Saw this post today...
30A/South Walton- you need to get your sh*t together on this beach access issue.......
Because you are literally about to hemorrhage money by blowing it.
I was super close to finally taking the plunge this month and buying a nice sfh in the heart of seaside for a little over 3 million.
At the last minute though(and even after we were drawing up the offer sheet), I just can't get over the uncertainty and potential clusterf*ck that is this beach issue.
Yes I know seaside and rosemary have their own beach access(so technically I and any rental guests would have access), but this misses the point. Which is that the overall health of 30a a vacation destination is important for rosemary and seaside.
In the last year or two the numbers I'm hearing are that rentals along 30a are down about 18-20% total. Not massive, but not trivial either. But we're only a few years into this- the fact that things are down 18-20% at this point means they could be down a LOT more 3 years from now.
I remember the last time I was there(I stayed oceanfront so it didn't affect me) I biked to the Waline(sp?) beach access point just to assess the situation, and it was the saddest damn thing I've ever seen. There wasn't one person there who didn't appear miserable.....crammed in like sardines when they are spending 700/nt to rent a home 2-3 houses back from the sand? Does anyone really think most of those people I saw down there are going to happily pay a bunch of money to come back and experience that? Of course not, so it's the future years where we are going to see the bigger declines.
This beach clusterf*ck is not going to be good for 30a as a whole. And that in turn has the potential to really hammer investment properties since a lot of the value is tied to rental expectatins. Even in the communitiees where the whole community has guaranteed access.
The crazy thing is this is possibly even true with respect to the direct oceanfront properties outside of communities like RB and Seaside. The simplistic way to look at it would be that a 'private' beach would drive those home values up, but that's only true in a reality where interest in the area as a whole is maintained. If the private beach disaster is harming the quality of the area as a whole, the negative effects of that could easily overwhelm any positive effects from the allure of the 'private' beach component.
There is another less obvious factor that scares buyers like me away, and it's also related to the uncertainty. Let's say that 3-4 years from now the rules effectively change and the beaches become public again. Well, then part of the premium I just paid to be in seaside or rosemary is washed away because I could also have great beach access by buying a similar house 3 houses back in seagrove or whatever. I realize that doesn't represent all of the difference, but generally speaking a small cottage 3 or so houses back in seaside that goes for 3.5 would go for 2.5 a mile down the road 3 houses back and outside the guaranteed access communities(seaside, wc, etc). The uncertainty is scary there....why buy now if a large component of that 1 million dollar difference immediately vaporizes with the stroke of a pen.
To sum it up, I know this is a long rant. But I'm sure I'm not the only one in this predicament who just bailed on a house due to the uncertainty and the general sh*tshow this is. Literally billions of dollars is about to be pissed away if they can't get it together. Obviously something that makes the beaches public again would be best, but even if we had more certainty that the status quo will go on for decades(while bad) would be an improvement over the current disaster.
Im not going to spend 3-4 million cash on a house in a county that can't get their sh*t together. And people with a heck of a lot more money than me who would be looking to buy much much more expensive properties probably feel the same way. Or they will be feeling that way soon....
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.
