Looking for The Best Place to Live in Destin Florida | Where Should You Stay?

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to live in Destin, Florida, for those of you that have visited? You've seen our pristine beaches. You've seen the amazing condos, the nightlife, the great restaurants, and everything else. But what does it look like to live here? So in today's blog, we're going to break down Destin into the four different areas that you could live in. And let's get into What is going on? My name is Andrew with the Emerald Group here at EXP Realty. And we serve everything from Pensacola to Panama City Beach and everything in between, including the town we'll be talking about today. Destin, Florida. We're getting calls, texts, and emails all the time from people wanting to move to this area. So if that sounds like you go and reach out to us. So let's get into it.  What does Destin look like? I mean, if you visited, you probably have a good idea of what Destin is all about in general. You know, you know, the beautiful beaches that we have. That's kind of what we're known for, this pristine white sands powder, you know, the beautiful emerald waters most of the time. Of course, when storms come in, it kind of knocks in some of that muck every once in a while. But it's Destin, right? It's got the beautiful beaches and the restaurants and you know, all the good stuff that we have here. And a lot of people don't know what it looks like to live in this tourist city should you decide to do that. A lot of people see the big, beautiful houses and think, well, it's not affordable for most people. We'd have to live nearby and why bother doing that? But that's not 100% true. There are some expensive houses, as you're going to see on our list, but for the most part, if you wanted to move here, a lot of Americans would be able to afford here. But let's go and break down what is destined to be for different areas. When you're looking at Destin on a map, I kind of think of it just putting a cross right in the center, a plus sign, and that's going to be kind of how it's broken up. So first, you're going to have West and East Destin up at the top, left and right, and then you're going to have, funny enough, the East and West Destin beaches. There are some other names for a couple of them that we'll go into as we're going. But for the most part, that's kind of the, you know, most basic term that we can call them.  So let's start in the top left of the map if you're looking at it, and that is West Destin. West Destin was one of the first places that started to get built whenever Destin was starting to get slowly built out. And then, of course, the beach side of the west side of Destin was also being built out. So whenever you're looking at homes here, you're going to be looking at homes a little bit older for the most part. Your general range is somewhere between 1970 and 1990. So not super old, you know, but not new either. So if that's the kind of vibe that you're looking for, then that is a part of it. And a lot of what's going to be in West Destin here is also going to be a lot of parks. Ease of access to just about everything. There's a lot of back roads and stuff you can take in West US to kind of get in different areas of Destin, depending on what you're wanting to do. And if you're looking at the active ranges of properties as of the time of shooting this video, they range from 285,000 on the low end for a three-bed, two baths, all the way up to 4.275 million. That's 4,275,045 beds, five-bath right on the water. Of course, the water here in this area is mainly going to be in either the harbor or the bay, but for the most part, it's going to be the bay. Now, depending on where you're at in West Destin, there are also small channels which you might have some access to the water that way, where it might not be in deep water necessarily, but you can get a small boat in and out. As I mentioned before, there are more parks in this area than there are in most of the rest of Destin, just because of how it was built and how it was laid out. So if that's important to you, they do have several of them scattered across some of them or even waterfront. The entire atmosphere in this area is going to feel less like a mass suburb that we're going to talk about when we get over to the west, Destin. And it's going to be more, you know, kind of older neighborhoods that yeah, they put some thought into them. They kind of block them out, they kind of plan them out. But it doesn't have that feeling of like, hey, you're just coming in here. And this is all this one neighborhood with like the winding roads or anything like that. A lot of this is a lot and block it's a big square, you know, lots of crossroads and things like that. Now, there are a couple of notable neighborhoods in this area, but they're still not going to have that super suburbia feel. If you didn't know that that's the area that you're in, you might completely overlook that. You're in a suburban area in West Destin. At least two of those neighborhoods are Kell-Aire Gardens and Indian Trail Estates. Indian Trail Estates is a little bit more known. It's at that kind of the top portion. You'll see the airport and then kind of its little area there. A lot of them are waterfront on the north side and the south side or not. So you can have a very wide range of property prices in that area. All right. If you don't want to be in West Destin, it's a little bit older.  If you're looking for something with more established neighborhoods then East Destin has you covered. So I'm looking at the map, east-central in the top right quadrant of that little box that we drew. Now, historically, the prices here have ranged in the last year from 235,000 up to 10.2 million. So definitely a really big range here. And that's because of the master plan communities that they have. And if you look at the property prices that are active as of the time of shooting this video, the lowest price property you can get in this area is 549,000, and the most expensive property actively on the market in this area, believe it or not, is 15 million bucks. In this area, you're primarily going to see 1990 to 2010 homes. You'll see some new homes. But the neighborhood, as it turned over enough for them to start bulldozing old homes yet. So that's why you're going to see the maturity in that 20-year time frame. So think big suburbs, master plans, communities, gated entrances, sometimes multiple gates, a gate inside of a gate. Inside of a gate. I'm not making this up. We have that. This is where some of your big named neighborhoods are going to be. Like Kelly Plantation, Indian Lakes, and Indian Bayou, all three of which have a golf course attached to it. So if you are looking for that big suburbia feel with houses that look very similar, that have a lot of rules on what they can look like, and great upkeep of these properties, this is definitely where you want to be. Kelly Plantation takes up probably almost half of this area of Destin and is probably the most popular neighborhood in Destin for good reason. It's got a lot of great amenities, and a beautiful golf course, absolutely stunning. And for those that want the condo, they even have three large condo towers called one water place that has so many, many amenities, it couldn't even begin to describe them here in this video. East Destin is known for its luxury, but also its proximity to a lot of things such as Destin Commons, Destin's main shopping area. It's got everything from a bowling alley slash arcade to a bunch of smaller shops that you might want to visit Pandora's. And no, I'm not a shopper, so that's kind of the extent of my knowledge there. Now let's move on to probably my favorite area of Destin, just because of the beautiful views and the great condos and just its overall proximity to everything. And that's Beach Side West Destin. So the West side of Destin, on the beach side, also known as Holiday Island, little known fact, if you look at the way that it's built on the map, you'll see this whole area where the harbor is that's the safe area for boats to be in and why most of the boats dock there that was supposed to be the entire thing was an island. It was attached to Okaloosa Island just to its west. They dredged out part of it where you see the East Pass go in right underneath the bridge. Your kind of see that like the little arm tale of Emerald Isle that was all part of the island. They dredged it out in the I want to say it was the forties. Forgive me if I'm wrong there, but anyway, they dredged it out and then built onto it to make it go back onto the mainland so they didn't have to build another bridge to get through there. And in turn, they created the second most dangerous pass in the country. Surprisingly enough, the East Pass is very dangerous, and that's why you don't see a whole lot of smaller boats going in and out. And it's because the waves are fighting each other once, trying to go above and the other ones rushing below. And it causes this havoc. But I'm kind of getting off subject here. Let's talk about the property prices and what you can expect here. So in these next two, I am going to include condo pricing. There are condos in the west and east Destin, but they're not near as prevalent. So I didn't want to go into that too much because there are not that many to choose from, at least in comparison in this area. This is going to be primarily condos. Now, let's take a step back and go back to single-family homes. In the last year, they ranged from 800,000 up to 6 million in this part of Destin. Now, when you look at condos that have sold in the past year, they have ranged from 195,000 up to 3.265 million. That's $3,265,000. But of course, prices have changed dramatically and at this moment, there is not a lot on the low end actively. When I look right before shooting this video, the active properties were from 1.295 million up to 8.495 million for single-family homes. I know that's a big penny for a lot of folks, but you can get in the condo range currently from 410,000 up to 3.8 million, depending on exactly what you're looking for. Now, the range of properties in this area is all over the place because it's a little bit closer to the water. More properties do take a little bit more beating over time, so you'll see them as old as 1947, at least in the past year. There may be even some older than that out there, all the way to brand new. Now, the big advantage that you're getting in this area is the proximity to everything. Not only are you right there by the Harbor walk, all the downtown stuff, all the shops, all the restaurants, all the nightlife. You're also right there on the beaches and you have a lot of access points if you're anywhere on holiday at all. No matter where you're at, you're just a couple of hundred yards from the closest beach access points at the worst and right out your back door. And best-case scenario now in this area of Destin, you're going to see a lot more active lifestyle sort of people. You're going to see people riding their bikes, jogging, and walking, not just on the main road there, but also along the beach and other areas of the holiday. So this is also a great area. If you are a boat owner and you are easy to access and you also want your boat in the harbor instead of in a large marina, now there is a marina there, but without like the big building or anything like that, but the harbor there is to protect the boats anyway. That's why they call it the harbor. So that is a great spot to put your boat and it stays pretty busy year-round as you can imagine. It is called the luckiest fishing village for a reason. And another big advantage of this area is you have every type of property you can think of. Well, no, I can't see that. The three main property types, single-family attached, single-family, and condos, you're not going to find a whole lot of mobile homes or ranches or horse farms or anything like that out here, obviously, but the main ones are going to be there. So if you like a certain lifestyle, you are probably going to be able to find it here. You can even find condos that are only for people that live here full time or as a second home. Then you can also find condos that are in places that are great rentals, even cash cows to make a little extra money as maybe you're just coming down to visit for once in a while and renting it out the rest of the time. Okay, so we went over a lot there. Let's go ahead and go to its neighbor to the Beach Side East Destin. Now, unfortunately, don't have a cool nickname for this one like Holiday Isle on the other side. So I'll probably butcher that name for the rest of this video. So in Beach Side East Destin, historically in the last year, you've got single-family homes that have sold from 315,000 up to 6.65 million. And when it comes to condos, they've sold anywhere from 127,000 up to 2.9 million in the last year. If you're looking to purchase any time soon, the last property prices that I just pulled were for single-family homes currently active at 485,000 to 8 million. And when it comes to condos, they range from 225,000 up to 3.5 million as of the time of shooting this blog. Now, of course, property prices are continuing to go up and it's probably going to go ahead and keep trending that way, even with the way the market is currently. But those are the prices that you can expect right here in Destin right now. Now, the age range of the properties on this side of death and they're going to be from the 1990s to brand new built. So a lot of the area still hasn't been built out. Well, most of it has now, but that's where you're getting some of the newer builds because they were just finishing out most of that area. You're going to get a little bit more block two neighborhoods but newer, right? So and as opposed to west Destin up at the top left near the bottom right there, about ten, 15 years newer on average. So you are going to see a little bit different vibe. They do have some planned neighborhoods and other ones that are a lot in the block where it's just large squares that people purchased and then put houses on. The big advantage of this site is that you also have a great mix of single-family homes and townhomes. In fact, as of the time of looking at this, it was almost split right down the center of how many were available in each. You're also going to have quick access to just about everything and a quick drive down to 38. Should that be an area you want to visit regularly? It's also going to be a lot closer to some of the other resorts and things like that that are off to the east in Miramar, Santa Rosa Beach, you know, any of those larger areas there. So if you're looking for quick access not only into Destin but also into other areas with different types of shopping as well, restaurants, things like that, this is a great area for you, of course. All in all, living in Destin comes with its ups and downs. For those of you who don't know, it's a fairly small town for people that live there actively. But during the summer months and spring break and some of the other months where we get a lot of tourism, the town kind of comes alive and becomes the rustling, bustling Destin that we all know and love.  You guys are curious about living in Destin in any capacity. Please let us know. Reach out. All of our contact information is on the website and if you'd like a free buyer's guide because you're thinking about moving, even if it's five years from now or you're just vaguely considering it, we do have a buyer's guide. BUYERS AND SELLERS GUIDE LINK BELOW: https://www.mykcm.com/scripts/guide/?g=buyer&contactId=670106 We're not going to ask you for anything weird or anything like that. It's just going to go straight to you. Not because I have anything. Let me know. See you next week.P.S. – To schedule a call with us, simply click here.