I dunno if this belongs here or in the lounge, so mods if you want to move it please do so.

Yall may or may not have seen my for sale threads lately on here. I'm parting out my hobbies and getting rid of excess cars, i kind of have it in my head to move to FL in 2013.

I've always lived in GA, but I've been a resident of west ATL for 6 years, and it's really wearing on me here. I'm 31, single, I own a home that's underwater, so if I move things will be tight as I'll have to rent this place out for a while.

ATL wears on me for a number of reasons, first and foremost being the traffic. My 31 mile commute takes me an hour and a half 1 way. When I DO get home my neighbor rides ATVs on his lot (1/2 are..) with an open header and the county has no laws about it, and the noise drives me up the wall. I've tried dating, but you find out that people who live "in atlanta" can be up to 4 hours away at the wrong time of the day. You can't show up for lunch with them or hang out on a friday night.. it becomes awkward and turns into a long distance relationship.

couple that with an.. unexpected.. change at work, and I may or may not have a job within 6-12 months anyway due to becoming redundant, so I'm sort of taking it as a kick in the pants ya know?

I guess my quesiton is to yall who call FL your home... I've spent a lot of time in Ormond beach area, really enjoyed it, port orange, new smyrna, all lots of fun. I work in IT tho, sort of an IT generalist/sys eng/sys admin, windows specializing though I do dabble in nix. Basically FL doesn't seem to have a big tech center, so i've wound up focusing on the Tampa area, with Daytona a close second.

Do yall think it's a good idea to move down there? What about the areas I've mentioned? Know anyone that needs an SA?

I know life as a resident isn't the same as vacationing, it's not all early morning walks on the beach, and I admit the bugs, gators, snowbirds, and hurricanes do concern me, but.. my mind seems to say "don't worry about that.."

Any helpful hints/tips/suggestions about this?

Thanks!

 

I live in Deltona (20 min west of Daytona). I love it here. I have traveled and have not found a better part of the country. Came here for college in 94/95. Went back to hell, I mean upstate NY. Met my wife, and back in 2000. This is the farthest north I will live again.

There are jobs here. Be competitive and find your new home. IMO stay east of Orlando. In between Orlando and Daytona. Commute wherever.

The car/bike/boating/flying scene is awesome here!

Let me know if you need any help and see you at a meet soon! :-)

 

I live in Daytona (actually Port Orange) and i love it here. Dont plan on moving but i honestly do plan on relocating my job. I make about good money for my age now but have more inmind for myself than $50k a year (no offense to people who make that)....meaning, once my wife has our first child, i will be looking to Sanford/Orlando area for jobs (30min-60min drive to east orlando)

Tampa is nice also! I have a few friends that live there. Few bad sections but what place doesnt.

Where in ATL are you? i have a child hood friend that lives in Grant Park. Not sure where that is from you but he seems to love it.

Few fun things in area:
Bike Week (i honestly like it)
The Nascar races
Rolex Races
Turkey Rod Run
Spring Turkey Run
GREAT SALT WATER FISHING
Ok bird hunting
Drag stripes that are open prob 50 weeks of the year
Lots of football going on
MLB team (etc like Grapefruit leagues) and the like play here for off season play
Attractions in Orlando and Tampa

 

oh certainly, I rented a house in ormond beach with my parents last christmas just off the beach. Dad loves NASCAR so we went and took a tour of the speedway, he loved every minute of it. Not to mention the weather in the 60s.

I have applied for a good number of jobs down there (about 20 now..) but i've heard back from none of them. I think it's because I'm not local (or perhaps they have an excess of applicants.)

I make in the mid 60s here, it's decent pay, wouldn't mind more, but I don't need a big house or anything, just a decent place to work on my hobbies. (at least a 2 car garage..) I enjoy biking and love that it's flat in FL, one of my favorite things about FL. One of the things a lot of people don't realize about ATL is that we're in the foothills of the mountains, it's very hilly here. Especially when you get up toward Cartersville. I live in Douglasville in the western area, about 45 miles form AL.

I've heard something about a ..sand flea? or something? Might help explain why the pools all have the metal fences over them..

 

I'm partial to SW FLA...moved here in 1985 and never looked back (uhoh, just showed my age) but I did come from Podunk LA. I moved here with no job, no leads, just my wife and dog. We both did fine

Fishing is 2nd to none...Hunting sux in comparison...if that's what your into.

Don't worry about the no-see-ums, their not that bad

 

sand fleas are at the beach. i cant ever remeber ever having a problem with them

$60k in daytona and you are doing VERY WELL. so keep in mind that same paying job might be $35-45k here. Home prices here are also very cheap IMHO.

 

What about evacuations? My mind pictures the highways in walking dead. I have a classic car I'd eventually want to bring down, I'd hate for it to be damaged in a storm or something. (we have tornadoes here 2 times a year, so it's probably no less risk here than there to be honest..)

 

I have been thru 5 hurricanes. No big deal. No worse than worrying about garage collapse under weight of snow....

 

I think your problem with ATL is that you live in the wrong place for your age and social status. If you don't need a big place and want a garage, there are still options in the city. I've been considering converting an unused commercial space into a studio type apartment in the Old 4th ward area (it's come a long way in 5 years). I'm admittedly a bit of an ITP snob, but love the Atlanta scene. I do have some friends that have bought houses with garages and/or large yards to build one in town too.

Where do you work BTW? There are plenty of IT jobs in the area.

I'm in a similar position, but don't WANT to move to FL, but want to be with my girl who has a much more solid career established there already. We've looked at homes there (south florida) and realized that it's not worth buying. Property tax for new buyers and Hurricane insurance make anything worth living in unreasonable. Plus for what she's paying for her townhouse there, she could live in a PALACE in Atlanta.

 

I've been in Tampa since '98. I'm not as familiar with a lot of it as a should be, but even with the major '04 and '05 hurricane seasons, I hadn't had bad experiences with hurricanes. Tropical Storm Debbie from this year seemed to be more of a nuisance. We never take direct hits. Storm surge is usually the problem. Don't move anywhere that isn't flood zone X.

Most of us former northerners are permanent residents. I don't think there are a lot of snowbirds in the area. Bugs can be a problem anywhere. I don't haven't had a direct encounter with an alligator. I saw one high-stepping on a sidewalk in the suburbs one time while in my car. I had to do a double take, lol.

I'd focus on areas just outside the city limits. Parts of Land O' Lakes and Wesley Chapel are suburbs-meets-rural area and you would have direct access to I-275 and I-75 which are the main arteries of the Tampa area. Also, US-41, Dale Mabry, and the Suncoast Pkwy (toll).

 

Living in Wesley Chapel and working in Tampa wouldn't be ideal for you as you said you hate traffic. Orlando also has horrid traffic.

St. Augustine/Ponte Vedra area has some of the nicest beaches I've seen. Jacksonville is pretty cool too.

I've lived throughout Florida and I really like Miami for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on.

 

Rains way to much here. Definitely the thing I dislike most. Traffic is pretty bad in most of the major cities. I think Miami is overrated (maybe cause I lived there for 18 years and just needed change). I think the southern/central western part of Florida would be ideal for you. I'm moving to Tampa in January.

 

Traffic is relative. If you live in Wesley Chapel and also work in Wesley Chapel, then no traffic. Although, I doubt you will be working in Wesley Chapel. There's corporate parks all over the place, not just in the core of Tampa.

There's the Highwoods Preserve complex up the road from where I've lived and worked for the past 14 years. A lot of businesses in there. Extreme north Tampa. There Hidden River complex off of I-75 in regular north Tampa by Lettuce Lake Park. The Brandon area is outside the city limits, has suburban qualities and some corporate offices behind the mall I think.

 

Jax here. and that pretty much covers it. good luck finding a place in FL man lol you will enjoy it.

 

Wish I never moved here.

 

Any reasons why?

The original tampa area job I looked at was in clearwater. I did get a call back but I was in a meeting so it went to voicemail, when I returned the call I got their voicemail, and they never returned MY call, so I can only assume they filed me under T (trash.)

I don't suppose I HAVE to move, it seems ATL is sort of the tech capital of the southeast, it just sometimes feels like there's no middle class here. You've got your poor small house neighborhoods, and your wealthy big house neighborhoods and nothing in between. You either live in a 5 bed mansion with a range rover or you live with cleatus next door and his plumber's van doing doughnuts with his ATV. (no offense to plumbers..)

ATL is very dry. It's drought all summer long, my grass suffers and I don't want to pay the water bills to fix it. They want $5000 to install sprinkers, so I have to string a hose if I do. In the spring/fall we have tornadoes that can uproot trees and blow houses away. Probably 4-5 people die every year from storm related incidents here. (course in a city of 5 million something's bound to happen.) If you want something to do there's LOTS here. Stone mountain, kennesaw mountain, lots of history, art, music, the aqurium is here.. but anywhere you go at any time of day you're going to be sitting still in bumper to bumper traffic, it never lets up.

So basically, in the summer everything is dead and dry and brown from drought, then in the winter everything is dead and dry and brown because of the cold weather. The view out the window can be pretty depressing. Ya know for a while we actually couldn't legally wash our own cars, and there was even talk of water rationing because of the droughts.

I guess if I wanted rain I could move to the northwest huh? But I dunno, something about the green grass and palm trees feels refreshing in FL when you go down and visit in the winter time. The place is still alive. I don't like that Volusia county requires recycling, nor the traffic light cameras which I believe does more harm than good. Is that a common theme for FL in general?

 

Ive lived on the east coast of Florida between Ft. Pierce and Palm City for about 12 years and now I live in Tampa.

Both coasts feel differant. I loved fishing, Jet Skiing, golf.

Tampa I enjoy more because im a sports fan and live in south tampa where sporting stadiums are 15-25 minutes away. Im a season ticket holder for the Yankees spring training ( 15 minutes), Buc's football ( 15 minutes) Lighting hockey ( 15 minutes), and when the yankees are in town, Ill go to tropicana field ( 25 minutes).

 

My main reasons are I'm making almost $12k less a year, cost of living has gone way up, unemployment is high, huge *** speedbumps everywhere, when sprinkles everyone drives 25MPH slower/people can't drive (I saw a guy on a motorcycle get smashed by a car), and at least once a month on my way to work I see cops swarmed around gas stations for reasons like:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publics...sunoco/1255483

http://www.wtsp.com/news/topstories/...Tampa-shootout

I loved visiting Florida. I always looked forward to it around Spring Break time. But that's about all I think FL is good for: visiting. I was so excited to move here I drove 17 hours straight. I've been here for over three years, and if I found a good enough job across the country I'd pack my **** and leave now.

But I'm probably just being negative. Pretty much everything you listed about ATL is the same here, which I'm sure is the norm everywhere right now.

 

Again, you're in the wrong neighborhood.

 

Well, where can i find a neighborhood with nice small houses and 2 car garages? Certainly not Acworth, not Douglasville,Dallas, CERTAINLY not Vinings/buckhead. not Smyrna, Marietta, powder springs, all the areas I'm familiar with you literally have $600,000 mansions next door to ghetto duplex houses, trailer parks, this city has always seemed so bizarre to me because of this. Why would someone who makes $1mil.+ a year want to live next door to government housing, or a duplex, or a trailer park?