Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated! (Tampa, West Palm Beach: fit in, short sales) - Naples - Florida (FL) -Collier County - City-Data Forum

Golfman530 · 06-18-2012, 11:22 AM

Hi everyone,

My girlfriend and I plan on getting married in less than a year and we are also finishing up our senior year in college. She will be an RN and I will have my communications degree (looking for a job in PR/Marketing.) We currently live in Michigan and are very interested in moving to Florida upon our graduation.

We have been looking for quite a while now as to where would be a good fit for us in the state. One thing that I flat out do not understand at all however is the crime rates in many Florida cities. The area we live in Michigan for example is about 30 min outside Detroit but our crime rates are very, very low compared to many Florida cities. This really worries us because here we would be relocating over 1,000 miles away and not knowing anybody on top of the fact that crime rates are over double what we are used to.

I say all of that because that reason is what brought me to the Naples forum. I looked at crime statistics for Naples and they are MUCH better than other areas where we have looked (Tampa/ St. Pete, Ft. Myers, West Palm Beach, Sarasota....)

From research I also understand that Naples is more of a wealthy area with more retired people than many of the other areas that I just mentioned. In your opinion, do you think two young professionals would fit in in Naples?

Here is what we are looking for.....The first one is obviously jobs for both of us. (I realize that is not easy anywhere right now but we do live in metro Detroit so we understand how difficult it is to find jobs and are doing our best to get internship experience to help us.) Secondly is a safe, somewhat affordable place to live. We could live in a studio apartment so size for us does not matter but rather a nice, safe area is more important to us. Lastly, I am looking for an area where I would be able to get involved in real estate investing (multifamily apartment building especially) because my ultimate goal is to invest in real estate full-time being that it has been a family business for us for three generations.

Does Naples offer what we are looking for and like I asked earlier, is it a good fit for young professionals?

If anybody has any advice or information that you think would help us, I would love to hear it because it would help us make a final decision as to where to really look.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Golfman530 · 06-18-2012, 11:32 AM

I also wanted to add that we would never move to the Naples area without jobs already in place. It is great advice when people say that on here but we already understand that so no need to say it again

-Thanks

magemom · 06-18-2012, 01:17 PM

Well, it really depends on what your interests are. If you like shopping, dinners out and the beach you are set. If you enjoy being near a big city for what big cities offer well, then you might not enjoy living in Naples. I started coming to Naples because it was the most awesome place I had ever been to. You shouldn't have a problem finding housing since you seem flexible.
Just a heads up (but this is probably true throughout Florida) salaries are low. My husband when looking for a job found jobs that payed about 25% of what he was earning in the Philadelphia area. He is in communications. I am in allied health and when I worked in Naples my salary was less than half of that in Philadelphia. We were able to find jobs but not decent paying jobs.
Compared to Philadelphia the crime rate in Naples is amazingly low

Come to Naples and see if you like it. If you fall in love like I did you will have no problem making a home here.
Good luck!

Golfman530 · 06-18-2012, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Well, it really depends on what your interests are. If you like shopping, dinners out and the beach you are set. If you enjoy being near a big city for what big cities offer well, then you might not enjoy living in Naples. I started coming to Naples because it was the most awesome place I had ever been to. You shouldn't have a problem finding housing since you seem flexible.
Just a heads up (but this is probably true throughout Florida) salaries are low. My husband when looking for a job found jobs that payed about 25% of what he was earning in the Philadelphia area. He is in communications. I am in allied health and when I worked in Naples my salary was less than half of that in Philadelphia. We were able to find jobs but not decent paying jobs.
Compared to Philadelphia the crime rate in Naples is amazingly low

Come to Naples and see if you like it. If you fall in love like I did you will have no problem making a home here.
Good luck!

Thanks for the helpful information. We totally love the beach, boating, fishing, and anything on the water really and that is one of the main reasons why we want to move to Florida in the first place.

I know that Naples isn't as big as some of the cities I mentioned earlier but I as far as size of the area, I am just mostly looking for a city that is big enough to offer real estate investment opportunities for me down the road and also jobs for us. If Naples offers that for us, then we wouldn't want to be in a bigger city.

As far as the salaries go, we knew that Florida pays lower in general than most states. Our wages here in Michigan though are lower than the Philadelphia area so I don't think it will be quite as big of a shock for us.

Do you know much about job prospects for new RN's in Naples? My girlfriend has been a CRNA for two years now and has a lot of clinical experience so she is really hoping that she can find something.

magemom · 06-18-2012, 04:05 PM

Naples Community Hospital and Physicians Regional along with Lee Memorial Hospital are always hiring--although I understand they generally hire nurses as seasonal employees before offering them perm positions. There are also a ton of nursing homes and assistive living facilities as well as urgent care centers in the Naples area. I'm a speech pathologist and was able to set up a job in Naples before I even left Pennsylvania. I went through the licensing process before I started looking for a job since I knew no one was going to offer an interview (especially a phone interview) without a Florida license. Your girlfriend should start the application process if you are sure you are leaving Michigan for Florida.

What you should know about Naples it seems like just about every one has a real estate license and have experience with real estate investing. You will have some serious competition!

Golfman530 · 06-19-2012, 06:29 PM

Thanks for the info.

We have done some job searches and found some promising looking RN jobs in Naples and also some communications and marketing jobs as well.

As far as the competition with real estate investing, that is totally fine with me. I enjoy competition

As a beginning investor, I would really be interested in starting my investing career in Naples and then once I get going I could branch out much more to other areas of the state/country.

As long as Naples offers me the opportunity to begin an investing career that is all that I am looking for.

Any other thoughts and or comments would be greatly appreciated in helping us make our decision!

magemom · 06-19-2012, 09:26 PM

You sound quite ambitious! Good luck to both of you!

Sweetbottoms · 06-20-2012, 05:07 PM

The issue is salary is low but housing is high. Decent rentals will cost u upwards of $950+ a month and won't include utilities and u won't be near the beach . That's a dream that is usually quickly found to be unrealistic by most people moving here. Most jobs r seasonal mainly nov.-April after that the town more or less shuts down . We cater to the snowbirds and wealthy and if ur not it ur bottom rung..r u planning to someday have kids? Fl schools are constantly ranked in the bottom 10 for the cou try. Brush up on ur Spanish you'll need it at some point.

What's ur budget for rental/housing,.. In the past year I've had 3 friends buy houses all with $200,000 budgets and all had to move out of town to the estates. Our market is being bought up by Europeans at a crazy rate and the rest r foreclosures /short sales that's are left over from the bubble. Think hard and look hard for jobs and set a budget before you make a commitment this large and so far from home.

Cleopatra1981 · 06-26-2012, 08:20 AM

I actually agree with Sweetbottoms for once. This area IS catered to seasonal residents. The crime rates aren't as low as they are reported, thefts, burglaries, gang activity, etc. is happening everyday. They like to make Naples seem like it's crime free, but it's not.

Golfman530 · 06-26-2012, 04:26 PM

Thanks for the information everyone! I guess I can see the issues with Naples like you are refering too. I'm not really looking for an area that has the strong vacation vibe to it and not much else. It seems like Naples is more for the people who have already made their money and are now kicking back and relaxing to enjoy it. Is that a true assessment?

Quote:

The crime rates aren't as low as they are reported, thefts, burglaries, gang activity, etc. is happening everyday. They like to make Naples seem like it's crime free, but it's not.

I realize that every city has crime and that it is impossible to get away from. It just shocks me in general how many of the cities in Florida have much higher crime stats than many other parts of the country. I can only assume it is because of tourists and the rich diversity of people that most of Florida offers?

Cleopatra and Sweetbottoms, are you saying that what we are looking for in an area does not really fit with what Naples has to offer?