Hey, this was me haha.
So I won't pretend to understand the legality of it all and the quiet claim deeds(or whatever they are called?), but I do think it's an issue that is a lot more murky and less binary than some describe it.
Many people attempt to frame it as a haves with power(beachfront owners who want their private beachees) vs a havenots without power(everyone who wants public use), but I don't think it's nearly that simple.
After all this seems to be a case where the institutional money(or the 'real' money) would favor public beaches. After all, these big developers have, on average, far more money than 90% of the individual gulffront owners(some of whom have a good chunk of their net worth now tied up in their gulffront home). It seems obvious that the big developers would favor public beach access for example. And many more examples(banks/mortgage companies, other institutional and commercial interests, etc).....
Second, I'm curious at the motivation of the beachfront owners who support private beaches. There has to be some play here.....because I can't imagine most of them want the area to suffer, and massive numbers of tourists to go elsewhere. The reason their beachfront home costs 2.5x as much in 30a as it does in say...pensacola beach, is because 30a is seen as a better/more desirable/more attractive area. And as a result of that the rental income potential is much higher, and then as a result of that the real estate is much higher. Surely they can see that if this private beach thing goes on the area as a whole is going to suffer and then rental incomes(even if they in particular don't rent their house) will suffer and then this will in turn drag down values of all property in 30a. Beachfront or not. IOW, peoples beachfront property isn't worth a ton of money in a vacuum. This being such a desirable area that attracts tons of tourists willing to pay a lot of money is part of what makes their beachfront property worth > 10 million.
I've seen reports of some beachfront owners say things like "tourism will be fine" and that some are overhyping the tourism problem which could be looming. I don't think that' s accurate at all.
so with all this in mind, I wonder if the goal of some beachfront owners is to get the county to give them a break on property taxes for some agreement on access. Personally I don't see the county doing that because that's just too big a pill for them to swallow when they see what the quiet titles cost in the first place. A hundred dollars in exchange for 65k dollars yearly isn't something they can swallow, even if they could afford to(and who knows if they can). They might though, I dunno.
I got the idea that that may be a driving factor for all of this because a local real estate agent told me an example of an older about to retire beachfront owner. Over the year's he seen his beachfront property rise to a very high value(9 million or thereabouts?), but the thing is he's not income wealthy. And since he doesn't want to rent out his place for various reasons, he has trouble actually converting that 9-10 million into $$ that he can pay the property tax and insurance bill with. So his options are:
1) sell the property(which he doesn't want to do)
2) short term rent the property(which he doesn't want to do)
3) take a mortgage equity loan out on the property. The problem with doing this is he would have trouble paying this off, and he wants to obviously pass the property on in his inheritance, but thats going to be problematic if there is even a small mortgage out on the property. The children would then have to sell it likely to satisfy that
so the real estate agent's presumption is that facing the above difficulties, he's hoping that he can get a huge break on the tax in exchange for allowing public access(which as I argue above is probably in the $ interest of the beachfront property owners in the first place)
So I dunno......my guess is that the beachfront owners themselves probably have a number of different motivating factors(and some are probably valid an not alltogether greeedy or bad)
Another issue I've wondered about- when they total all the beachfront owners up, they don't include all the seaside/watercolor/rosemary/etc beachfront owners in that mix do they? Because they shouldn't be, as those people(by the very nature of their community's agreement) DO NOT have any more beach access than someone in the very back of those communities. In fact, someone could rent the very farthest back house in Rosemary beach(right up against 98) and have more beachfront access right in front of that person's home than the beachfront homeowner does if they pay for chair service and the homeowner doesn't. I don't know if the rosemary/alys/seaside/watercolor beachfront owners are included in the total or not, but they shouldn't be.
Honestly, I'm just waiting to see how it all plays out. I just hope it plays out in a way that will allow 30a(and especially rosemary and seaside as those are the ones Im interested in) to thrive longterm. Until this issue works itself out and there is some solid resolution(and we see the effects of it either way), I'm going to sit out buying. I know that others(some of whom are looking at properties waaaaaaay more expensive than me) feel the same way.
