[Lone Star Navy]

Greeting all. I've recently been offered a position with the Air Force (Civil Service). I'm currently in a very good paying job but I have to keep living with the fact that there is no job security. In this day and age, civil service looks to be very good for the long haul as I have a wife and 2 boys. The position I've been offered is to Eglin, AFB. Based on the premliminary research that I've done online, it looks like a very beautiful place to visit but I don't know about living there.Since I'm going to rent (possibly for the first year) I plan on getting renters insurance. Do I need flood/hurricane insurance as well? I would't think so if I've got renters insurance for my personal property.My first priority is to make sure my kids (5 year old and 12 year old) get a good quality education so I'm searching for any recommendations on living areas. My gut feeling is to rent first and my budget would be in the range of $1200 per month. I've heard the schools in Navarre/Mary Esther are the best but I don't know. I would like to be close to the beach/water as we are a very active family that is into fishing, running, camping, etc...Thanks for any feedback.

[RVlover]

Originally Posted by Lone Star Navy

Greeting all. I've recently been offered a position with the Air Force (Civil Service). I'm currently in a very good paying job but I have to keep living with the fact that there is no job security. In this day and age, civil service looks to be very good for the long haul as I have a wife and 2 boys. The position I've been offered is to Eglin, AFB. Based on the premliminary research that I've done online, it looks like a very beautiful place to visit but I don't know about living there.Since I'm going to rent (possibly for the first year) I plan on getting renters insurance. Do I need flood/hurricane insurance as well? I would't think so if I've got renters insurance for my personal property.My first priority is to make sure my kids (5 year old and 12 year old) get a good quality education so I'm searching for any recommendations on living areas. My gut feeling is to rent first and my budget would be in the range of $1200 per month. I've heard the schools in Navarre/Mary Esther are the best but I don't know. I would like to be close to the beach/water as we are a very active family that is into fishing, running, camping, etc...Thanks for any feedback.

If you live on base or in Niceville/Valparaiso, youll be just 15 minutes to the Coast . Lots and lots of things to do in the area, particularly water sports. Check out : www.emeraldcoastguide.com for a review. Sorry, i cant address the schools or what rent goes for in that area , as im about 30 minutes north of there in Crestview. Incidentally, Crestview has ALOT of military families and prices of homes and rent should be cheaper ...and its an easy commute to Eglin straight down Rte. 85 , a four lane highway.

[beachmouse]

I'm in the camp that is that the FWB area can be a very good place to live if you can bring your own job, and you've already gotten that taken care of.

I'm not sure of the renter's insurance situation. When we moved down here, we lived on the beach and were told that no one was writing renter's insurance on the barrier island at that time(1998-2001), so we rolled the dice and went without for a couple years before buying inland.

The schools in general in Santa Rosa and Okaloosa Counties tend to range from solid to excellent. (Bluewater Elementary was just ranked #30 among all public schools in Florida and Collegiate charter High School was somewhere around #35)

I tend to view Destin as more of an entertainment destination than a place to live- too much daily traffic for a good six months a year, and totally hurricane bait.

For the rest of the area, $1200 can get you a single family home in a relatively nice part of town if you do a bit of looking. A good number of military folks buy and hold houses when they PCS to the area with the idea of coming back and retiring here, and then rent the house out for the years when they're sent elsewhere.

The Mary Esther and Navarre areas do have some nice houses, but you'd get stuck on US 98, which is regularly despised as the worst commuting road in the area, on a regular basis. It's far beyond 100% capacity at rush hour, and when there's an accident, there is no alternate route around it.

I'm a firm believer in that daily time spent commuting in the car is time wasted, so I'd probably stick with the areas within about 15 minutes of one of the Eglin gates. The Kenwood, Shalimar, and Longwood/Poquito Bayou areas on the north side of FWB tend to be pretty nice (though there are a handful of slightly ugly parts of Shalimar), have very good elementary schools (though I'd put the grade 7-12 situation as not quite as good as what you get in Niceville) and will get you to Eglin's west gate in 10 minutes or less.

In 15-20 minutes of the East Gate, you can find an average-sized (1800sf or so) house in your price range in east Niceville or the Bluewater Bay area with a little bit of work. Slightly better schools (Bluewater or Plew Elementary, Ruckel Middle School, Niceville High) than on the FWB side, an easy shot down the toll bridge to the Destin beaches and fun stuff, and Bluewater proper has a great set up for active families- the most pedestrian-friendly area in the panhandle, and membership options for tennis, golf, a couple competition-size pools, and marina.

Very good fishing options in the area (Destin calls itself 'The World's Luckiest Fishing Village') and a lot of state and federal land for camping. Youth sports and high school are a big deal down here, and a good number of running road races and triathlons.

Climate is different than points south. We do get four actual seasons here, though they're a little bit subtle, and the occasional night below freezing. Ivan was a decidedly Not Fun event, but tropical cyclone activity more commonly involves a tropical storm dropping 8 inches of rain on the area in a way that's not really different from the non-tropoical storms that dump 10 inches of rain on an area a couple times every spring.

For an area of about 200K people, there really is a lot going on here.

[RVlover]

Quote : 'Very good fishing options in the area (Destin calls itself 'The World's Luckiest Fishing Village') '

REPLY: IE: A couple weeks ago, a Fisherman caught a 714 lb. (thats Seven Hundred Fourteen pound) Blue Marlin off Destin and it took him 8 hours to reel it in . Thats enough food to feed a family of 5 for a couple months !

[Lone Star Navy]

Thanks RVLover and BeachMouse. You both provided some great feedback. I'm now starting to focus on the Niceville and Bluewater Bay areas. What are the main streets to EGlin AFB? I see that Eglin covers quite a bit of distance so I wasn't sure what the main roads are to the base from Niceville/Bluewater Bay.I've gone to Militarybyowner.com and found some nice properties in Niceville. I'd really like to get some place that provides workout area, pool, and walking distance to some bay fishing. I'm thinking some sort of Condo but would much rather prefer a single family home. I think I would really love this place.

[beachmouse]

Because Eglin Reservation take up about 95% of the land south of I-10, there really aren't that many different major roads. The major east-west roads are US 98 through Ft. Walton Beach and Destin, John Sims Parkway through Niceville, and Racetrack and Lewis Turner in FWB. The major north-south roads are Eglin Parkway and Beal Parkway in FWB, Hwy 85 (Niceville to Crestview), and the Mid Bay Bridge road between Bluewater Bay and Destin (White Point Road north of the bridge and Danny Wuerffel south of the bridge) (Yes, that Danny Wuerffel)

Base proper is the area between the towns of Shalimar and Valpariaso. John Sims goes to the East Gate; Eglin Parkway goes to the West Gate/medical center area. The remaining 98% of Eglin Reservation has a few smaller outposts- Duke Field, Camp Rudder where they train Army Rangers, the Navy EOD school north of Bluewater, the space tracking center, etc. but is largely managed as one part target range to four parts conservation and recreation area. It was originally Choctawhatchee National Forest, and in order to get the locals to go along with turning the land over to the Department of War during WW2, there was an effective promise that hunting, fishing, and gathering rights in the forest area would be preserved.

The down side is that the conservation efforts these days are a little too effective, and the local black bear population is increasingly showing up in populated areas. As a rule, they don't go near humans, but they adore getting the chance to dumpster dive right before trash day and make a heckava mess.