Moving to Fort Walton - Insider Secrets

So, you’re moving here to the Destin Fort Walton Beach area and you're considering Fort Walton Beach. What we're going to do is go over the top 7 things you're going to need to know through The Insider secrets from the people that do live here to include yours truly.

Okay, so let's get into it. Let's talk about Fort Walton Beach. Where is it located? Well, it's smack dab right in the middle of the Emerald Coast or what we call the amber coast, which is between Pensacola and Panama City Beach. Fort Walton Beach is a population of about 22,084.  This area is actually best known for the beaches on Okaloosa Island and of course, Eglin Air Force Base which encompasses a huge part of every part around it and to the north. Eglin Air Force Base is actually one of the biggest Air Force bases around in the continental United States. It's kind of crazy, but we do get a lot of military people out here, a lot of vets just like yours truly and contractors is just a really, really awesome place to be a part of.

1. Traffic

Okay. So, number one that I want to talk about is, well, traffic. It sucks. It's just terrible right anywhere on the Emerald Coast because most of the time we've got water on one side, may have a bay or an intercostal waterway, so there may be choke points in different places. Don't get me wrong, there is a choke point right there in Fort Walton, as you're going into the Okaloosa Island area, had none in there to Destin. But the cool part about Fort Walton Beach is this, there's alternative routes to get around different areas because the Eglin Air Force Base is right around the Fort Walton Beach area. We can't just get a road to go up and through those areas. So because of that, you know, it's very tough to get around from say Navarre all the way to Fort Walton without having to go up and around a different areas. Now Fort Walton Beach does offer an opportunity. If there is a choke point somewhere or there's a crash on a major street that people are going through. There are alternate routes to get around in certain places like in Mary Esther or Destin or places like that. You get one, maybe two routes to actually go to where you're going. So Fort Walton Beach is awesome because of that.

2. Great Location

Let's continue talking about that, it's a great location. It's centrally located, it's where I live. It's mainly because I can get to all those different places that I need to go. I need to go up to Crestview and get onto I-10 to head over to Tallahassee, or to head over to Pensacola or anything like that, it's a straight shot up there. You're not far from Destin, you're just a quick drive down Okaloosa Island, of course you've got Niceville just on top of that. Of course, you can shoot over to the kind of a city area as well, and you're just centrally located and about an hour, maybe an hour and a half out to anywhere on the emerald coast you want to go. It's really, really great! And not only that Fort Walton Beach if we want to talk locally, is a great place for a lot of people that work with the military or on any of those military installations because it's smack-dab in the middle of it. So you've Probert field off to the west, you've got Eglin Air Force Base kind of to the north and it's really nice. And even if you're working up at Duke field, it's only a short drive up there. If you're one of those cool 7th group army guys, or you're working some of the cool stuff that dukefield has in the air force..

3. Rentability

Rentability is amazing. Now, if your renter coming into this area, it's tough and it's because of the transient people that we do have throughout the area, thanks to the military bases. And if you are looking to buy a property as an investment and rent it out later, it's pretty amazing. I wish I would have known this when I was first stationed here over 10 years ago as a young airman. So, when that actually comes about and you purchase a property, as long as you're going to be staying here for at least a year or two at least two years, let's just go that route and you want to rent this out. We want to build a portfolio through real estate. This area is amazing for. There's never going to be a lack of people desiring to rent and the rents here really, really good and attractive to those that are looking to invest in the area.

4. Home Prices

Alright, number four, the home prices. Again, this is a Real Estate channel let's talk about real estate. Let's talk a little bit about what Fort Walton looks like. So you may have been out west or certain areas where they've just had these structural plots and everything is, you know North, West and it's like in this grid and all the houses kind of look the same. You're not going to find that here. The housing here is very eclectic. What I mean by that is that you can have a 1.6 million dollar property sitting on the water across the street from a $300,000 property in about six weeks or six blocks away from the trailer park. Like that's the sort of thing that you get here in Fort Walton Beach. All the people here are amazing, they're really nice. There's really not any sort of bad areas around here. Comparison to other places that I've lived. This area is just very eclectic. You're not going to find that. You're going to find a lot of unique properties that have their own personality to them. Some of which may have been built in the 50s. There might be some that were just built in 2021. And there's a good mix all throughout this community, which kind of makes it what it is. Now talking about housing prices, we're in the fall of 2021 as of the date of this video and our median home price is around 288,000. Now, that's a high all the way up to 2.6 million and a low of about 65,000. Now, that's really not too bad living here in paradise when our national average across the continental United States is 270,500, not too shabby, right?

5. Centrally Located

Okay, number five on the list is, this is where things are. People will travel from different places, like Mary Esther, Shalimar, all over here to get to Fort Walton to get to the different things like we have the stores, and when I mean, is we have Sam's Club, we've got of course the Walmarts throughout here, all the different shops that you might be going to. We've got restaurants and bars all throughout this area. You've got the gyms, we've got all the staples that people want to go to, to go do things, you know on their off time. So everything is in Fort Walton and you have different ways around to get to it.

6. Best Bang for your Buck 

Alright, number 6 on this list is well, it's the best bang for your buck if you're looking for a vacation condo. In the city of Fort Walton Beach not so much, although it does exist. But what I'm talking more about is Okaloosa Island, it's at the most southern part and is that little strip of island or peninsula, whatever. They goes all the way up to the Destin bridge, which of course is where crab island and everybody else at, right? But there's a small area which has been developed, and typically in this area they have a lower HOA's, the price points a little bit better. And because of that, your ROI's, your return on investment are typically better than what you're going to find in Miramar Beach or Destin or different places like that. Now if you are looking to go out a little bit more to the East and go out to Panama City, you can get lower price points and maybe have a better ROI, the issue with that, is that you're just not going to get the same feel that you do in the Destin-Miramar-Fort Walton Beach area. But anyway, if you want more information on that specifically, of course, you can just reach out to us or leave a comment here below, I'll be happy to help you out with that, and send you some of the things and information that we know about our vacation condos here. There is also a video on this channel that you can go ahead and check out about vacation condos on Okaloosa Island.

7. Okaloosa Island

Speaking of, number seven is Okaloosa Island. That's right, that's six miles of undeveloped white sand beaches that aren't going to be developed anytime soon. I don't know why; it's because we have the approach way of where Eglin Air Force Base is at, and they're not going to build anything up there. Matter of fact anything on Okaloosa Island, they can only build up to about six or seven stories high. It's just part of the land lease that they have out there and there's a certain portion that you can just go out to, and just walk for miles approximately about six miles with nothing being there and you have access to that. It's just an amazing place to go if you're a local here, most of the time if you're in Fort Walton you're within 15-minute drive down to Okaloosa Island. There's plenty of different access points for you to go to, to go ahead and enjoy the beautiful beach anytime of the Year.

Well, that's all that I do have for you for moving to Fort Walton Beach and our Insider Secrets.

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