Moving to Florida 2021, 1 Year in Review

So, you're thinking about moving here to Florida, and we're looking back at how 2021 racked up for the rest of the years and to see if this coming year or the following years is going to be right for you. So, what we're going to do is take all this data and give it to you to let you make the best decision.

Well, let's talk about Florida. Let's talk about, what it would like moving to Florida here in 2021. It is now December at the date of this video, and we're going to take a review all the way back to see kind of, why people wanted to decide to move out this way.

So, 2021 was a wild year. Lots of changing, changes continuing with the pandemic and local government restrictions in certain areas. I personally know this through part of last year. I was traveling back and forth from Dayton, Ohio down here to Northwest Florida and was doing it every two weeks. And it was night and day, I can definitely tell you that. Florida, of all the places here in the United States is probably one of the more lenient states. There are about nine states right now as far as COVID restrictions that they really don't have that many. This is partly due to all the amount of people that have come up. So, the last statistics that were pulled was something around nine hundred to a thousand people moving every day to the state of Florida. And, the last statistics that we saw were from April 2020 to April 2021 and already for those numbers. And, especially moving during that time, it was almost 330,000 new residents moved to the Sunshine State. So, in 2021, we saw that 8.9 million people change their addresses. And 28% of that decided to relocate to Florida. So, you could do the math and figure that out, that's a ton of people coming down this way. Now, I'm used to, I'm originally from Upstate New York. I'm used to see most of my New Yorker friends, their parents, whomever wants to get up to retirement age or they just got tired of the cold and the snow that they would move down here to Florida and mostly into central Florida. We don't see too many people coming here to the northwest Florida, it's kind of a hidden gem. So, if you are from these areas and you're just figuring this out, give me a call. I'll tell you how the transition is.

LET'S TALK ABOUT FLORIDA

Alright. So, why did people decide to move here in 2021? We've got about six different reasons that we and my team and I had come up with.

COVID RESTRICTIONS

First things first, let's talk about the elephant in the room, COVID restrictions. No matter where you stand on that. The state of Florida has elected that the people of Florida can protect themselves to whatever that they seem fit. So, meaning that there's no forced mask mandate here in the State of Florida. They're not making kids go to school in any different area, any different county, forced to wear a mask to school. Now, they can still do so if they want to protect themselves. However, those that are forcing a mask mandate that aren't private schools here in the state of Florida. The governor at our time, DeSantis, has elected to remove funding from that school for not going with that. So, you can find more information about that. If you go on to the governor's website, and see what those specific restrictions are. But, a lot of people got just a little too much of the restrictions that were out there and decided to move down here in Florida.

THE BEACH

Alright. Other reasons that people would move that just don't have to do with anything that's going out with COVID, is the beaches. Oh, yes. Even non COVID time period, people love to flock down here some of the best beaches in the world, in my personal opinion, especially here on the Gulf Coast in the Destin Fort Walton Beach area. Lovely places to come down and just beach time year-round, just that pure white sand with those emerald water, it is just paradise. Just driving from my home to go to certain places at work, going over the Destin Bridge and just peering over and seeing the white sand flanked by that Emerald colored water is just, it's gorgeous. I've lived here since 2012, and I still can't get over it every single time. So, yes, the beaches are huge huge thing why people want to be here.

WEATHER

Obviously, the other side of the coin is weather. Now, most of Florida stays pretty warm all throughout the year. If you're in Central Florida, it's pretty warm all year round, right? Now, if in South Florida, obviously, now as you move to Northwest Florida where we are at, it does get a little bit cool, but cool can be relative. So, when it gets down to 45, 55, us Floridians are freezing getting out your winter jackets, right? But you guys up north in, like, Minnesota and New York, Maine, all up in that area, probably have shorts and a t-shirt on. So, it's all relative to where you're coming from, but the weather here is absolutely gorgeous. Most of the year, we probably get three, maybe four months of cool weather before it starts heating back up to seventies, eighties, and nineties in the late summer.

TAXES

So, the other part that why people are moving out this way mainly are taxes, right? Florida is one of the other states that just don't have income tax. Right? So, that's a big chunk of money that you're not having to get back to your state. And you'd think that they would make that up on the other side through property taxes? Well, property taxes are actually pretty low here. In comparison to places like California and New York, both of which that I've lived in and both have terrible taxes in my opinion. The property tax is less than 1% in the state of Florida. Some states, like I believe New Jersey, is up to 2.7%. That's insane, the amount that they're charging you for those taxes. There's a bunch of other taxes as well that you can consider especially you people coming from California. We do have another video on this site, go ahead and check out moving from, why people are moving from California to Florida. That could be a whole comprehensive list between those.

REMOTE WORKING ALLOWING MORE FREEDOM TO RELOCATE

Alright. Moving on, we also have that, because the way the world has gone. And, because of the way that COVID has changed everything where people weren't showing up to work. There's a lot more remote working that allows the people the freedom to live wherever the heck they want. So, you could be working for a company in New York City with a higher amount of wages, but lives somewhere in relatively low cost of living, in comparison to. So, because of that, this isn't just hey, I can work when and go from wherever I'd like to, this is a huge huge change here. Because even if you're moving somewhere and say you're coming down here, you're giving our team a call because you want to purchase a home. Most of the time you have to secure a job before you decide to move somewhere. Now you don't have to do that because your job isn't conditional for you being around it. So, a lot more people have the freedom and can get into different loan products to purchase that home down here in beautiful Florida in the Sunshine State. Even though that their jobs up in New York or out in Seattle or wherever, it's a phenomenal time to have that freedom here in the United States and move where you want to and work the job you want to work.

LOWER HOUSING COST

The last one that I do have for you is it actually does have a lower housing cost depending on where you come from. Right? If you're out in rural Ohio or out in the area that I used to work in Dayton, then this area, especially in Northwest Florida, would be quite high in comparison to. But, if you're coming from places like California, some places in Arizona, Texas, especially New York, anywhere up in the northeast for the most part, you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck and be able to live here in paradise. So, it is absolutely a great time to be moving down here to Florida with the way that everything is going. Some things that you will have to handle will be a little bit more obviously the opposite side. So, if you don't like the warmer temperatures, you may not want to come down here. But if you're not, if your view on COVID is more conservative, then you may not want to come down here because it's a lot more laxed and there's not a demand for mask mandates besides certain businesses that you go into in federal institutions, at least at the time of this video.

So hopefully, these are some good reasons. If you have any questions, of course, about anything I mentioned here, please feel free to call/text us at 850.320.7757 or email us at Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com