[macguy]

Originally Posted by sunrico90

Can anyone afford the $399K today?

Of course they can, if they can't they should not be looking at something for $399,000. You can't judge things by what people with no money did. There are plenty of people living in their homes with traditional mortgages making their payments and none of these headlines make any difference to them. I would bet in the grand scheme of things, the percent that all this is bad news actually effects is very small. Most people are fine and going about their lives.

[sunrico90]

Originally Posted by macguy

Of course they can, if they can't they should not be looking at something for $399,000. You can't judge things by what people with no money did. There are plenty of people living in their homes with traditional mortgages making their payments and none of these headlines make any difference to them. I would be in the grand scheme of things, the percent that all this is bad news actually effects is very small. Most people are fine and going about their lives.

Great post, is true...

[pslOldTimer]

I think people are forgetting the one critical, fundamental. defining difference between a house in South Florida and one anywhere else North of Vero Beach -- it gets COLD up there.

I don't care if the South Florida house is $500,000 and the North Florida house is $50 -- if I had to live there for more than 4 days in the Winter, you couldn't pay me enough to make me do it, let alone have me pay you for the house.

[hiknapster]

PsOldTimer:

North of Vero Beach, it gets cold to you. Not to someone from Buffalo, or Minnesota, or even, Kentucky.

[dreamer1]

very true hiknapster, i'm from buffalo and in two months we could get snow again.

[MrTudo]

One of the criteria we are using is, "if you can grow Coconut Palms" there, then we're interested.

[pslOldTimer]

Originally Posted by hiknapster

PsOldTimer:

North of Vero Beach, it gets cold to you. Not to someone from Buffalo, or Minnesota, or even, Kentucky.

That's exactly the point. Before I moved here, I lived in northern Massachusetts, near Nashua, NH. We were in a snow belt. We had a saying, "If it snows before Thanksgiving, you won't see the ground again before Easter." We owned snowshoes, and used them to walk the dog (and, no, I am not kidding).

We moved to Florida to get away from that. We kept going until, as Mr.Tudo says, we could grow coconuts. That line is generally considered to be Vero Beach, "where the tropics begin". We have even gotten too cold here a few times, and threatened to move to Ecuador, which sounds like it was named for the Equator.

I mentioned "4 days" for a very specific reason. For 18 years, we owned a cabin in the North Carolina mountains, very near the Virginia and TN borders. We went up there year round, for 4 day weekends, about once a month. Obviously, we were up there in the Winter months. We enjoyed the occasional snow when the kids were young, letting them learn about sleds, etc. We were probably the only car in Port St. Lucie, FL driving around with tire chains in the back, which we needed because our mountain road was not plowed. But, we could only tolerate that coldness and wetness because we knew that on Monday evening, we were headed back to tropical Florida. There is no way we could have lived there for more than 4 days.

We finally sold the cabin about 2 years ago, one of the reasons being that we could no longer tolerate even the 4 days of cold, and we weren't getting enough use out of it.

I don't have a clue why people moved to Jacksonville or Gainesville or even Orlando; they might as well have stayed in Buffalo or Kentucky or wherever as far as I'm concerned. The weather might be a little better in North Florida than in Buffalo, but not enough to make it worth stopping there. If you're coming to Florida, come to Florida, not Georgia or Alabama. Of course, almost everybody else thinks the same way, so things will be a little more expensive here. The reason it's cheaper in the North is simple; no one wants to pay any extra to live there!

[MrTudo]

Heheheh, right on Mr pslOldTimer

[j_rode]

So I'm the only one here who actually enjoys winter? I love the cold, it's so refreshing.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to move to and live in Florida, but I love my mix of seasons here in Wisconsin. Winter is probably my favorite season.

[hiknapster]

Hey, PSLOldTimer! I'm from Massachusetts, too!

Fort Myers is like Vero Beach. South of the Caloosahatchie is considered the sub-tropics.