Western North Carolina has long been a summer vacation and second home destination for the citizens of Florida.  If you live in Florida, is it time to call it quits and move up to the mountains full time?

What really got me thinking about Florida was this little tidbit in the Wall Street Journal the other week: State Farm insurance is dropping all their homeowners insurance coverage in Florida.  Not just Hurricane prone areas, not just certain counties, all of it.  Here’s the link to the article about State Farm pulling out of Florida.

A quick search turned up a few other interesting tidbits of discontent in Florida.

A recent article at New Geography points out that many people are, in fact, calling it quits on Florida.  Here’s the link, Florida’s inbound migration trend reverses, and the excerpt talking about people leaving Florida for other parts of the Southeast:

“Florida: A Changing Story: Flyover Country’s gains are impressive. Florida has attracted the largest number of residents from other states, at 1,250,000 since 2000. This amounts to a 7.6 percent increase compared to the state’s 2000 population. However, things are changing. As the state’s housing became unaffordable, domestic migration dropped and then stopped. By 2007, domestic migration fell more than 80 percent from average of earlier years. Then, Florida slipped into a loss of 9,000 domestic migrants in 2008.

Southern Gains: The rest of the South generally avoided the worst of the housing bubble… North Carolina has added 580,000 domestic migrants… ”

Here are some cons to living in Florida: Hurricanes, high property taxes, hot summers, sprawl, congestion, bad drivers (a cheap shot, I know).  Unemployment higher than national average.

And some pros: Nice beaches, mild winters, and sunshine. If you live in Florida for the beach, well, then I assume you would stay put through a lot of stormy weather.  The beaches are nice.  But how many families are really down there for the beach?

Bruce Gilden, famous photographer, has even weighed in with a photo essay on the Florida foreclosure crisis.  His piece is here at Magnum in motion.

A Google search for “leaving Florida” turns up a whole bunch of interesting stuff, so I’m not the only one thinking about it.  Even if Florida house prices stabilize - and a whole raft of Florida real estate bloggers are looking for a market bottom - I think Florida has more negatives to overcome than ever before in order to lure enough families into filling the housing oversupply (homes + condos + apartments).

I wonder, if people leave Florida, are they likely to consider buying homes in Western North Carolina and buying Asheville real estate in particular?  There is a long history of Floridians spending money in the mountains.

What do you think?  Anyone out there who has moved from Florida to the Asheville area that cares to comment?

Clark Mackey — Sparkdog

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