Considering a move to Florida......need advice.

[_19disnA]

If you are looking for milder winter climate, there are LOTS of states along the southern portion of the US besides Florida to consider. Do you want to still be near relatives, children/grandchildren or how often do you think you will travel to see them or them to see you? If you move to a smaller city or remote area, how far is the nearest hospital since it is something to consider as you get on in your years. How far is the nearest shopping? What are the amenities you are most interested in? Amenities like swimming, tennis, fitness center or even golf can look attractive in a sales brochure, but aren't worth as much if those aren't things you will make use of. Your budget needs to consider ALL significant costs, not just the purchase price of your house. I think it would be a mistake to decide to move to a completely different part of the country just based on what you might have seen on TV or read in a travel magazine. Should certainly spend some time in any area you are seriously considering before buying a house. A place you enjoy for a couple of weeks on vacation may not be the best choice for a permanent residence. As you get older, will you still want to drive long distances to visit relatives? Flying is an alternative, but can be expensive depending on where you live, location of nearby airports and your budget.

If children/grandchildren plan to visit, you need to think about the rules relating to those 55+ communities since some have a lot of restrictions on who can stay overnight. I guess some think that having children around there will be noise or people running through your yard. However, if you plan to stay active during retirement, might not be a bad idea to have a variety of age ranges in the community where you live.

 

[Lynn CC]

But that would also include all your amenities with your pools, clubhouse etc too right? There is no member fee for that? That would be a very reasonable HOA fee.

When we were first looking I wanted an independent house (no community) because I was having a hard time with the monthly association fees. But I did the spread sheets and even paying those we save a great deal of money and get all the perks and security that comes with our community.



I'm not sure why that would be other than maybe not wanting seasons.

We didn't want any part of being down south. My parents are close to Ft Lauderdale 7 mos out of the year. It is too far for anybody who drives down there. They want everyone to visit them and even though they are in nice condo overlooking beach, no one goes. They come back here summer months because it's unbearable down there. For them to drive back and forth to here is becoming difficult. We are in St. Augustine. We love it there and appreciate the cooler winter months where we can still swim in the pools and garden or sit on the beach. Honestly I wouldn't want to be any further south than Orlando. I can always do a long weekend down south if I want to enjoy something there.

Yes that HOA fee includes all the amenities within our gated community

 

[maxaroni]

@Lynn CC

Your community seems amazing! My dad moved 2.5 years ago from NJ to Summerfield, FL. He’s in a 55+ and loves it. He went down not knowing anyone and we are all only children, so it was/is hard for me. At any rate, we have visited him and will be going down this summer, so perhaps we will look into your community. Dad is currently 84 but after losing my mom, he stayed here a few years and decided he wanted to leave the winter weather behind. My DS27 & his fiancée are visiting him now. Dad did take us to Ocala and loved to see the horse farms.

 

[Lynn CC]

Florida has an 80-20 rule, it’s the law.
20% of homeowners can be under 55 years old. We thought 55 community meant no one living here would be under 55... there are plenty of people here who are in their 40’s mixed right in with people in their 80’s.

it’s a great community of friendly people, lots to do & everyone is making friends!

 

[Lynn CC]

@Lynn CC

Your community seems amazing! My dad moved 2.5 years ago from NJ to Summerfield, FL. He’s in a 55+ and loves it. He went down not knowing anyone and we are all only children, so it was/is hard for me. At any rate, we have visited him and will be going down this summer, so perhaps we will look into your community. Dad is currently 84 but after losing my mom, he stayed here a few years and decided he wanted to leave the winter weather behind. My DS27 & his fiancée are visiting him now. Dad did take us to Ocala and loved to see the horse farms.

The horse farms are beautiful here!
lots of our neighbors own horses!

 

[NotUrsula]

I think that the only reason someone might think Ocala was too far north is if they took frequent cruises out of Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, or if they REALLY were wanting to get into open water year-round -- as in physically in the water, not in a boat, because most people consider the waters that far north to be too cold for swimming in wintertime. (Kayakers or jet ski enthusiasts, perhaps? And, yeah, a kayak is a boat, but if you get out and paddle a sit-on-top kayak in even small chop, you normally end up pretty soaked pretty quickly, as opposed to being in a boat with actual gunwales.)

But ... if that were a concern, I'd be surprised at such a person being as far inland as Ocala, given that the Gulf coastline on that latitude pretty much has no barrier islands, and thus no beaches. (Well, one small one, at Fort Island. Straight west from Ocala is mostly the Waccasassa State Preserve, which is coastal wetlands -- marshes. Not great watersport country. Great birding, though!)
Besides that, no one who is a serious open-water enthusiast would pick a community that far inland -- that kind of person really needs to be able to smell the salt to be happy. If you want beach from Ocala, it's at least a 70-mile drive to get there. (The closest beach to Ocala by road is actually on the East coast; Ormond Beach, on the north side of Volusia County.)

Oh, and lakes don't count for our mythical get-in-the-water retiree - people really don't swim in lakes in Florida, for safety reasons. (Cold springs, yes, but not lakes.)

 

[dhardawa]

Great, we are #8. We were looking at a $800k condo in Breckenridge and I said the Real Estate Agent that the property taxes were slightly worse then ours in Ohio at $24k per year. She looked at the sheet and said the $2k was annual, not monthly. I told DH we are buying one of these just for the cheap property taxes.

That’s crazy. I’m right next door in Indiana and I paid $1,800 last year in property tax. That’s on about a $200,000 home.

 

[L&Lfan]

Hope this isn’t too political, but I don’t understand why residents of these high tax states don’t vote in politicians that will lower taxes. Some of these property tax rates are unreal! $24k????? How can states get away with it?? Can someone please explain? Is there nothing a citizen can do except move?

This doesn’t seem to be a partisan issue as there are both blue and red states in the top 10.

 

[JaxDad]

Hope this isn’t too political, but I don’t understand why residents of these high tax states don’t vote in politicians that will lower taxes. Some of these property tax rates are unreal! $24k????? How can states get away with it?? Can someone please explain? Is there nothing a citizen can do except move?

Ha! Instead of doing what you so astutely recommend, the residents of high tax states instead move to low tax states and vote for politicians who support high tax policies.

 

[Kimberlyann11]

I am from a lower property tax state so I don't have to make that decision, but I would think that sometimes politicians that would lower taxes might have other policies that the voters don't approve of. I mean that in a non-partisan way - red or blue. Not everything is about money.

 

[dish rag]

Hope this isn’t too political, but I don’t understand why residents of these high tax states don’t vote in politicians that will lower taxes. Some of these property tax rates are unreal! $24k????? How can states get away with it?? Can someone please explain? Is there nothing a citizen can do except move?

This doesn’t seem to be a partisan issue as there are both blue and red states in the top 10.

Because many of the voters are under the impression that they are going to get hand outs.

 

[tcufrog]

I live in Texas. some transplants complain about the property taxes but there's no state income or sales tax.

 

[lukenick1]

Great, we are #8. We were looking at a $800k condo in Breckenridge and I said the Real Estate Agent that the property taxes were slightly worse then ours in Ohio at $24k per year. She looked at the sheet and said the $2k was annual, not monthly. I told DH we are buying one of these just for the cheap property taxes.

$24K is taxes how big is your house? Wow!

 

[hertamaniac]

Ocala is an area that is expanding rapidly, again. I have family members that live in a community (not stated as 55+, but in reality it is) on the NW side. The area is growing faster than the infrastructure can handle. The horse farms are nice to see, but once the new World Equestrian Center comes online, the traffic will likely be horrendous.

 

[Lynn CC]

Yes, it will be interesting to see the whole transformation in Ocala after the Equestrian center is built.
prices on new homes are already starting to rise. We built just in time!
After next year I foresee a huge jump, especially in our community. Horse people want second homes & this is a very new, nice place to live. We already have people that are living here just during the months horses in the sun events are happening. Jan.-March.

 

[hertamaniac]

It's the traffic on 27/40 that is going to be the problem (even more so when the convention center is built right on 27 near the newer communities). SR200 is already a parking lot and is jammed most of the time. I know the HOA's are going to skyrocket for the existing NW communities. I also know that some of them have no cap in NW Ocala. With more new homes being built, it can actually decrease the value of homes built within the past few years; I've seen it first-hand in Ocala over 15 years.

 

[NotUrsula]

As the PP noted, when the community you look at is new, everything is really lovely, if sometimes a tad isolated. And that can be a good thing. However, there is also something to be said for looking at communities that are themselves mature; where there are no more open fields that might one day turn into things that you won't want to deal with.

I'd just like to remind those who are thinking of moving to such a community that they are not all new developments; places in Florida (and elsewhere in warm climates) have been building retiree-oriented communities for 100 years now, and protecting them with land-use covenants for at least 50 years. You have the option of finding the amenities and security that you want in an area whose traffic patterns and density were pretty much set into stone decades ago, so if you are concerned that a community could physically change in a way that you don't like as more development is approved, then older might be your better choice, even if renovation is going to be part of the scenario.

PS: about the 80/20 rule. It isn't Florida law, it is Federal Law, the Housing for Older Persons Act, passed in 1995. The important clause requires that to be allowed to discriminate based on "familial status", the community must require that ...

(i) at least 80 percent of the occupied units are occupied by at least one person who is 55 years of age or older

(Under the Fair Housing Act, you cannot exclude based on "familial status", which previously caused some issues for developments of this kind., so this specific exception rule was created.) Note that no part of the rule says that they must allow 20% of the residents to be under that age, only that they can allow it -- but the 80%-over part of the balance is firm. Accordingly, most resident boards only allow under-55 residents on a case-by-case basis. Most of the exceptions they are asked to grant involve younger spouses who have been widowed or divorced and do not wish to leave, or adult children residing there who stay after the older family member dies or enters a nursing home. However, in order not to hit that magical 20% by dint of natural attrition, they have to build in wiggle room. It is much less difficult to keep that margin open by excluding adult children in the first place, rather than telling grieving residents that they have to leave their homes. so most associations choose to go with that method. Full text of the law is here: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title42/chapter45&edition=prelim

PS: Let's tread lightly on the tax-issue discussion; we don't want to get the OP's thread closed before she gets the information that she came for.

 

[kirstenb1]

We're in our fifties, so we've got lots of time to look around. I like northeastern Florida, around Jacksonville. One of our criteria for an area to either retire to, or snowbird in, is lots of cultural activities. I love sports, museums, zoos, music, etc. Therefore, we need to be within an hour of a bigger city. I also want to be no more than 30 minutes away from the beach. We've spent the last 2 spring breaks on Amelia Island. Love the town of Fernandina! St Augustine is on my list of destinations to visit. Lots of sleepy beach towns up and down the southeastern coast that I love to go to for vacation. But to live somewhere, I'm going to need lots of activities, and volunteer opportunities.

 

[shh]

The 55 plus places I know of in Florida sell very quickly. One of the reasons is the guest rule.

Depends entirely on the development...many don't sell well...the newer, more modern ones do. The older ones, with fewer amenities or tinier condo apts built back in the '70s were impossible to sell during the last recession: you couldn't give most of them away. Some don't allow anyone under 55. Others don't allow you to rent - not even for a short time, so you're paying costly HOA fees and other costs, but can't recoup while you try to sell in a depressed mkt. Some restrict both - no one under 55, no renting. (Don't ask me how I know....)

 

[dish rag]

Depends entirely on the development...many don't sell well...the newer, more modern ones do. The older ones, with fewer amenities or tinier condo apts built back in the '70s were impossible to sell during the last recession: you couldn't give most of them away. Some don't allow anyone under 55. Others don't allow you to rent - not even for a short time, so you're paying costly HOA fees and other costs, but can't recoup while you try to sell in a depressed mkt. Some restrict both - no one under 55, no renting. (Don't ask me how I know....)

Of course too you don’t want one that allows rentals. That’s another part of it. This, the 55 limit and similar rules is what makes them desirable. Who wants to live by renters. Especially short term.