Nancy - Same kind of question I posted to Jan M. What made you decide on Tampa?
Unless you have family or close friends you want to be near, I agree with other people who suggest renting and maybe even trying different parts of Florida before buying anything. Another important thing to keep in mind is that for most people it doesn't take long to get used to the warmer winters in Florida. What sounds good to you now you might not be as happy with as you think after a while. High 60's to mid 70's is our typical daytime winter weather here where we live. In June and July of our first summer here I kept asking the neighbors when it gets really miserable here. They would say that is was awful now and I just laughed because our son calls almost every day and it had been consistently hotter and more humid in the Cleveland and Youngstown area of Ohio than it was in our area. What we've since found out is that this stretch of the coastline from Miami to West Palm Beach almost always has at least a bit of a breeze because of the Atlantic gulf stream which makes it less humid and cooler in the warmer months. In August and September when at times that breeze dies, oh yeah, it is wicked hot and humid. When you get away from the coastal areas and into the center of Florida it is much hotter and more humid.
Our old next door neighbors from Pennsylvania moved to Florida about 8-9 years before we did and live in Cape Coral. We really wanted to move to Florida as soon as our son finished high school so when we would visit them they would take us around to the over 55 mobile home/park model communities in their area. They have six adult children so needed a house with more bedrooms but we only have one son so they enjoyed showing us what they would have loved to have had. Lol, back then we still had abut 1-2 more years to go before my husband hit 55 and we could buy one! We really, really liked what we saw and the prices too! If you are looking to rent I suggest you look online for those types places, get some phone numbers to call and see what you can rent at one of them. They usually have activities and people doing stuff all the time. If you are looking to spend a couple of months in Florida having that type of community is important to most people. It has been my observation that the people who aren't happy rent houses, apartments or condos, they don't know anyone and there aren't any activities other than the pool to meet people. In talking to a lot of different people, some of them realtors, we were told that if you are looking to live in Florida year round and you can make it through your second summer you will be fine.
Where we live in Tamarac is about 11 miles inland and directly across from Lauderdale-by-the-Sea if you look at a map. The homeowners insurance rates are insanely high in Southern Atlantic coast area of Florida. When you live west of I-95 they drop and you get the best rate if you live west of the Turnpike, which we do. We had taken vacations in mid January to mid February for twelve years before we moved from Butler, Pennsylvania in December of 2010 to this area for my husband to take a new job. We'd stayed in Orlando, Daytona Beach, Fort Myers Beach, and Pompano Beach. When we moved we needed to be in this area because that is where the largest percentage of my husband's work is. His territory is all of southern Florida from Sarasota across to Fort Pierce and clear down to Key West. Why do we like this this area? Fort Lauderdale is known as the Venice of America because of all the canals. That seems to make this area much more picturesque, lush and green than a lot of other parts of Florida. There is so much to do in this area and within no more than an hour if there is traffic we can be in West Palm Beach or Miami if there is something interesting we want to do in those areas. We've had the opportunity to stay in a lot of different areas of Florida thanks to my husband's job and the timeshares. Yes we like this area but we also like other areas like Naples and Sanibel too.
Let me start this by saying we know cold weather. I grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio which is on Lake Erie and my husband is from Erie, PA. Butler, PA where we lived for 23 years before moving to Florida sees single digit and below temperatures in January especially. It isn't unusual to have temps in the minus teens with the windchill factor. One year when we were staying in Pompano Beach on vacation we stopped to eat in Marathon on our way back from a day in Key West. Marathon is in the Keys about 2/3's of the way down. We were wearing shorts, the daytime temperatures hadn't been any higher than the low 70's that week, but had jackets with us because the nighttime temperatures had been dropping down to the high 50's. The waitress saw our shorts and joked that she could tell we weren't locals. We explained to her that we frequently had summer days that the temperature doesn't get above 70 and that it hadn't been above 0 the whole week we'd been in Florida. She was absolutely appalled and asked where we lived but her tone of voice made it clear she was thinking OMG what level of Hell do you people live in? When we said around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania she was even more horrified as she was sure we likely lived somewhere in the very northern part Canada or Alaska. We still crack up over that!
We remember the one year we were in Orlando over Martin Luther King week. We wore long pants only once in the entire 9 or 10 days we were there and that was because we were going to a dinner show. Each of us had one clean pair of shorts left for the next day, our last day of vacation, we had a full day planned and I wasn't doing laundry on our last day. It was either a year or two years afterwards that we bought the timeshare and love having a washer and dryer in the unit. Our weather had been so nice that one day we drove over to Daytona, went in the water and had a picnic on the beach. Two weeks later some people we knew were down for the race in Daytona the first week of February. They had left their winter coats at home thinking heavy hoodies would be fine and they could always layer. They had to go buy winter coats and were still cold sitting at the racetrack. Another year when we were in Florida there was a cold spell and Frostproof, Florida was no longer frostproof! If you look at a map Frostproof is in the center of Florida across from St. Petersburg. Someone else we knew was one of the coaches for our high school cheerleading squad and they came to Orlando for a competition every February. Sometimes they had some chilly days but one year they wore their winter coats the whole time they were in Orlando and were so bummed. Keep in mind that these are other people from up North who were coming to Florida from cold weather at home.
BTW Sebring is a lovely area! I've been there. I haven't been to them but like I said my sister and BIL like the Venice/Bradenton/Englewood areas. My husband's brother and SIL like Stuart where they stay and we've liked it too when we've stayed up there. Lots of great choices here in Florida. From what I've been told Sarasota and Tampa tend to be higher priced. And I haven't seen nearly as many of the over 55 mobile home/park model communities here in my area. There are a lot of very nice ones on the west coast when you get south of Sarasota.
