Florida…yuck.
And we are NOT young…

I have no idea how anyone could live in Florida from May thru October. It’s beyond hot and no one comes out of their house.

Think carefully about Florida. Your auto insurance will be double and your home owners insurance will be incredibly expensive. When I sold my 1300 sq ft manufactured home in the Orlando area in September 2023, my next insurance bill was $4000. That’s after putting a new roof on after Hurricane Ian. Since I was selling, I didn’t shop around and probably could have gotten something lower, but not by much. You also have to be careful of your carrier, but there’s not a lot of choice as carriers have fled Florida in recent years. My neighbors also needed a new roof after Ian, and got $800. I got $6000. Our roofs were the same age.

If you could find a place that’s not in an HOA/COA, that would be ideal. While there’s a limit to how much fees can increase on a yearly basis, insurance and reserves are not included in that. The property I was helping to manage went up 25% on their fees after Hurricane Ian. Plus there can be the hassle of rules to be followed.

Your morning coffee in the kayak wouldn’t be as relaxing as you keep your eye out for gators and water moccasins.

Personally, I found Florida to be boring in many respects. But the summertime thunderstorms are awesome.


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Thank you! All excellent points! You keep us thinking and we question ourselves everyday. We've been wondering about the trade off for cold winters versus hot summers. As mentioned in this thread everyone stays in their house in the summer but we're doing that here this winter. Our fireplace keeps us cozy and I suppose A/C works in the summer.

We do love our cottage and remodeled it just for us. So much so that we were even considering duplicating it in Florida. I've always said to my wife "I can't believe we live here." Maybe we should just count our blessings and leave well enough alone.

Lakefront living is good. We didn't mean to hijack this thread.

The original question was should you buy a lakefront home in the winter? My answer would be anytime and anyplace you like. We purchased here in November of 1998. When driving by it looked like a dump. We saw inside and bought it on the spot. It was only seasonal at the time and the seller winterized it then with us. In the spring we did the normal stuff for an older cottage. Windows, siding, etc. We remodeled 6 years ago and moved in full-time. So if you find the right spot just jump on it. Contractors are buying up waterfront places and just knocking them down to build multi-million dollar mansions. The way we see things going that's all there's going to be on Winnipesaukee in the not so distant future.

It isn't really contractors.
Contractors have been so busy, that purchasing or building something for later sale (Spec Home) isn't too popular.

I agree. The Contractors need not do any speculative building these days because they are making so much money just handling all the business they already have on their plates.

Sorry I probably should have said "people". But stuff is coming down and going up constantly. 2 million dollar fixer uppers are demolished and are turning into 5 million dollar mansions. Where our place has been approved to go up we figure anyone wanting it would most likely do that. I remember when the Christmas Island places were built and folks were saying no one will ever pay 450K for one of those. Now you would be lucky to get one for 1.5 mil if something ever came on the market.

Back to the thread. We would have never bought our place if we drove by in the winter. Wouldn't have even stopped. Obviously we're glad we did.

Waterfront properties don't look like much this time of year. Especially if not occupied and everything looks dirty. But in the Spring when the waterfront vegetation blooms, the wildlife is active, and everything gets cleaned up it's like an oasis. When you have clean water, a sandy beach for swimming, and you can enjoy your water toys that's the lake life! :D

Always make sure to do your due diligence. We had someone who bought a place in our small community to run an air bnb business. This was not allowed by our HOA and ended up being a huge problem for the buyer after they found out. They ended up selling again.

Check condos bylaws and if possible have a chat with other owners that can answer questions sometimes better than a realtor.

I'm not sure if anyone would want to live in a place where guests are constantly rotating and getting drunk all hours of the night.

We understand that folks like to get help paying for their investment. But personally we don't want to entertain strangers on vacation on a daily basis during the summer.

So bottom line in an HOA check the rental rules. The community does make a huge difference!

An HOA near us changed the rules after a guy bought for Airbnb. A bad situation for him. But as you say, too many abuses

Good example to note the CI condos. One just went on the market for over $2million!


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I have a different experience. The SF house in Florida I had built in 2007 was 2570 Sq Ft in an HOA with 1890 Homes. The monthly condo fee was $220 and included cable, lawn mowing, fertilizing, and irrigation maintenance. You couldn't buy those services yourself for that. The irrigation was fed by ponds in the community so irrigation water was not something that was on my water bill. It had a resort style pool and the community was gated. Insurance was about 1,800. I closed on the current SW Florida house in May, 2021. It is a little larger and the insurance is about $2,200. Recently, 11 insurance companies announced they are returning or entering the Florida market so that may help create competition and hold down price increases. I am fortunate to be able to summer in Gilford and winter in Florida. After over 50 years spending some or all of every summer on Winnipesaukee it would be a tough decision if I had to pick one place to be year round. I hope it doesn't come to that but who knows what life will throw at you.

Happy to hear you have had a positive experience. And you prove the point that if people do their homework, they can do well. Can I ask who you have for homeowners’ insurance? My sister and her husband are still in FL, and the past few years they’ve had to do a lot of hunting each year to find a reasonable rate.


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Wow that's something. We will look it up. If it sells for that price our asking price is cheap. Especially since you can build something for a lot less right on the water!

It certainly makes you think. We're not listed on the MLS but one of our realtor friends said if it was we would sell in a week. Not sure about that but it's certainly crazy watching what's happening around here.

It would be nice to be snowbirds but that's not an option for us. The idea of new adventures someplace else is what interests us the most. As much as we love the lake we've done it all. We do miss the old days when the Road Kill Cafe' and Nothin' Fancy were the "go to" places.

Found that listing. It's a nice place. But most everything on the lake is.

That sounds like a wonderful place! Can we ask where it is? We were looking at the Englewood and Punta Gorda area. From what we have seen it's more old school Florida with an average age about us and pretty laid back. We have friends that have moved there and they love it.

I had some friends that had a home in Punta Gorda, they moved because they said the residents were too old for their lifestyle, they are in their 50's.

You're closer to this than I am, so I feel awkward questioning you. But with the weather of the past few years, it's hard to look at Florida real estate as anything but an insurance time bomb waiting to go off

I wasn’t going to raise that issue. In fact, we’ve lived and worked in Florida for over 50 years. Our house was totaled in Hurricane Andrew and we never returned to it. It was a traumatic experience and we said when we could both retire we would spend hurricane season somewhere else. Hence our first visit to Winni and purchasing on the Lake.

In essence, we’re “sunbirds” rather than “snowbirds.”

Certainly, millions of people live in FL and enjoy it. But IMO ignoring that risk anywhere in Florida is not realistic and that discussion should be in anyone’s plans.

I understand your perspective. My current Florida home is about 1 mile East of route 75 in Fort Myers and about 1 mile south of Fort Myers Airport. The neighborhood, Wild Blue, is on a former stone quarry of 660 acres that is now a 660 acre lake, generally 25 to 35 feet deep. That makes me appreciate Winnipesaukee!

This far inland I have no concern about a storm surge. I do keep watching insurance costs and I think if they rise dramatically I would consider selling the house. However, if the insurance cost goes way up it will probably diminish the resale value. I closed in May 2021 and the last couple of new houses in this 670 house community are now on the market. The good news is that new and resale houses are selling for about 150% more than I paid so I have no worry about getting my money back.

I have a friend with a waterfront home with a boatlift. His insurance is $10,800 per year.

The old neighborhood (2007 to 2020) was Bella Terra in Estero. It was nice and my house was about 1 1/2 miles from the front gate. It was mostly younger working families with young children so not a great match for me.

The new neighborhood, Wild Blue, is actually across the street from the old neighborhood and is mostly older retired people. The HOA fee is about $650 per month. There is a large clubhouse, restaurant, and beach bar that is great socially. It is a little more expensive, but,............ there are no luggage racks on a hearse!

You are not wrong here :laugh: I'm an accountant and my analytical skills sometimes get the best of me and keep me from making a leap.

Re: Florida - I lived there for 10 years - from 2004 - 2014, I'm happy to answer any questions. We lived on the SW Coast in a town called North Port - it is in between Tampa and Fort Myers. It wasn't for us. Florida is a beautiful place to vacation, but a tough place to live year-round. It gets unbearably hot from May - October. You just shuttle yourself from air-conditioned location to air-conditioned location. We love outdoor life (hiking, kayaking, etc) and that was dangerous there. There are fire ants in the grass - look them up if you haven't heard of them. Their bites are incredibly painful and they swarm you and you can easily get multiple bites before you realize you're being swarmed. We regularly had bobcats in our yard, diamondback rattlesnakes, and scorpions in our home a handful of times. Wolf spiders are common and get into your house - they're as big as a hand in some cases and FAST. Freshwater almost always has gators in it. And Florida seems to be the sex offender capitol of the US. There were a disproportionate number of sex offenders and predators in our area. Then there are the hurricanes, the very expensive insurance and the inflated home prices. With FEMA and some other agencies who help during natural disasters losing funding & employees - hurricane-hit areas are going to have a tougher time than usual this hurricane season. You may want to wait one hurricane season and see how that shakes out before deciding.

Good luck with your decision!

Convinced me!

He made it sound so inviting!:laugh:

On the subject of climate...

I was raised in NJ, back in the days when most homes had windown fans and no AC.

Summers were hot and humid, and the only way to get relief was to travel north to NH to take advantage of typically cooler, my temperate conditions.

But that left the winters, and mud season ... brutal, and an acquired taste, one which I never acquired.

I'd traveled this land and settled in Portland, Oregon, which I feel has a climate best suited to me: moderate, temperate, little snow, little crushing humidity.

YMMV