Top10 Reasons Why You Should Move to NW FLORIDA

Should you move to Northwest Florida? Right, that little thing they call the Panhandle of Florida up there in the Northwest corner of it. Should we move there? On this video, we're going to go over the top 10 reasons why you should. So, stick around.

Alright. So, let's talk about Northwest Florida. The area that we're specifically talking about is what we consider the Emerald Coast. So, the Emerald Coast is anywhere between Pensacola all the way out to Panama City, Panama City beach area, okay? It's really interesting because you do have a whole bunch of people that come from all different walks of life down here. And it's kind of awesome, it adds to the diversity of this area. But you also have the southern charm that gets into this community, very respectful. Just really nice place to go. All the places that I've ever traveled in my 14 years in the military, this by far was my favorite. But let's talk about those top ten reasons. Let's get into them right now.

1. COST OF LIVING

Cost of living to live here on the Gulf of Mexico or in very close proximity, is actually pretty reasonable. It's only just a little bit above the average index across the United States. If you have an index where a hundred, you know, zero to a hundred or a hundred is the act is the national average. It's only a couple of points above that depending on which community you actually end up moving to. So, cost of living is pretty reasonable. Of course, that's depending upon where you're moving from. If you're moving from New York City or Los Angeles or Miami or something like that, cost of living significantly lower than those areas. But of course, if you're in another rural place somewhere and the, I don't know, the Midwest, there we go. Then, you know, it could seem quite a bit higher. Cost of living is actually pretty pretty decent as far as by and large.

2.  WHITE SAND BEACHES

Yep. It's one of those ones where you're walking across and you can actually hear, like, the sand creaking under your feet. That's how fine the white sand is here. Of course, that's flanked by the beautiful Emerald colored water. Yes, it does look like that, like you see in the pictures. And of course, that's all next to you forest for the most part. There's not a whole lot of areas here that is just what you would consider in South Florida as like condo city where it's just condos everywhere and you can't even see it, see the golf. There's lots of open places where you can go and actually get a clear cut view of it. You come into the Destin area and you come over the Destin Bridge heading into Fort Walton, like every single time, like I've been here six years or more at this point. And still to this day, every time I go over that and see the water flanked on both sides and coming in, it's just, it still gives me goosebumps. It's just an absolutely beautiful place to live.

3. BEACH AND VACATION VIBES

It's like year round that you get to enjoy it. Now it is a lot more when it starts to warm up from, you know, mid March all the way until September when we get more vacationers coming in here. But it's very easy to take a 15, 30 minute, 5 minute drive wherever you end up moving, going down to the public beach and just walking down the shore. And it's kind of cool just seeing everybody else on vacation kind of makes it feel like you're on vacation too. But going out to different restaurants and things like that, you just, people are happy because they're on vacation. It's nice to be around happy people. If you're like me and have lived in places where people are pretty darn miserable all the time, it's just a nice breath of fresh air every time that you go out and do things.

4. GREAT FISHING / BOATING

It's got great fishing, boating all throughout our area. Destin in particular, was mentioned in boating magazine a few times that some of the best boating in the state of Florida and actually throughout the United States. You've also got Crab Island in certain places, at least in Destin. There's lots of great fishing, deep sea fishing. There's some good snorkeling throughout here. Lots of water activities, boating, everything's in there that you want to go see. If you want to go check out the dolphins, they got some tours for that too.

5. GREAT WEATHER

Great weather up through here. It isn't devastatingly hot like it is almost all the time, like in South Florida. But it is humid. It can get humid, and it does get a little bit cooler in the winter months. It's usually about midway through December until that midway of March. We'll see temperatures around 45 to 55 degrees. But just note that the humidity is always high here in comparison. It doesn't really cool off that much from that. So, the cold makes it colder, then the hot makes it hotter. Okay? But for the most part, it's really nice if you like the warm weather.

6. NO STATE INCOME TAX

That's awesome. The state of Florida makes it up because we have a ton of tourism that comes down here in their sales tax, okay? And because of that, if you're a resident of Florida, you don't have to pay state income tax. I knew that as a young military person and was very prompt to change my residents. Alright.

7. YOU CAN GOLF YEAR ROUND

If you like to golf, man this is a great place to move to. If you like to pretend to golf like I do and just hit it in the woods all the time, well, that's cool too. But, there's great golf courses all throughout here, and it's just a bit of good time.

8. IT'S NOT A CONDO CITY

It's like I've mentioned before, it's not condo city up this way like it is in South Florida. Because of the air force bases, because of military installations all throughout our area, some restrictions apply of how high that you can put some of these. For example, in Fort Worth Beach on Okaloosa Island, they can't build anything that's over six stories tall. And because of that, it kind of has a little bit more weight to the feeling when you go down there. And in certain parts of Destin, they can't build them that high as well. And the way that everything was set, there's not a whole big line of condos where you can't see anything. Even if there are, there are some small parts that do have that, but you're a short drive away from either the state park. Or, some place that is owned by the Air Force Base like, there's off of Destin, there's six miles of untouched beach that will probably never be developed because it's all part of the Air Force Base coming in. So, it's nice because you still have access to go walk out onto that untouched beach. It's just, it's fantastic to have that access.

9. GREAT PEOPLE AND ATMOSPHERE

There's great people and atmosphere. I kind of touched on that when we first got into this video. But again, yeah, you have people vacationers that come down here and want to retire down here. You've also have a good amount of military folks like myself that didn't even know this place existed and end up coming back here or retiring out here as well. And of course, it's got a mix of good southern atmosphere, southern hospitality, so to speak, and a good mix of Florida, the vacation of Florida. That just makes it unbeatable for the community that's out here.

10. GREAT INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY

Last but not least, number ten, is there's great investment opportunities. Why, because this place is growing so so much. Now, across the United States here at the day of this video in 2022, the housing, there's just hasn't been enough with the demand for people that want to go. And in this area, it's always been a high demand because it's a vacation area. But there's great investment opportunities. This is one of the reasons I personally moved down here and got into real estate was that, you know, even ten years ago, actually more than ten years ago when I initially got here, there was just a high influx of good renters that were all throughout this area. And I was like, man, this is, I should be an owner in this area and capitalize on that. Now, not just long term rentals, but an opportunity because there's some older homes to be able to flip. We're not that market really right now, but that is something to look into. And of course, we have vacation rentals. There's tons of those, and they continue to build out. There's more complexes coming up, renovations and some. This area is expanding. The growth of infrastructure that at least they're trying, traffic. But they're growing the infrastructure and everything else for this area to grow. And it's just a great opportunity right now to get into it.

Well, that's all I have for, should you move to Northwest Florida, the 10 reasons why you should move. You got any questions about anything I mentioned here, please feel free to call/text us at 850.320.7757 or email us at Admin@WhittemoreGroupRE.com