seasonal Traffic

Number three is, you have to be wise about seasonal traffic. You're going to live and Destin, holiday vacation or traffic is a thing, you're just gonna have to get used to it. When I used to do, when my office was actually in Destin, one of our offices was, as I would bring up Google Maps and I would see how long it would take to get back to Fort Walton. And if it was going to be that long, I would turn it off and go back to work until it died down. But you kind of have to you have to time these things because it's not very easy getting around especially in Destin because it's almost an island, right? And there's only certain ways to get in. There's really two ways to get around if you need to get to like Fort Walton or Niceville or whatever. So you have to time and we just have to deal with that traffic. You're going to have to get to know your alternate routes, especially if you're in the eastern part of Destin, there are some alternate routes to get around. Now Google will actually reroute you there as an alternate route now and you can actually go up and go by Kelly and kind of work your way through the Maguire's like then back up there and you can find your different ways. Now, the locals are probably going to kill me for telling you that because now it's all going to be congested. But just now that there is a way around 98, and if you're going to live there, make sure to get used to your alternative routes to get around. There are some that you can avoid 98 altogether. Now there are too many but make sure you know. 

4. School

Number four is the schools. What do you need about to know about the Schools? Destin has the Destin Elementary and also now, as of the last year or two has the Destin high school, they just built this thing. So it's very very new, Destin finally has its own high school. Does it have a middle school? No, you're still busting the Middle School out to Bruner middle school out in Fort Walton Beach. So be in Destin, ship them out to Fort Walton, and then they get to do the last four years in Destin high school. So just let you know that that's what you can anticipate as far as your kiddos going to school there.

5. Weather

Number five is the weather. It does get cold here. And cold is a relative term, but it does get cold here. For your wintertime, your average temps are anywhere from between 45, it's pretty typical all the way up to highs like 70 degrees, but that's as hot as it gets. I have seen it get down to 20s in here but it doesn't last long, on your average we typically see somewhere in the 40s to 50s during the winter. So, to us, that's pretty cold. If you're somewhere from the Dakotas or if you're in Canada somewhere, that should seem like short sweater I imagined. All right, come this spring is starts to warm up where we ski lows of 60 and eyes all the way up to 88 it really depends. It kind of gets weird in the spring. It seems like our springtime frame lasts for about a week and then it's just hot which brings us into our summertime or is anywhere between a low of 73 up to 90 degrees and then that goes into our fall. And that follows actually really nice where it's anywhere between 48 to 80 degrees. So that's kind of what to anticipate for our weather here. And if you still like it, if you still like our Insider Scope of things and you still want this Destin area, the next thing I'm going to tell you to get started is to give us a call. Give us a call, text, email, find me personally on social media. I don't care find our group there. Anyone on our team. Let us know that you need some help. We'd be happy to sit with you. Do a quick Zoom call, or in person, depending, and give you all the information education. You need to know in order to be successful moving here, especially if you're going to invest in purchasing one of the beautiful, beautiful properties here on the Emerald Coast.

So that's all I have for you. If you have any questions about Destin or any of the surrounding areas, please give me a call text at 850.320.7757 or email at Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com