Standard of living in South Florida (Miami, Pembroke Pines: neighborhood, universities, restaurants)

[Weston_in_the_Pines]

I remember back "in the day" So Florida was a pretty inexpensive place to live and, in fact, that was one of the draws to the area.

(plus coral springs has a nice - albeit busy - super walmart)

[tallrick]

To illustrate that point, the house across the street from me sold for 69,000 in 1996, I considered that VERY CHEAP at the time. Florida used to be a great value, of course waterfront cost more, but even that wasn't all bad.

As someone mentioned Broward county was even less expensive than Dade in the 80's and very tempting. I came so close to buying that 5 acre lot by Griffin and US-27. There was a church being built out there and property values stagnated...even in 1993 I found a great deal in north Miami, a 1.5 acre home in an iffy area, but under 70,000. Of course there were never deals around Brickell, north beach, star island, etc. But in addition to the homes of the wealthy there were plenty of good deals for anyone willing to look. That disappeared in 2002.

I did not have a lot of money, but those were affordable to me. Today...what a laugh!

[compelled to reply]

Originally Posted by tallrick

To illustrate that point, the house across the street from me sold for 69,000 in 1996, I considered that VERY CHEAP at the time. Florida used to be a great value, of course waterfront cost more, but even that wasn't all bad.

As someone mentioned Broward county was even less expensive than Dade in the 80's and very tempting. I came so close to buying that 5 acre lot by Griffin and US-27. There was a church being built out there and property values stagnated...even in 1993 I found a great deal in north Miami, a 1.5 acre home in an iffy area, but under 70,000. Of course there were never deals around Brickell, north beach, star island, etc. But in addition to the homes of the wealthy there were plenty of good deals for anyone willing to look. That disappeared in 2002.

I did not have a lot of money, but those were affordable to me. Today...what a laugh!

Like I said in the past, we had a choice coming out of Orlando to go to Greensboro NC, or go to South Florida, and it was a no brainier. ESPECIALLY since the price was not much more than Greensboro, yet a lot of quality of life factors were much better here (air quality, weather and believe it or not, crime and schools). The greatest appeal here though used to be the cost of living for a lot of the wonderful things this area had to offer. Areas developed a high quality of life like Coral Springs, Boca Raton,Davie etc (maybe not to your liking with all of the HOA activity, but albeit by most standards, an excellent place), and the relatively affordable prices were just icing on the cake. Now, its just plain not worth it!Lets put it like this, if we had to do it again in 07, it would not be logical. There is no economic force driving all of this. Its an awesome place to live if you have the cash, but now its not attainable to the common man. I still continue to recommend Broward County to those who already have a good job to take down here, but we need more people transferring here with good jobs (Aka a real economy), or else the future here looks iffy, regardless of real estate prices.

I still think we offer a high quality of life here in SW Broward, to get back to the topic of the post, and not many seem to disagree.

[celcius]

You can't even generalize the big cities though. You HAVE to go smaller, down to districts or neighborhoods, because like the city is to the county, the district is to the city.

I hear all this about crime in Pompano Beach. My grandparents used to live in Pompano Beach, and I've spent at least 3 weeks every year there since I was a tyke. I used to go for neighborhood walks for miles away from the house--at night--without any problems. My uncle has owned a condo in Pompano for the past 10 years in the more industrial part of the city, and i could still go for a run there at night. Sure, Pompano has some skeezy parts, but it's not hard to avoid them. I plan on moving down there when I graduate from college.

[celcius]

Originally Posted by Weston_in_the_Pines

I remember back "in the day" So Florida was a pretty inexpensive place to live and, in fact, that was one of the draws to the area.

(plus coral springs has a nice - albeit busy - super walmart)

You got that right. My grandparents bought their house in Pompano Beach for $120,000 in the '70s. Granted, that was a lot of money back then, but they sold it last year for over $650,000. Talk about profit!

[compelled to reply]

Originally Posted by celcius

You can't even generalize the big cities though. You HAVE to go smaller, down to districts or neighborhoods, because like the city is to the county, the district is to the city.

I hear all this about crime in Pompano Beach. My grandparents used to live in Pompano Beach, and I've spent at least 3 weeks every year there since I was a tyke. I used to go for neighborhood walks for miles away from the house--at night--without any problems. My uncle has owned a condo in Pompano for the past 10 years in the more industrial part of the city, and i could still go for a run there at night. Sure, Pompano has some skeezy parts, but it's not hard to avoid them. I plan on moving down there when I graduate from college.

The thing is, a lot of neighborhoods in Pompano Beach that used to be good neighborhoods have took a serious nosedive over the past few years as more and more people moved into the suburbs like Coral Springs. It's an inner city effect, basically. Its still fine in some parts, but Pompano has seen better days.

[T27taylor]

I read your post about Coral Springs being in the top 100. I'm thinking of moving to florida from Las Vegas, and we checked into wellington because we have a friend in WPB. But do you know if Coral Springs is better than wellington? We have school age children and I work in the healthcare business.

[lauralei2]

My husband and I wouldn't be able to afford to live in the house we currently own if we had to pay $$ mortgage/taxes by today's standards. We bought our home in 1994. We got more 'bang for our buck' in Broward than in Dade, as we are both long-time Dade residents and our first choice was Palm Springs North (were we had an old townhouse..and wanted to up-size), but glad we chose Cooper City instead.

[newtocoralsprings]

Originally Posted by eufo

Good links, f.l. <-not sure what else to call you

Florence, SC worse than Detroit for violent crime per 100,000 people??? Wow!

I am moving from the Florence area and I can not believe this statistic. I travel throughout the city all of the time shopping and am never really afraid.

This was a good link.

[compelled to reply]

Originally Posted by newtocoralsprings

I am moving from the Florence area and I can not believe this statistic. I travel throughout the city all of the time shopping and am never really afraid.

This was a good link.

The thing about Florence is that is a stopover point for drugs because of the highway intersection. That creates a lot of drug related violence, but maybe not so much to make the average person unsafe.