Moving to Pensacola area and want locals opinions (Warrington, Pace: condo, new home)

[mrf815]

Hi, my family and I are coming to Florida this August for a few weeks to browse the area and look at homes. We are going to be staying in a condo in Navarre during our trip.

I have been doing a lot of research and have somewhat narrowed down cities I am interested in: Gulf Breeze, Navarre, Warrington, and Pensacola. I am leaning more towards Gulf Breeze because my daughter will be starting Kindergarten next year so good schools are a must (We have a 2.5 year old and 4.5 year old), but I am open to other areas that I listed or others that you think are good!

I would like some locals opinions on the different cities, job market, neighborhoods, etc.? I have a degree in Business/Office Management and my husband works from home so he is all set. I'd like to be within a 25-30 minute drive to the beach from wherever we live, close to malls/stores, things to do..

I know the weather is humid/muggy, so I am well prepared for that. Our summers here in Michigan are similar. How often is the area hit with hurricanes? Flooding? I did read some parts of Gulf Breeze were flooded out a few years back so what neighborhoods should I avoid?

And any other thoughts or suggestions would be really helpful!

Thanks!

[beachmouse]

The Warrington area can get sketchy really quick in places. If you want to be on the west side of town, you need to go pretty far west to just north of Perdido Key (Blue Angel Elementary area and the other one I'm blanking on) to pick up some good elementary schools. Definitely west of NAS Pensacola.

I grew up in Michigan, and no, the humidity up there is nowhere close to what we get down there. The dew point will regularly be above 72F from early June to late September. Be ready to run the AC hard in summer months and ask the power company for average electric bills for any home you're looking out. There are some wonderfully energy-efficient homes here (We've managed to bring our power bill down to about $150/month in summer while running the AC quite cold after energy efficiency improvements)n and others that will have your power bill send you to the poor house.

Hurricanes- a bad one every ten years or so, but that's not evenly distributed so 'we're due for one' isn't really accurate. Every county should have federal flood zone maps available. You want your house to be in Flood Zone X (aka not really flood zone.) Tropical storms are much more common and no big deal most of the time. A hurricane watch/tropical storm warning isn't enough to wipe out the Friday night high school football slate unless local emergency planners think it will be a bad one.

[ncnittany]

Originally Posted by mrf815

I know the weather is humid/muggy, so I am well prepared for that. Our summers here in Michigan are similar.

You really have no idea what you are getting yourself into!

[moondoggy51]

You may want to consider Pace which is just a bit northeast of Pensacola on the other side of the bay. Pace has been reported to be one of the fastest growing communities around and one of the reasons is the schools which are considered some of the best in the state. There are some really nice subdivisions in and around Pace that you can purchase a new home if you like. One other factor to consider wherever you select is whether your prospective home is whether it's in a hurricane evacuation zone. If you go out to the local TV station's web site Hurricane Center - WEAR - News3 - ABC - Pensacola you will find a button for each county that says "Interactive Evacuation Zone Map" and somewhere on those pages will be a place where you can enter a physical street address and it will tell you if you're in an evacuation zone or not. My home is new and has Kevlar storm shutter and is not in an evacuation zone so I'm pretty comfortable about where we bought our home.