Why should I Live on Emerald Coast

So, you're considering moving to the Emerald Coast down here in Florida. And you're kind of wondering, why should I move to this specific area here in Florida? Well, in this video, my team and I came up with the top nine, and there may be more as I think of it, reasons why you should actually move down here to the Emerald coast. And the last one might make or break your decision. So, stick around.

So, if you're not familiar with what the Emerald Coast is, it's actually the unofficial name for about five counties across on the Panhandle of Florida. And that stretches, if you want the city's areas, from about Pensacola all the way to Panama City Beach. So, that is the Emerald Coast as we call it down here.

So, why do people want to move here? Now, I didn't originally grow up here. Matter of fact, the reason that I even know this place existed was, thanks to the US Air Force been stationing me down here at Eglin Air Force Base back in 2012. And as soon as I got out, I realized that I needed to come back here. And here's the reasons why that I've continued to stay here and wanted to continue to come back.

1. WHITE SAND BEACHES

Number one, you probably guessed it, it's the white sand beaches all throughout this area. Now, you may be coming down and probably checked out Central Florida on the gulf side, maybe been down to Tampa, and all down that gulf side, and you're like, yeah, they got really nice beaches there. Well, if you haven't seen ours here, you're definitely going to become a beach snob after you do. The big difference here is it's not as developed. It's not what, some of my past clients have called Condo city. The condos that are here aren't really built as high as the rest. They're not built as close, which means that you have access to this beach. And because of all the different military bases that we have around here, there's restrictions on how high they can put these condos and where they can. So, we'll find miles and miles and miles of untouched, just open beach for you to walk and bring your family out with. And it's just absolutely gorgeous to have access and free access to those beaches and where you want to go. It's just phenomenal and you get to live the beach life and what's wrong with that.

2. RELAXED BEACH ATMOSPHERE

Not only that for number two, is it's got a very relaxed beach atmosphere and year-round. How cool is it that you can live in the place that you would normally vacation. Right? Now, I will let you know that it does get cold for about three, maybe four months, what your definition of cold is, between somewhere around mid-December all the way down to about March time frame. And then, that's the spring break time, and that's when things seem to heat up, literally. And, it's just really nice. The whole town kind of operates like that. And I've done real estate in two other states, and nothing is quite as relaxed as being able to go up for showing, and I'm wearing flip flops and a short and it's, you know, a 1.2 million dollar showing. You know, those are the sort of things that can happen because the people here are just relaxed in the way that they do things. And if you like that sort of beach atmosphere, that kind of openness, this is going to be a place for you to consider, to move here on the Emerald Coast.

3. AMAZING PEOPLE

Number three on the list is, it's really just the amazing people. You've got everywhere from the salt of the earth, amazing down to earth people, all the way up to the top one percent wealthiest of people that live here on the Emerald Coast. And we all mix in perfectly. And you wouldn't know one from the other. To be quite honest, you can't really tell by the way somebody really carries themselves versus the way that they dress. It's just not as segregated as that. Everybody just gets to work together, so, so well here. And because of all the tourism and everything, it brings a great diversity of people here. The amazing part about our permanent residence here is that, there's four or five military installations all across the emerald coast. And because of that, we've got this mix of the very respectable, military type mindset families and everything throughout here added to that southern hospitality. And there's no way to really describe it. You have to visit here and stay here for a length of time to understand what that actually is like. And it's a weird combination of accents that people have here too because of that. Alright.

4. BOATING AND FISHING

Destin, Florida was actually is named, one of the luckiest fishing villages around from where originally started to the crazy explosion of tourism and wealth that came to the Destin area. The boating is world-class here. Matter of fact, there's a couple of areas throughout the Emerald Coast that have been, featured in boating magazine, like Regatta Bay, and places like that. It's just a phenomenal place to go boating to go fishing. And, you just, you just can't mess, you can't just can't mess up here. I personally don't own a boat, but I have plenty of friends that do, and I've learned from them that it's probably better to have friends with a boat than it is to own one because it's just a money pit that you just keep throwing money into. I will pay for your gas. Don't worry about it as long as I get a seat on the boat. You boaters, you know what I'm talking about. Alright.

5. INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Number five is the investment opportunities down here. Now, originally before I came down here, I was getting my license in New York, New York state. And, when I got the opportunity to come down here and work as part of a team with a prior military buddy of mine. It was when I did the research, the opportunities for real estate down here are just absolutely phenomenal, even back then. And a couple of ways that you can invest in real estate here, the one thing that attracted me personally was the affordability of the homes and the long-term rentals. Mainly because our demand for rentals in our specific area is sky high, seems like all the time. And it's because of the transient nature of our area with the military people coming in. So, not only do you have a high demand for rentals, but you also have a higher class of people that are renting these units and are a lot more responsible, or at least they do have a first sergeant that you can go after to get your rent. So, the investment opportunity has been great. Not only that, is that, if you want a little slice of heaven for yourself, you can also get a condo, the beachfront condo or somewhere close. And, do short term rentals and build some wealth that way. Now, I have a whole video on what it's like to invest into condos down here on the Emerald coast and specifically on Okaloosa Island, which would really just be the same thing for pretty much across the board everywhere. But, it's really, really nice that you could just come down and have your own personal view and then make a little equity, make a little money on the side, while you have that. So, the investment opportunities for real estate on the Emerald Coast are great.

6. GREAT FOOD

Next on our list, number six is the Great Food. There's great food all throughout this area. And you think, it's on the coast, so the seafood's good. It is good. I'm not going to lie. There are some amazing places to go, and they're not all your chain restaurants either. There was a lot of kind of hole in the wall places that you wouldn't know exist out here that have just amazing food. I feel like I should probably do a video on that, but, you know, well, let me know. And a comment below here if you'd like me to do a video on the best hole in the wall places on the Emerald Coast to go get some food, because I wouldn't mind doing that. But there are great food, not just for seafood. There are all sorts of great places to go out and they're expanding as more people are moving here. We've got everything from great Mexican food, there's Cuban, there's Greek. We got a new Indian restaurant in town all across the board, just phenomenal food down here. Alright.

7. AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Number seven, you knew I was going to say this, but affordable housing. How great to be in paradise without having Miami prices. Right? If you're trying to get on the water, you don't have to spend, you know, ten million dollars to get some of this. Now, don't worry, that does exist if you want it. If you have that sort of money to spend, please give me a call. But you can get on the water. If not right there on the gulf, you can get on the bay for as little as 400-500,000 at least as of the date of this video. And have your own beach route, or have your own beach view, or water view type of home unit, what have you. You can get, on Okaloosa Island as the date of this video, you can get into a beachfront condo. Beach front condo for as little as $250,000. Now, that's not common. The median price for them is around $368,000 I believe, right now. It's $368,000 but still, it's just great to have housing affordability to be in paradise. Now, I will tell you that right now in certain areas, the median home price is around $265,000. And, those are places up more towards Crestview and in those areas. And, as you get a little bit closer to the water, we're looking more in the low to mid three hundreds, as of 2021 summer. But still not terrible in comparison to, you know, our neighbors in central Florida. Okay.

8. CRAB ISLAND

Number eight is, well, it's going to be part of Destin, which I'm calling Crab Island. If you guys haven't checked that out, Crab Island is just a phenomenal place to go. Remember I talked about boating? Well, you need a boat to get out here. And it's not really an island, it's kind of a sandbar that sits off the Destin Bridge just north of it. If you've ever gone over that bridge and you see all the boats kind of just out there, that's what they're doing. They've all tie off together or put in the anchor, and it's always a big party, pretty much every day when the weathers nice. So, you'll go out there and they've got like little vendors out on the water, you know, if there's all sorts of stuff. I think even now, there's a church that goes out there. And now it's a church on Crab Island that's a part of a boat, it's crazy. The insanity that goes out there, but they have all sorts of amazing things. It's just such a good time party on the water, do what you'd like.

9. GREAT MIX OF AREAS

Alright. Last but not least, is the great mix of different areas. So, as I mentioned before, we're talking about the Emerald coast, which stretches from, Pensacola all the way to Panama City Beach. Now, let's explain a little bit about each area just so you get an idea which one might be best for you. If you go into Pensacola, Pensacola is nice because it's like a median sized city. You've got that downtown area on Palafox Street, or you've got different bars restaurants, things like that. Of course, they've got a minor league baseball team there, the same thing for minor league hockey, and they do have, like, an arena in there as well. So, you got everything that you need for a medium sized city. Now as you start moving the other way, into Gulf Breeze, that's actually where Pensacola Beach is. And Pensacola Beach is really nice, it's got some little boardwalk there. There are restaurants, there are bars. And the beach is really nice with a big old pier. And there's lots of different condos and things down that way as well. Moving on, further east as we go, you will hit Navarre Beach. And Navarre Beach has been ranked one of the top, most relaxing beaches in all of the state of Florida. Not only that, but it also has the longest fishing pier in all of Florida as well. And it's just really great to bring family. There's a handful of restaurants and bars also on that beach. But it's just a different feel completely different than what you're going to feel over there on Pensacola Beach, Destin, and, Panama City Beach. Moving further down, of course, you do have Okaloosa Island, technically Fort Walton Beach, and that's that big open place that I talked about. Now, those are the lower rise condos that we have there. And that's because of the approach pattern into Eglin Air Force Base, so you can't build them too high. But that's really nice, just to really relax atmosphere. Not as relaxed as Navarre. There's still a lot going. There are still restaurants, there's still bars down there. Across away, you got to check this out it's called the gulf. The Gulf is really awesome. Just sitting there off the intercoastal waterway or the bay, whatever you want to call it, and it's got like container city next there. Anyway, you got to check it out, all types of different seats. But that's on Okaloosa Island. And you've got a bunch of stretch of condos all the way from newer ones that were built in the last couple of years, all the way down to ones that were built in the 70's. And they're still sticking around, they still were able to get through all the storms have rolled through this way. So, I absolutely love it. It's probably the most affordable place other than Panama City Beach to purchase a condo. But, good news about Okaloosa Island is that, across six miles of untouched beach, you have Destin. And Destin has been the destination spot for a lot of people coming down this way, and that's where everything is. So, you've got the HarborWalk, you've got the peninsula that they just rebuilt there, which is called Norriego Point. So, there's different parks. You've got Henderson Beach, which is a public beach, but you have to pay to get into it because it's State Park. There are some public beach accesses throughout there. But this is where all that stuff is, you know. This is a lot of tourist items are to include go cars shopping. All of us locals that live in this area, we usually travel there on the weekend for the things that we want to do as far as going to our favorite watering hole and getting our delicious libations all the way to going to our favorite restaurants. And that goes all the way down as we hit Destin in the Miramar Beach area. As we get further towards the Miramar Beach area starts a little bit more ritzy. We start to see just a little bit more of the resort feel, like, Sandestin in that area. As far as like, Baytowne, Baytowne Wharf. There's tons of different stuff in there. And if you're looking for that atmosphere, that's a good place to go. And there's even more shops and things out in the Outlet malls as we move that way.

Now, there's a big old stretch that we have, it's called Highway 30A that goes all the way down pretty much down to Panama City Beach. And down, there's all different places throughout their. Rosemary Beach, we've got Grayton. These are all where the really, really pricey houses are. And, this is where you've got that top one percent wealthiest of people that are staying there. Multi-million dollar homes way more affluent sort of feel to things. Everything is painted white like, I guess that's how things just look out there and they just pop. It just looks really clean, looks really fresh. And, it's a phenomenal place to go, just to go down. If you are going through there, I definitely suggest besides Grayton Beach going down to Seaside as well. They've got this open area with lots of shops and things like that. If you're traveling down Highway 98, you may miss it. You have to actually turn off to get down to the Highway 30A in order to check all these different places out. I suggest you just going for a drive and check out all the amazing houses that are out there. It's just absolutely phenomenal.

And, as we end our little trip all the way down to Panama City Beach, they've got the pier park that's out there with, again, another outdoor shopping mall with tons of different things to do. Panama City Beach was the place where they used to have a whole bunch of spring breakers that came down, the rowdy parties. That's kind of calmed down quite a bit over the years. But, it's still a good place to go. It's still got affordable condos. It's going to feel a much different than any other place that I had mentioned before as far as condos. People have referred to that a little bit as the poor man's condo city. I don't know how true that is. I like some of the condos there, but it's just going to be a different feel, if you're looking to move there. And of course, we have Panama City, which again is another smaller, smaller city, much like Pensacola, not as built out in my personal opinion as it is over there, but, definitely has a lots of jobs. It was a little bit rough after hurricane Michael came through. There's still kind of recovering from that. Of course, you have Tyndall Air Force Base that's out there, that they're rebuilding. So, expect that that's going to be a big thing coming here in the future. Okay.

So, that's all I have for you for why you should live on the Emerald Coast. If you have 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

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