I moved to Florida to retire - and left after 18 months. Here's the honest truth

Agree. we had a pool and lived so close to the ocean you could just walk over, without that I would never have lasted a week. I will also say the temp and humidity is drastically different on the coast compared to inland. You get that nice breeze most of the time and the temp is usually about 10-15 degrees cooler on the coast than Orlando etc. Every time I would drive to Orlando for a flight or whatever I literally almost died in the summer, WAYYY too hot for me.

 

It's all about where you live in this state. If you want to live in an upper crust suburban cul-de-sac filled neighborhood, you're gonna pay more. Florida has plenty of property well away from the popular big cities and blue hair retirement destinations. Where I live, I have 2 acres and a 2600 sq ft house and pay less than $900/month, and $800 of that per year covers insurance, fire department protection and curb side trash collection. My all electric home costs me under $200/month even during the hottest months. No, we don't live near a big city (unless you consider Gainesville a big city), we live in the country where we can hear hoot owls and one of the neighbor's guinea hens cackling. We have deer hopping our fence eating our grass and pooping on our lawn. We have racoons, possums and armadillos roaming around and even have hawks swooping down catching little rodents. But we get to do things how we want and there is no HOA to govern us, and the county doesn't get too involved with permits unless whatever you build is over $10k, and then it's mostly to re-acess your property value. These snow birds come down here thinking they're moving to a paradise...as far as the article says, CT is attracting a lot of people, but I would be more miserable up there than the author was down here...my feelings about that, good riddance, we don't need your northern arse down here anyway

 

I used to manage a Military training facility up in Keystone Heights, maybe 40 mins from Gainesville, so I lived there M=F for 5 years. I loved that area all the way down to the Ocala National Forest. I still go to the Ocala Forest half a dozen times a year to ride dirt bike in my RV, if I had to move back to FL that's where I would live, Salt Springs or Ft. McCoy.

 

My folks lived in Lantana FL for quite a while in the 90's. I stayed with them for a couple of of years. I liked living there until the population started growing. My folks always said the utilities were on the low side compared to the northeast or west coast. They decided to sell after their house started sinking. They got out just in time! The development was an old orange grove and the company that bought and developed it didn't prep the soil right. Everyone's concrete slab cracked and a lot of them were unrepairable. I dont know if they closed or rebuilt but it was a nasty mess.

 

I was stationed at NAS Key West from 92 to 95. You couldn't pay me enough money to live in Florida again. To each his own.