I am gloating after reading an excellent piece by Conor Dougherty headed, "Is Florida over?" in today's Wall Street Journal. We asked essentially the same question here at GolfCommunityReviews, and answered it, more than eight months ago. (Click here for our January 26, 2007 article.) We have also reported frequently since then about comments to us from "halfbacks," those former northerners who moved to Florida a decade or two ago and are now moving halfway back to the Carolinas and other southeastern states. For months we have been suggesting that the tide was flowing out of the Sunshine State.
Choked with traffic, burdened with increasing property tax and insurance rates in the wake of hurricanes and too bloody hot in the summer, Florida is losing its status as a retirement paradise. I lapse consciously into off-color British prose above because so many Europeans think of Florida as the only warm place to vacation or purchase a second-residence in the U.S. Strong suggestion to our faithful offshore readers: As you consider investing your strong pounds Sterling and Euros, look north of Florida first. The sun does shine in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Florida real estate is still overpriced, with many who paid too much in the waning days of the boom unwilling to yield to the reality that they cannot sell their homes for what they thought they might. Property taxes are high, in part the natural consequence of offsetting the lack of a state income tax, and also to prop up school systems that saw an explosion of students in the last 10 years. Cities like Naples have over-expanded wildly, packing high-density and high-end condos into ever disappearing properties along the Gulf, in effect imprisoning residents inside their gated communities. And consistent with a great Florida tradition that goes back to the 1950s at least, local legislators and town planners have shown little backbone in dealing with aggressive developers.
The bloom, it appears, is off the orange blossom. Approach any investments in Florida real estate with caution.
