What's with the cost negativity? (Orlando, Gainesville: real estate, insurance, for sale)

[LeslieB]

I'm curious about all the people who are complaining about the Orlando vicinity cost of living....I'm wondering to what they are comparing it. In my experience, it seems fairly average for a mid-size metropolitan area. The prices are fairly comparable to the Chicago suburbs and even Madison, WI and it's considerably cheaper than the West Coast cities and the larger urban areas. Am I missing something?

[lovelyrita81]

The pay has not kept up with the prices. I moved from Connecticut about a year ago, my pay is much less in comparison to Connecticut, which is a state with a high cost of living. My expenses are not all that different than they were in Connecticut. My food bill is about the same, gas is cheaper but the traffic is worse here so I still spend more, utility bills like water and electricity are more expensive.

The issue here is if prices go up exponentially and wages do not keep up, how are people supposed to support themselves?

[Rhett_Butler]

Exactly, real estate has almost doubled over the last 3 or 4 years and, needless to say, wages have creeped up very slowly... Average Joe (or JoAnna) has been virtually priced out of the housing market if they didn't own one before the boom...... In some cities/towns around the country where a similar boom occurred there's a price correction going on that's bringing the price of housing down but that's not occurring here......

It's been a shock to middle class citizens in the area that they can no longer afford a house (one that they'd want to live in anyway)...

[Rhett_Butler]

Originally Posted by lovelyrita81

The pay has not kept up with the prices. I moved from Connecticut about a year ago, my pay is much less in comparison to Connecticut, which is a state with a high cost of living. My expenses are not all that different than they were in Connecticut. My food bill is about the same, gas is cheaper but the traffic is worse here so I still spend more, utility bills like water and electricity are more expensive.

The issue here is if prices go up exponentially and wages do not keep up, how are people supposed to support themselves?

Oh, and add the exponential increase in homeowner's and renter's insurance due to the '04 hurricanes on top of that.... Almost forgot....

Funny that we had a virtually non-existant hurricane season this year, but I'd guess that insurance rates won't come DOWN because of it...

[florigidge]

can't vouch for orlando, but i will add my thoughts on living in gainesville, and now living in oregon in regard to east vs. west.

in gainesville, if you are not a professional person or a business owner, you are stuck in support service mode - such as secretary and lower. this doesn't bring you wonderful wages - depending, can be less than $20,000 for office workers or up to $30,000 depending on the type of support staff you are. (again, i'm only referring to office support personnel.)

i managed to survive - the most i ever made (and i have a college degree and loads of office/computer/software experience) was $25,000 (a friend at age 29 currently makes $30,000-plus at UF in a support staff position - and she has no college whatsoever and can barely type, but is a good person for figures; what she is, however, is younger than me. after the age of 40, it became more and more difficult to find a job in gainesville...and gville went thru some heavy layoffs during reagan and during both bush 41 and 43 so a lot of support staff people were unemployed periodically.)

anyway, after 17 years in gville, i applied to grad school and moved to oregon. even the drive west was a shocker as things gradually became more expensive (this was in the fall of 2003) - gas, food.

once i arrived at my destination, i suffered from and still suffer from sticker shock. everything is SO expensive here. gas, food, restaurants.

while the minimum wage may be higher, support staff still do NOT make any more than what i made in florida. indeed, the jobs are scarce and all i've found after i left grad school which busted me financially is temp work ($10.00 an hour).

permanent support staff jobs here can pay exactly what gainesville paid - and yet, you must also deal with the high cost of food in the grocery stores, high cost of fuel at the pumps, high cost of rent/utilities.

i gained nothing by moving here; i lost plenty including $20,000 for one year of grad school as an out of state resident, but that's another story.

i can see no appreciable difference in what people earn here and what people earn in gainesville - and yet they are paying through the nose for even the most minimum of items. i regularly must bypass foodstuffs i would normally purchase because i cannot justify the outrageous price. i rarely, if ever, go to restaurants - I-Hop here is twice what I-hop was in gainesville! I-hop!! even mcdonald's and the fast food places are higher.

oregon likes to say "but we have no sales tax." RIGHT! you don't need one because it's all in the high price of food, the high price of gas, housing, etc. (they DO however have a state tax and florida does not.)

i am barely making it here. i would much rather go back to florida. and i used to think Publix was 'expensive.' LOL.

live and learn.

[Rhett_Butler]

With no intent of starting any political war or anything..... Oregon IS one of the most liberal states in the country, so I would expect a higher cost of living..... The wage data surprises me admittedly though.

[florigidge]

funny thing about that "liberal" thing for oregon - it's like florida in that if you venture out beyond any of the larger cities, it soon becomes incredibly CONSERVATIVE and dare i say, right wing. that was an eye-opener, too. they can be just as "redneck" as any southern town in some of these smaller cities in oregon, and just as clannish.

and btw, it's just as expensive as one heads west and gets into texas, arizona, etc. as soon as i hit texas, everthing changed and as i got farther west i had a real education as to how expensive things were on the west side of the country as opposed to the eastern side.

[Rhett_Butler]

Originally Posted by florigidge

funny thing about that "liberal" thing for oregon - it's like florida in that if you venture out beyond any of the larger cities, it soon becomes incredibly CONSERVATIVE and dare i say, right wing. that was an eye-opener, too. they can be just as "redneck" as any southern town in some of these smaller cities in oregon, and just as clannish.

and btw, it's just as expensive as one heads west and gets into texas, arizona, etc. as soon as i hit texas, everthing changed and as i got farther west i had a real education as to how expensive things were on the west side of the country as opposed to the eastern side.

Really??? From everything I heard on the real estate front, Texas was the best place for undervalued homes..... Houston area especially from what I understand.....

Is everything else really expensive there??? (not that I have any interest in moving to Texas..... Just curious... )

As far as the rural conservative areas, etc.... Seems to be the case no matter where you go. Connecticut, from what I understand, hosts the largest branch of the KKK in the country, so I guess you never know....

[florigidge]

hi vafury, i can't vouch for housing prices in texas; i'm just commenting on when i moved to the west coast in 2003 as soon as i got to texas, prices began to rise - gas, food - and continued to rise as i got farther west. a real eye opener.

and living in oregon has been the pits insofar as money is concerned. if i have to make the same salary HERE and suffer with the high cost of living/food/gas, then i might as well be back in gainesville florida, where i didn't have cardiac arrest every time i went to the grocery store or out to something as simple as a Chili's.

[j in florida]

The Orlando area for a long long time was a relatively cheap place to live. The past few years the RE prices exploded (like a lot of other places) so the housing and related expenses (taxes, insurance, etc) exploded as well and now it's not so cheap anymore. The wages have not gone up, but there a lot of people around here making tons of money.

Gainesville (Go Gators!!) is still a pretty cheap place to live, especially if you look at the east side out all the way to Hawthorne and Melrose. I recently saw vacant lots available for sale in the $10000-$15000 range, and they were not in the ghetto.