Homes in FL

[Reddwarf]

This week the HGTV show House Hunters has been in Florida. WOW! Real estate is way expensive there! How in the world do you folks afford to live there, own nice cars and still have money to spend at AG?

Seriously, I knew homes were expensive there, but some of the prices on that show were outrageous. A good reason to live in Dallas.

 

[Nica]

I think its all relevant Reddwarf, I'm sure that even in Dallas things have gone up in price. It’s just part of the rise in the economy. It's funny because when I purchased my home the average house was going for about $180K to $200K. When I say average I'm talking about a 1800 sq feet with a double garage. That was about 2 to 3 years ago, my wife was looking at some houses about 2000 sq feet with a double garage, about average I would say and the average price has now gone up to $380K.

So in my opinion, it's all part of the economy. The only issue I see is that, even though the economy is doing quite well. Wages in the other hand have gone up a bit but not enough for a regular person to go out and purchase a $380K home. I can't imagine my self getting a mortgage for that amount, very difficult to get out of debt and still have extra money to spend at AG and cars.

But that's just what I've seen where I'm living.

 

[Surfer]

This week the HGTV show House Hunters has been in Florida. WOW! Real estate is way expensive there! How in the world do you folks afford to live there, own nice cars and still have money to spend at AG?

Seriously, I knew homes were expensive there, but some of the prices on that show were outrageous. A good reason to live in Dallas.

What are of FL? Down here, yes very expensive (Boca Raton). We're based around the Intracoastal and Beach and going west you have all the Country Club type developments. It's not the house prices, it's the property taxes that kill ya lol, my families old house was directly on the intracoastal, you don't want to know what our property taxes were. Now, mother downsized to a much smaller (about 3K sqft) normal 2 car garage type home, but were right near the beach.

Boca actually used to have an exotic zoo way back in the day that I was looking at videos of, and found this clip lol:
[URL="http://youtube.com/watch?v=CFrUTXAfTLA] - Boca Raton[/URL]

Problem in Boca is what used to be affordable isn't, teachers etc have been pushed out unless they have a spouse who makes good money as they can't afford it here. Kinda sad. Before the whle Real Estate boom, you could find a normal house on an canal leading to the intracoastal in the 700K range, now some of those normal houses are upwards of 2 mill. A lot of people have been priced out. Boca was always known as "snob" city, but the whole boom made it even worse. I called in to a rock station once (Zeta for the floridians when it was around) and won tickets to a rock concert, when asked where I was from, they said "boca, you don't need to win tickets you can just buy them".

Still not as bad as Cali or NY overall, I guarentee Cali market is going to crash again like it did over a decade ago except it's going to be way worse b/c the majority of owners out there are using exotic loans to afford homes they can't "actually" afford.

Problem is wages/salaries stayed kaput, while everything else is rising.

 

[Kelso]

around here the market has absolutely died. prices are high but nothings selling so theyre coming down. construction workers are getting laid off pretty heavily it seems. the prices are pretty outrageous still though

 

[ScottB]

no real unions in Florida, most employers fail to consider cost of living increases. Add that to property taxes and windstorm/hurricane insurance polices and you are SCREWED !!!

 

[Surfer]

no real unions in Florida, most employers fail to consider cost of living increases. Add that to property taxes and windstorm/hurricane insurance polices and you are SCREWED !!!

How about the "let's increase tax to 8.5%" to make up for the loss of insurance from property taxes if they get rid of them....LOL.

 

[noname5]

Well, not everyone can deal with it. Everyone's feeling the strain as property taxes go up.

Plenty of people are actually leaving this state because they simply can't afford to pay property taxes and home insurance anymore. It's pretty sad, really.

However, the market will eventually readjust itself. The question is, how long and how many casualities will there be until that happens? Hopefully the government doesn't do anything stupid in making a wrong move with some "intervention" law. Luckily, Florida's government has been good so far at laissez faire.

Hopefully it will stay that way, although we do need to rework our insurance, healthcare, etc.

 

[wytstang]

Yeah it pricey but sometime way deep down in side I miss being there (mostly friends and I drinking on south beach and hanging out around Coconut Grove"