The St. Joe Company is Florida’s largest private landowner, owning approximately 650,000 acres primarily located in Northwest Florida’s Panhandle region. The St. Joe Company is a product of the Great Depression when they were able to accumulate their vast land holdings for just dollars an acre. At that time nobody saw the value that the [...]

According to the Florida Association of Realtors, existing home sales across Florida rose 34% over the year before. The rise is primarily attributed to the First time homebuyer tax credit, which ends at the end of November. Results were even better for condos across the state. Sales of existing condos rose 77% over the previous [...]

Everywhere you turn newspapers, magazines, and other websites are relishing in the fact that Florida is no longer growing as fast as it once was. In fact, most data indicates that Florida’s population actually shrank last year. While this may be true right now, its most likely a temporary blip in Florida’s long history as [...]

There are two facts that most people do not know. First, flooding is the number one natural disaster in the United States; even properties not near water can be susceptible to flooding. Second, losses due to floods are not covered by your homeowner’s insurance policy. The Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) puts out “flood maps” [...]

You may have heard that both State Farm and Nationwide Insurance have either decided to completely exit the Florida homeowners insurance business (State Farm) or greatly reduce the amount of policies they have (Nationwide). If you are going to be retiring in Florida anytime soon, this article should be helpful. I cover this topic in [...]

Nationwide Insurance announced last week that they are dropping 60,000 homeowners insurance policies across the state. This leave them with just over 200,000 policies. The move follows the announcement by State Farm earlier in the year that they would not be renewing any of their homeowners policies in Florida, and would not be writing new [...]

There are several websites such as this one where you can find information on certain communities in specific states that you are interested in moving to. But very few websites cover the broad topic of the best places to retire. My friends at TopRetirements.com have released their book “100 Best Retirement Towns” for those wanting [...]