Searching For The Best Place To Live In Destin FL – How to Find the Perfect Area

Are you ready to search for the perfect place to live in Destin, Florida, but you're not exactly sure where to even start? Well, today, I'm going to give you a few tips on how to help you find the perfect area in Destin, Florida. So stick around.

Alright. So, searching for the best place to live in Destin. Well first, you obviously decide what type of home that you want to live in. So, what's best for you or if you have your family moving here too, what's best for everyone. So, if you're just really looking for a place to live, if you're by yourself, you might want something small or maybe you still do want something big to accommodate all your maybe extra vehicles or when you have a boat, jet skis that you want to have room to be able to store on your property. Or, if you have a family, you want to make sure you have enough space for everyone to have their own room. Maybe you need an office space in your home, you need a big yard for your kids or for your dogs. But, let's just say that you are in the retirement phase of your life and you want to downsize and just live a simple life on the beach. You might want to look into purchasing a condo. But if you don't want to stay right on the beach, kind of get away from the vacation crowd, you can still purchase a condo and it doesn't have to be right on the beach. It could be within a walking distance or a short drive. However, a lot of people do want to make sure that they have the perfect condo on the beach with the perfect view of the gulf to be able to catch the sunrise and the sunset. But, whatever it is that you feel like you're looking for, whether if it's short term, just you know, for a couple years or long term, you want to really narrow down what type of property would suit your needs based on your living style and what is it that you need to live comfortably on a day to day basis.

Now, you also want to think about the neighborhood and the surrounding areas, what you like, and what you don't like. So, let's just say you like to live in an area where there's lots of children because you have children of your own and you want to make sure they have people to play with. Or, if you're close to school, they can walk to school together or even carpooled together. Maybe, you want a neighborhood that has a playground for the kids. Maybe dog park close by, if you like to take your dogs out to enjoy the neighbors as well. Maybe, you want a community pool instead of maintaining your own private pool in your backyards. There's always a benefit to that, so you don't have to worry about the cost and time of maintaining your own swimming pool. So, maybe you do want that, but rather just have it as a community pool so you can just walk over to it with your children, have little parties for them. If you also like to be close to the water, maybe you like to, maybe you want a home on the water, though, you know, you have your own boat slip, boat dock, and you don't want to have to find boat storage close by, just make sure you look into the areas and maybe they have needed access if you don't have your own boat slip.

Again, if you want to make sure you're close to the schools, there's a lot of people that reach out to us speak in. The school zone does matter to them, so they want to stay within, you know, specific areas that was closer to the specific schools that they're wanting for their children. You also want to take into consideration the commute time, for getting to and from work. So, if you live in Destin, just you know, it doesn't matter where you live because you're within the city limits anyway. Or, maybe you're a military and you work in Eglin Air Force Base or Hurlburt field in the Fort Walton Beach area. So, you kind of want to take into consideration how far of a drive it would be for you. You might be one that doesn't like to sit in traffic, or you just really don't like to be in the car for too long. But, the commute from Destin to the military bases really isn't that bad. You're looking at maybe 20-30 minutes, but then again, it also depends on the time of year and the time of day. So, peak season of course, the traffic is a little more rough to deal with because of the spring breakers and the summer vacationers that like to come and visit this beautiful area. So, really take in consideration how close you want to be to where you work if you don't already just work from home, and also the schools too. Maybe, if you're in college, we do have some local schools in the area. There's the Northwest Florida State College. There's a campus in Fort Walton Beach and in Niceville. I believe there's also one in Walton County as well. But, you just want to make sure that you are within your driving limits, whenever you're able to tolerate or maybe you have a busy schedule and you don't want to have to spend so much time driving to and from work or school. So, just really take that into consideration as well when you're trying perfect place to live.

Also, think about if you want to be close to all of your favorite activities. If you do like to be out on the water a lot, you know, you might want to think about how close you are to the beach if you're not already living on the beach. You don't have your own little beach house or a condo. If you want to be close to where all the nighttime activities are. So, if you'd like to go bar hopping, join or go to the clubs at night and you want to be either walking distance or just a short Uber drive away or even a friend. You know, you have that one designated driver in your group that doesn't have to go a long distance to be able to get everyone home safely. But, yeah, just think about what you like around. If you like to play golf, you want a home that's in a golf community. There's, for instance, like Regatta Bay, that's a great area where you can live in the golf course. There's the Indian Bayou area as well. So, just think about the activities that you like, and if you prefer to be close by to have a shorter commute where you want to go to. I mean, even if you live in a golf course community, you can have your own golf cart and just shoot down the street right over to to the Greens and enjoy your day out there.

So, once you really think about the type of home that you want and the area that you want, which you want around that specific area. You want to go ahead and connect with a mortgage lender just to make sure that you can even afford everything that you're looking for. I mean, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. If you're already in Destin, you might already have an idea what the prices would be like and what your budget would be. So, just make sure you connect with the lender and get your mortgage preapproval before you even start looking at what specific areas and specific types of properties in the Destin area just to make sure that you are well within your means to be able to find your dream property in Destin.

And once you have your preapproval or even right before you get your mortgage preapproval, always make sure you connect with a realtor too, especially if you're not familiar with the area or you just like you need that assistant to you know, to help you find what you're looking for and make sure you have someone to guide you in making the best decisions for you and your family. Of course, no one can make decisions for you, but that's why a realtor is great to help you throughout the process. And they could really help narrow down your options, help you narrow down certain areas that you're wanting to live in, types of property that you're living in. So, make sure you connect with one real estate agent to help you throughout the process. Again, once you really get everything narrowed down, you can start scheduling your showings. You can start touring some homes in the neighborhoods nearby and see if it's really just a great match for you or you and your family. Now once you find the right home for you, whether if it's a condo or a beach house or just a single-family home away from the beach crowd. You want to make sure you get your preapproval letter ready and submit an offer and seal the deal so you will be able to move to your dream property here in Destin, Florida.

But, if you want to know more about the whole process of purchasing property or locating the right property for you, feel free to reach out to us here at the Whittemore Group. Again, we love to help as many people as we possibly can. We do try and make it as fun and easy as we can as well. The process shouldn't be stressful especially when it's such an exciting time to be able to purchase property here in such an amazing area here on the Emerald Coast. So, make sure you reach out to us. Please feel free to call/text us at 850.320.7757 or email us at Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com