Top 3 WORST neighborhoods in DESTIN FL

So, you're thinking about moving here to the Destin Fort Walton Beach area and you were considering Destin, right? Maybe your vacation down here, maybe one of your friends and talked about it and you're like, yeah, let's go ahead, we're decided we're moving here. But, where are the places I need to avoid? What are the top three worst neighborhoods that I need to avoid? Well, in this video my team and I came up with the top three that you should be aware of prior to moving to Destin. You want to stick around till the last one because it might make or break your decision, so stick around.

So, let's talk about Destin. What's going on with Destin? Well, some of the great things that I love about this area is, there's tons of things to do. You got great weather down here. It does get a little cool sometimes, and that's a relative factor here for us Floridians. You've got the Harbor Walk to go out to, of course, the beaches and I can't mention that. You got Henderson Beach, you've got Noriega Point, a Crab Island, oh yeah, Crab Island. The cost of living here is really good. You've got the people and hospitalities. It's a kind of nice cool little mix here of just past military people and Floridians, and we're also influenced by Georgia and Alabama. So, like there's all kind of mixes together and it's really, really cool and a great great community. Of course, golfing, year-round golfing and we're surrounded by three or four military installations here. So, it's very military-friendly. There's lots of vets like myself here and just really good. Good people all around, absolutely love this area and love the Destin area.

Now, we're going to talk about some negatives. I hate doing negative content but, you know, sometimes we got to talk about certain things, right? But, the things that may be wanting to hear like, hey, what are the crime rates where these like bad people hanging out. Is there somebody's picking belly lint out of their belly button standing in front of their house, drinking out of a big old jug with three x's on it. We're going to go over any of that. Although, I may have seen that somewhere in this area before. That was a direct reference to something. But it wasn't a Destin. Now, if you want that information when I would like and suggest to you, to get the most up-to-date statistics for that, is go on to sites like niche.com or areavibes.com, or any of those, and you can find those sort of things. Now, we as real estate agents are supposed to give out those certain things. They call that steering and we're not going to do that here today. So, what I am going to go over, is the things that are CONS and the worst places to be in them. There are three, and these three neighborhoods were the worst things in Destin that drive you crazy.

Okay, so first one and it should be just number one with an exclamation point is traffic. What neighborhood is just the worst affected place for traffic, right?  Number two, the aircraft noise. Yeah, there's a military installation over there, but there's also an Executive Airport. So, which one's worse for that? And of course, where does it get most crowded? Where is the most amount of Tourism? So, all those things will make your skin crawl depending on what bothers you. So, everything that bothers most people here is the traffic unless you're from LA, and this will seem very tame.

1. Traffic

The worst place for traffic, I'm going to say is Crystal Beach. Now, Crystal Beach is just east of Henderson Beach and it's just west of where Miramar Beach starts. It's just south of Highway 98 and it's where there's a ton of Airbnb's, VRBO's, rental properties essentially. There's not a ton of condos, and if there are, their little ones that are on the water. But you also have access down there to the Crab Trap of Destin. You've got some local beach accesses as well as public beaches that are down in the crystal beach area. It's a beautiful beautiful place. But, it is filled with people trying to get to those beaches and get off those beaches and it's south of 98. Now, the issue with it being south of 98, is you don't have a way to get around it. So, if everybody's on Highway 98, either trying to get through Destin, go into Destin, anywhere, that's your only way to go. So, it is constantly just bumper-to-bumper. I mean, the traffic does move, but depending on the time of day, it is so frustrating. But, if you go into a neighborhood like Crystal Beach, there's a couple of ways to get around and next thing you know, you're in a gated community and then you can't get around and even Google Maps will throw you for a loop. So, even if you do find an alternative route, that area is filled with speed bumps, so you can't go very quickly anywhere. So, yes Crystal Beach in my humble opinion, is worse for traffic in Destin. So, if you're looking still, there's a good amount of single-family homes there and it's south of 98, with a little golf cart drive down to the beach, it's just hard to beat that. And because of that, our home prices in this area are pretty up there. So, your median home price for a single-family home, so I'm going to talk about condos, if you want that number, please feel free to contact me or my team. But, the median price here at the end of 2021, was about $999,450. Might as well, just said a million, but that's not what the number said. Alright, the low was about $315,000, and high, it was sitting there on the golf was about $5.7 million, and that house was gorgeous. And, Crystal Beach has a lot of good things going for it, and thus, you pay for it, but the traffic's been rough. Okay?

2. Aircraft Noise

So, we have Destin Executive, like I had mentioned earlier in this video. And, it is just a small airport with a single strip that pretty much goes will say northwest and then down to the southeast a bit. So, it goes right down almost to the middle of Destin. But, it's in the eastern part of Destin, if you look on a map, you can see it pretty easily. There's a neighborhood on the approach, runway, and the most Northeastern part of Destin, and that place is called Bayou Main Street. Yes, It's Bayou Main Street according to nextdoor.com. So, you can check that out there too with some extra cool little comments in there. However, I can tell you from personal experience over the years that I've been doing real estate and selling out in Destin. And we remember going to this house and it was in this neighborhood, the neighborhood's great, I really like it. You wouldn't even know you were in Destin in this like nice little hidden area and they're big bigger lots. You know, they're nicely kept up and all the neighbors really take care of their place, and it's really nice because it's just a relaxed part of Destin without being in a gated community, love the neighborhood. However, I remember being out back, showing a little bit of this and that, and I was on the phone I think I was doing a virtual tour. This dual-engine airplane just flies right over the top of us, and of course, you know, if you know anything about flying, they've got flaps and everything does it's going super slow and it's just screaming on the way down like, hold on, yeah, so you're under the approach path of the runway, oh man, it was crazy. They didn't end up offering on that property, I don't think it was because of that. They really did like it, but it just wasn't for them. But yes, if you're used to the aircraft noise and I think you do get used to it, me as an Air Force veteran that used to be a mechanic and a flight engineer, I can tell you that I got used to it and it wasn't a big thing. However, no matter where you are in this area, you will still be subjected to those early-stage turbines that are in the Jets that are flying around here. Like you're F-15's, your F-16's, they've got the F-35, they've seen 22s. All the stuff that they're testing around here, you get to hear them just in the pattern. But you don't have to be in Destin to hear that, you could be up in Crestview, you could be out in Navarre. They're just loud and you're going to use to it, but it's not constant, that's the biggest thing. Anyway, great neighborhood, but most likely the most affected point of the entire area for jet noise. So, that's going to be Bayou Main Street. Let's talk a little bit about that real estate. We Are Real Estate General here. Alright, for your median single-family home, your average price in there is going to be, well, median price is going to be $779,950 as of the date of this video. Now, that was a low of $325,000 and a high all the way up to $1.2 million. Now, the reason that is up a little bit higher than what we normally see, is because of the market. But, a lot of the homes that have sold in the past year, which is what we're getting from the comps here, we're mostly really close or on the water. So, you can still get a pretty good deal for around 5, 4, to we'll say, 4 to 6 hundred thousand and still get a pretty nice lot with nice house in there.

3. Tourism

Okay, last one I got and you know it's coming, is tourism. Now we love tourism here in the Destin area. It brings so many jobs, it's really nice. We got all these cool things to do. Heck, us locals that don't necessarily live in Destin, go out to travel out there to do all the fun things during the weekend. So, tourism is great, but it can also be very frustrating. Why? Because we have to share the area with everybody. And, all this fun stuff, you know, it just wouldn't be there without them. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't, those sort of things. So, that being said, what is the most affected area due to tourism? And we're going to say it is Holiday Isle. Holiday Isle is one of the most expensive parts of Destin, which is the most southern eastern part. It actually is connected to Noriega Point. Noriega Point Beach Park is right there, that you can go out to. It's a lot like the southern part of Destin Harbor. So, there's tons and tons of different real estate. Lots of condos, some single-family homes throughout there. But if you are out there to live, they can get a little bit frustrated. Mainly because you're sharing everything, and there's only one way in and one way out. And if you do not have designated parking where you live, good luck. Because during the springtime all the way up until about school starts, good luck trying to find a public parking space out there. It is rough because you're sharing the beautiful, beautiful, one of the most beautiful areas in Destin. So, Holiday Isle, for our median single-family homes are about $1.4 million, and again, these are the single-family homes out there. Your low is about $625,000 and a high up to $4.2 million. And, those are, every time I go and show something like that, I just get to envision how the other half lives, and I'm kind of jealous of you guys. But, absolutely, absolutely gorgeous real estate down in Holiday Isle. And, that's the reason why there's so many tourists down in that area.

So, that's all I do have for you for the top 3 worst neighborhoods in Destin, Florida coming from my list and my personal experience in living vicariously through others here in our area. You have any questions about anything I spoke about, please feel free to call/text us at 850.320.7757 or email us at Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com