Relocating from NJ to St. Johns (St. Augustine: rental, HOA fees, houses)

[Kbog2654]

Hello all,
We are looking to relocate next summer(2017). We are flying down in October to get a better feel for the area and all of the different developments. My husband wants to make the best of the trip and maybe contact a realtor to give us more information on all of the areas. We plan to rent for a year or so. My question is, do you think a realtor would give us the time of day since we're not moving till next summer? I was thinking of just touring the larger more popular developments, but now I'm getting overwhelmed by how large St. John's is from St. Augustine to Ponte Vedra....We need to narrow down an area in October so that we are all set to go in the summer. We need a 4 bedroom as we have three children ages 9, 6, 3. How would you all go about this???

[EricBoyd]

I don't think you'll have a problem finding a Realtor to help you find the best place for you, even with your long term plan. I think that makes it easier, actually.

[Florida2014]

I would come down and find a rental first, which will allow you the time to really get a good feel for the different areas before you commit to buying. It would be very difficult to do that with short trips or remotely via a realtor.

[mawipafl]

It can be overwhelming since the First Coast is so large and offers so many choices!

To help narrow down the areas, consider what would be doable for a commute, and look at what's available inside that diameter (or just outside it).

Since you have young kids, schools will be important, and I'll guess that close proximity to their activities would be on the list.

When we were househunting we wanted to see all kinds of neighborhoods - large master-planned communities and medium-sized ones, as well as traditional older neighborhoods. Although we thought we had no interest in "cookie cutter" type places, we surprised ourselves and bought in one of them! We're so glad that we did and that we didn't eliminate that kind of neighborhood without seeing one in person.

As nice as some communities and neighborhoods were, we ruled out the ones that didn't have sidewalks. Taking a stroll or bike riding would have meant doing so in the street. We also eliminated communities that were too new and chose to look in ones that were either already built out or close to it, and that amenities were already in place rather than being promises for the future. We did our research about all this via the internet before making the physical journey. Web searches, satellite views, google streets were all helpful.

Perhaps make a priority list. Budget, commute, schools, sidewalks, nearby grocery shopping, beach access, closeness of downtown Jax, house and garage and yard size, family-friendly neighborhood with a lot of kids, pool, community amenities and social events, taxes and HOA fees and CDD fees, etc. Decide what's very important down to would-be-nice to not-interested.

Such pretrip work was so helpful to our realtor! We established a relationship with her by phone and email, and she helped guide us. (Listingbook was much more helpful that realtor.com or Zillow or Trulia). Once in town she showed us all kinds of things, even a few neighborhoods that we had taken off our list just so that we could confirm them to be "no". Along with taking us out, she also gave us some listings so that we could do drivebys on our own. This latter was extremely useful - we drove all over the place getting a feel for areas, and those that gave us the warm-fuzzies we made appointments to see. Neighborhoods or houses that didn't give us this "home" feeling, we just didn't bother with further.

[Kbog2654]

Thank you so much mawipafl. I've never heard of listingbook, I'll have to try it out. It's very hard because job wise, we don't know where we'll be working as we can't start looking for employment this early. I'm thinking we'll drive around everywhere to get a feel for all of the developments. I feel it may be too early to enlist a realtor at this time, although the hubby wants to.

[mawipafl]

It's actually not a bad idea to make a "fact-finding" trip first. That's not to say there aren't realtors who are very willing to help even this far out from an actual purchase - there are. (And EricBoyd confirmed that previously.) But there are SO many choices here and so many wonderful areas - and so much to do here - that it is sometimes worth making a trip just to drive around and get a feel.

Regarding Listingbook, we got free access to it from our realtor - not sure if it's free to buyers or if it's even available (never bothered to look). It allows for a better search in my opinion than the other sites, letting you be more specific with a larger, more detailed variety of criteria including location. A feature I enjoyed that was very simple to use was a watch alert so that if a particular house you liked was sold or had a price change, you'd receive an email message.

Besides weather of course, one big change for this former northerner was that storage here is greatly lacking! I was so used to attics and basements. We have a 3-car garage that houses no cars :-)

[RamenAddict]

Since it seems like your ultimate purchase time is a couple of years out, one thing to keep in mind is that the school situation is in flux for a lot of the new build communities. The growth is so fast that while neighborhood X might be zoned for schools A, B, and C now, by the time your children are old enough for middle and high school, the neighborhood may have schools much closer OR much farther away depending on what neighborhood you select and what schools have been built. This is especially the case for the larger, more popular developments. The decisions that are made now in 2016 may not give you a full picture of the decisions that will be made by 2018 when you want to buy.

The benefit of some of the older communities is that they'll be in more established neighborhoods with fixed school boundaries. For example, in PVB or the older areas of St. Augustine, there isn't that much room to build so the school boundaries are likely to stay the same. Yes, they are sticking houses in every little strip of available land, but most of the PVB new build communities have 40-60 homesites max instead of 1,000 to 10,000 like Palencia, Nocatee, etc.

[EricBoyd]

Re: ListingBook. It's only available through a Realtor. My wife uses it for her customers, along with the MLS portal, which has gotten better in recent years.

[Kbog2654]

Great, thanks for listing book info, and yes, the communities are ever changing. There are so many to choose from which is why we will rent initially. I really would not mind an older house at all, but I really would like young children in the area, which seems would be more in the newer developments. We'll be really putting the miles on during our visit in October! I really appreciate all of your comments on such a big move in our lives!

[Kbog2654]

And yes...I love my basement!! One thing we will miss. A "loft" just isn't the same with the toys all over the place for everyone to see!! I'll take the great schools, nice weather, and lower taxes though!