Moving to FL- Boca, Jupiter, West Palm, or even Coral Gables...need help! (Miami: section 8, oceanfront)

[jazzrach1996]

My husband and I are moving to Florida later this year.
We are torn between Boca, Palm Beach (west?), Jupiter (Admirals Cove), Coral Gables and tbd.

West Palm-visited, but heard it was ghetto, where's best part?
Jupiter- visited, liked, but seemed to not offer much other than restaurants in malls-little too suburbia without culture?, liked sandy beach in front of waterfront houses
Boca- did not visit
Coral Gables- did not visit

We're live near the water in LA and it's important for us to live on the intercoastal or a near inlet.
We're looking for a waterfront home with clean water with no fixed bridge access to the ocean, access to high end restaurants and culture, and a good family atmosphere.
Based on some of the threads I know there are certain areas that are sketchy, redneckish, or full of old people who don't care much for families (DelRey?). I'd like to avoid that as much as possible.

We have a newborn and will be adding additional kids on short order. I definitely want to set roots in an area that has other families. I've also heard that the schools are crap in FL (similar to LA) but that Boca has good public schools. We will do private schools if the public schools are bad.

In summary, we're looking for family friendly, great water, and great culture in an area where I don't have to hang up my Christian Louboutains.

Does anyone have recommendations for neighborhoods, cities/areas, etc that we should consider or avoid? We will consider homes up to 3M.

[TriMT7]

Originally Posted by jazzrach1996

My husband and I are moving to Florida later this year.
We are torn between Boca, Palm Beach (west?), Jupiter (Admirals Cove), Coral Gables and tbd.

I'll discuss the areas I know best: WPB and north County (Jupiter/Gardens):

Originally Posted by jazzrach1996

West Palm-visited, but heard it was ghetto, where's best part?

The northend of the city (except a few neighborhoods in Northwood) is the part that you wouldn't live in, ever. It is certainly not ghetto everywhere, though ignorant people with no real experience in the city will always associate the entire city with the news reports from the northend. Price per square foot, the better areas of West Palm Beach are among the priciest in the county. Even moreso than places like Gardens and Jupiter.

The best parts of West Palm Beach are in the southern part - in YOUR price range in particular, the neighborhoods of El Cid, Central Park/Monceaux, and "South of Southern" (AKA "SoSo" or "Southend"). All are very close to the water. El Cid would get you closest to downtown WPB and Palm Beach, and all the amenities with same. Historic homes, absolutely beautiful... though what you're looking for your family, the "Southend" may be better. The public elementary school for the area is usually either Palm Beach Public or South Olive Elementary. Both well regarded. Might want to consider private for middle school and high school, though the middle school is "A" rated (Conniston).

The stock of waterfront is limited, but, location location!

Originally Posted by jazzrach1996

Jupiter- visited, liked, but seemed to not offer much other than restaurants in malls-little too suburbia without culture?, liked sandy beach in front of waterfront houses

Jupiter (and by extension, Gardens), ARE the suburbs. But for that, you get a bit more polish and orderliness. West Palm Beach's best areas are more traditional neighborhoods - older, without gates, sidewalks, etc. Up in north county, it's newer. I love both areas. If I had 3M to spend on a house, I would be torn. It depends on what lifestyle you want.

[City Guy997S]

I lived in Boca for 15 years, Jupiter for 10 and graduated from University of Miami (Coral Gables) so take this for what it is worth.....

Coral Gables can be beautiful (Biltmore, Venetian Pool, UM campus) but you can also buy a million dollar house with bars on the windows. The less affluent towns surround Coral Gables so you will always have that as a neighbor, sharing grocery stores, malls etc. Traffic on the US corridor is brutal at rush hour, remember only 3 lanes in or out of Miami when I-95 ends on US-1.

Boca is land of the scam. Playboy magazine called the 1 mile stretch of US1 between Glades and Palmetto "maggot mile" for all the boiler room scams that operated out there! East Boca is nice, west Boca is suburbia on steroids. There are plenty of 100K homes in Boca, yet everyone talks smack like they are millionaires. Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club is the best 3MM neighborhood.

East Delray (like east of intracoastal) is very cool but you have a very rough corridor to cut through to get there once you get off I-95. The beach is beautiful and Atlantic Ave is trendy like Las Olas.

West Palm is older and unless you are talking Palm Beach there is no reason to consider it with the 3MM budget. Palm Beach island is going to make you feel like a pauper with that budget especially wedged on a dry lot.

Jupiter is very nice. Admirals Cove is an older crowd, very few kids and the neighborhood is in a constant state of renewal. The older 4K sq ft homes are being torn down and replaced with 9K sq ft mansions. Mandatory club membership is expensive and not always a hit with newcomers. Admirals is mixed, you can have a 10MM single family home or a 300K condo. Jupiter Inlet Colony crushes anything else in Jupiter. 3MM would get you a small oceanfront/intracoastal home on the bluest water in the area.

Jupiter Island is very desolate particularly in the summer. Mid-island can be very tough when trying to get anywhere. You can be 6 miles from US1, then start your trip where ever you are trying to go.

[skylinet]

Toll Brothers is building an intra-coastal community in Juno that will offer new homes in your price range with no fixed bridge access. That should be a great community when it's done.

Harbour Isles in North Palm sounds to be a great fit for you. There's currently 8 4500sqft+ homes on the market under 3m. It's a gated community that was built in the early 2000's, has easy open water access, and is only a couple blocks to PGA where you will find a variety of restaurants, and a world class mall. There's a couple homes for rent in there too if you wanted to try the area out before purchasing.

[FloridaHawkeye]

Interesting article on Boca and that "maggot mile". The article is from 1992

An Oasis Rich in Shady Operators - NYTimes.com


Another article:
:: closermagazine

To Live and Die in Boca

Maggot Mile

With the possible exception of Beverly Hills, this city of gated communities and opulent country clubs must be home to more scam per capita than any other place on earth. Maybe it's the classy tones of the city's name as it rolls off the tongue. Notorious as the address of choice for high-pressure securities salesmen, so many of whose boiler room operations bloomed on the city's Federal Highway through the long stock market boom of the '90s the strip was dubbed "Maggot Mile" by securities attorneys. Often enough, the salesmen were bankrolled by organized crime.

Leading lights in the recent Boca catalogue of white collar crime include:

• April 2000: 40 employees of Meyers Pollock Robbins are charged with promoting worthless stock, costing 16,000 investors more than $83 million. The brokerage's staff includes many past grand jury targets, among them some salesmen who took bribes from mobsters to promote and inflate the price of specific stocks.
• March 2001: Frederick Buckley is indicted for tax evasion in connection with the operations of Innovative Telemedia, which convinced thousands of investors they could get rich quick through the leasing of fraudulent 900-number telephone lines.
• January 2002: William Caudell is sentenced for his role in Professional Resource Systems International, an Internet pyramid scheme that ripped off about 48,000 people, chiefly mom-and-pop business operators, for an estimated $13 million, charging them $295 apiece for space in a nonexistent Internet shopping mall.
• August/September 2002: "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap--nicknamed for his brutal cost-cutting and job eliminations--a corporate chieftain formerly worshipped as a paragon of tough-minded capitalist virtue, has to fork over $15 million to settle securities fraud claims brought by shareholders of Boca's Sunbeam Corporation. Turns out at least $60 million of the appliance maker's profits under Dunlap involved fraud. Dunlap pays another $1/2 million to settle SEC charges. No sweat off the slasher's brow, though--he cleared a cool $100 million during his reign of Boca-based Scott Paper. Pending further investigation, of course.

Two of Boca's most successful corporate crooks had the good taste to use the city only for rest and recreation, doing their looting and pillaging elsewhere.

• The completion of former WorldCom chief financial officer Scott Sullivan's $15 million estate on four acres of western Boca has taken so long to complete the neighbors have complained. Now under indictment for his role in the bankrupt telecom giant's overstating of $3.8 billion in earnings, Sullivan may never get to enjoy the 24,000-square-foot mansion's swimming pool, cabana and two-story boat house. Maybe he can rent out the 18-seat movie theater to raise bail.
• Also now under indictment is fellow part-time Boca resident Dennis Kozlowski, currently free on $10 million bail. Big D orchestrated the looting of conglomerate Tyco International to the tune of nearly $600 million, a mere $30 mill of which went toward the purchase of his Boca estate. It is unclear which, if any, of the following widely-reported Kozlowski extravagances are found there: a $15,000 umbrella stand, a $6,300 sewing basket, a $17,000 "traveling toilette box," a $2,200 wastebasket, a set of coathangers for $2,900, two sets of sheets for $5,900 and a $1,650 appointment book.

[Swimmom32]

We love Boca and we dont have a Million Dollar Budget..There are alot of nice communities on the Water...Our Friends live in the Royal Palm Yaht Club and its beautiful, there are also open lots available as well....I just went out with my aunt and uncle to start looking at homes they are in the 3M-4M price range and we saw quiet alot of nice homes...If you dont care about sending your child when the time comes to private school you can also look in Lighthouse Point its pretty nice we saw some beautiful homes on the Direct Intercoastal there...Delray we saw 2 magnificent homes on Wide Water that were in your price range as well..Anyway there is alot to choose from, Jupiter is beautiful as well...
This article is very funny...let alone extremely Old....

[Jolowell]

Wellington is THE best upscale, family friendly area in south Florida. A rated public schools. Young family atmosphere.

[TriMT7]

Originally Posted by Jolowell

Wellington is THE best upscale, family friendly area in south Florida. A rated public schools. Young family atmosphere.

Wellington is fine, but it's not anywhere near the water.

[City Guy997S]

Wellington is great if you are in a gated enclave but I'll pass on the section 8 housing, the gang fights at the Mall at Wellington Green and the countless bad subdivisions on 441 (Olympia, Versailes, Black Diamond...all junk mcmansions with high foreclosure rates). Welly World is 15 miles from the intracoastal, 20 from the beach!


Swimmom- Boca has been scammy for 25 years, yes the one article was 1992 but the Tyco/WorldCom stuff is certainly more recent.

Boca has too much flash, not enough cash! Lots of wannabe millionaires out there reinventing themselves when they go to Flariduh!

BTW Bernie Madoff's secretary was a longtime Woodfield Country Club resident.....recent enough? Scammy enough?

[Swimmom32]

And the point is??? Im sorry but I dont think this is very relevant..We love living here and have very wealthy friends who are wonderful and not scammy as we dont associate ourselves with scammy people...We lived in a town up north where all the Mortgage brokers are now in Jail etc for being scammy and what they did to people but people still live there...What I dont get is for people like us who call Boca Home and who are very happy here, why is it so neccessary for people to just come a spew things that are just not relevant as not everyone cares and there are people that actually are looking to move here so I dont seem to get the whole point..we have friends in Woodfield country club who are very normal and nice...so what if Madoff's Secty lived in Woodfield? so You think all of boca is scammy??? well I have to disagree..There are quiet a few places in South Florida that are all about the Flash..I just dont pay attention to it most of the time nor does it bother me much...and most of the people we know have the money they dont have to pretend to have it...More Power to them is what I say....it amazes me too how people are so quick to go after the "wealthy" with the same stigma over and over again....If they arent in my life who cares??? If they are trying to impress people who cares??? I think alot of people are also jealous of those that live that lifestyle but will never admit it...Me Personally we are very fortunate and wealth doesnt bother me for those who are....