Top 3 WORST Neighborhoods in Fort Walton Beach Florida to Live in!

So you're moving here to the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area, and you're considering moving to Fort Walton Beach. And you're curious, "What are the worst three neighborhoods in this area?" Well, my team and I put together those ones that you're going to have to keep aware of, and as an added bonus, at the end, we're going to tell you why the Fort Walton Beach has kind of been arranged the way that it has today. So stay tuned.

Okay, so let's jump right into it. Let's talk a little bit about Fort Walton and why you'd want to move here other than a military PCS or a military contract, okay? One of the big reasons people move here as well, you probably guessed it already, the beaches. The white sand beaches over on Okaloosa Island. That's over six miles of untouched beach, undeveloped, that you can go out and we've got all sorts of great stuff, but we're not talking about that today, but that's one reason. Really, Fort Walton Beach is central to wherever you want to go. If you're going up to Niceville up North, if you're going to head over to Destin, or out to Pensacola or Navarre, you're right in the center of it. So you're kind of equal distant of where you want to go.

As far as home prices, this is a real estate channel, so let's talk about home prices. It's kind of a happy medium of all the areas surrounding it. It's not the lowest, but it's not the most expensive either. And my favorite reason for living in Fort Walton is that there's a lot of different ways to get around the traffic. Due to the way that our area is set up, and you've got to go up and around the bays or go across the gulf or anything like that, this area, specifically, has different ways to actually get around traffic if there is a holdup. Some other towns don't have that same sort of option, or it's 45 minutes out of their way to get around. Okay. So let's talk about the neighborhoods in Fort Walton Beach. There's actually 47 neighborhoods just in Fort Walton Beach.

And now, if you're not familiar with our area and you're on the Google Maps, I said, "The Google," geez, I'm getting old, then you're going to see that it's not just Downtown Fort Walton, but there's other places that are considered Fort Walton Beach, such as Ocean City and Okaloosa Island. So that's all Fort Walton Beach. Okay. So let's get into the top three, which you're here for, the worst neighborhoods in our area. So the first one, number one is Beale/Pelham area. And if you're not familiar with that, it's actually right where Beale and Mary Esther Cut Off actually intersect in Fort Walton. And it's just Northeast and Southwest of that juncture. Now there are some rundown homes in certain areas, although there are some pretty good ones. However, home prices are very affordable here and there is some new construction popping up around that area. It's a great location. Because it is at Beale Parkway and Mary Esther Cut Off, you have great access to get right out there to highway 98. Mary Esther Cut Off has a ton of shops and it's got Home Depot, lots of restaurants.

And of course, being close to Beale, you've got access up to Sam's Club, and of course, right down into Downtown Fort Walton. Okay. Number two is Mary Esther North. Now I'm not talking about all of Mary Esther, just the section that we call the neighborhood of Mary Esther North. Now this area has some rundown areas as well, which is why I've divided it up into the North area. It does have some low-income housing in certain areas. However, this has great access to Mary Esther Cut Off, well, of course we had just mentioned have lots of shops and restaurants, and really it's a quick access to Hurlburt Field if that's where you're going to be living.

All right, third and the final that we have is the MacFarlane neighborhood, this is another area with spots of low-income housing and some trailer parks kind of mixed in there. This is right next to or around where the Chocta High School is. And of course, you have the middle school right across this street, right off of Racetrack. However, there's lots of new large apartment complexes there, there's new renovated homes now, and just a lot of things going on. And it does have access to Racetrack, which is the main road that we have there, it's not an actual racetrack, depending on what sort of Florida driver you are. But that is kind of central where you want to go wherever in Fort Walton that you're at, so nice location. Okay. So as I promised you, here's a little history of why this whole thing is set up the way that it is and why it's rather eclectic in Fort Walton Beach.

Mainly because there was nothing here. When the United States Air Force decided to put Eglin Air Force Base right where it is today. When that happened, there was nothing here so what they did for base housing, they just put a whole bunch of trailers and stuff out there, and that's just kind of how it was and the base grew and what have you. So, as things continued to progress, they started getting that land back and started developing, but there was no zoning. So that's why you have a $1.4 million house sitting there on the bay across the street from a $300,000 house, which is six blocks away from a trailer park. Welcome to Fort Walton Beach. Now, I'm going to let you know that a lot of things have changed since then. A lot of those trailer parks, because of the great real estate market that we've been in for such a long time, have been pulled out of there. They're putting new construction up in that area. So it's really, really coming around and looks very, very nice.

So that's all that we have for you for the three worst places that you could live, or rather neighborhoods that you could live in the Fort Walton Beach area. If there's something I missed that you wanted to leave here, please keep it positive, go ahead and leave it here in the comments below. If you have any questions on anything that we had mentioned, again, leave them here in the comments below. And if you are moving to our area and you got some questions, need some help, again, give us a call, text, or email and we'd be happy to help out any way that we can. Again, I'm Tim Whittemore with The Whittemore Group right here with eXp Realty.

Contact us a Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com or at 850.204.4416