? For those who have moved to Orlando area

[Criickette]

I'm sure that like anywhere it depends heavily on your income and what you want to spend on a home.

If you are very high income, Davis Island/Harbor Island - avoid South Tampa as it has an older drainage system and floods terribly at a medium rain.

Westchase, Lutz, New Tampa are nice areas.

Riverview/Apollo Beach and Wesley Chapel are the two suburbs that are currently building up and will have brand new housing (one is north and one south).

Avoid Brandon - so many live there now and they've built so many apartments that the traffic is horrendous at any time. I'm not just talking rush hour but 1pm on Tuesday.

I don't know about the schools in all of those as we bought before kids and luckily did move into a great district, so I can't advise there.

Obviously the further east the closer to Disney. Riverview/Apollo Beach would be the closest out of those! I live there and am under an hour from my door to the MK parking lot, although Google Maps says about an hour fifteen.

THANK YOU!! That is very helpful info. Having Disney be an hour from my door would be perfect!

 

[fla4fun]

For those of you dreaming of moving away from your cold winters, keep in mind that you will find weather issues anywhere. Think about hurricanes, brutal summers (especially July and August) where you don't spend any time outside because it's just too darn hot, and the damp cold when it does get cold here (and believe me, it does get cold here). I have been in Florida for more years than I care to admit, and near Orlando since 1990. I like living here, but it has challenges just like any other place. It's all about what you need and what your priorities are.

If you're coming from an area with a lot of public transportation and you prefer using public transport to get around, you will find it's pretty limited here. I lived in a city laid out on a grid system with buses every ten minutes. I rode buses everywhere. Now, I can't even access the Lynx buses from where I live except for ONE pickup in the morning and ONE drop off at night, Monday to Friday ONLY. I don't live anywhere near the one commuter rail line that runs north and south (I live west). So I have to drive everywhere. Toll roads will be your friend!

It can be difficult to get a job in advance of a move unless you are transferring with your current company. You pretty much have to be a resident before a lot of places will consider you. I ran into that a lot, both moving from up north to Florida, and then moving from city to city within Florida. There are good jobs around, but they aren't going to be near the tourist corridors.

The one thing that surprised me about Orlando was that you can go about your daily life and pretty much forget you're in a top tourist destination. You don't have to have it in your face all the time unless you want to. So when I vacation at Disney (and I do stay on property) I still feel like I'm going on vacation.