Moving to Florida......Info on Winter Park??
 

We're are planning to move to Florida sometime next summer from kenrucky with our infant daughter and I'm a little concerned. We were looking at the winter park area near Orlando but have been told that the suburbs there can be quite dangerous. Could anyone suggest a quiet, affordable, more country setting that's fairly close to Orlando but not terribly far from a beach? Clueless...Please help.

Maybe someone is giving you some off-base advice on Winter Park. It's a lovely community just above Orlando and I've never heard it called dangerous or troublesome.

Perhaps check with the police dept there.

Winter Park is a very upscale and beautiful community just north of downtown Orlando. I am in Maitland, considered a sister city to Winter Park. See www.winterpark.org for extensive information. Also see - www.itsmymaitland.com . I would not, however, consider this an affordable area as it is affluent. We are also at least 45 minutes west of the east coast. Where do you need to be...job wise or other considerations?

Dangerous? I'll admit to it being dangerous to the wallet - I've spent way too much shopping on Park Avenue in Winter Park.

I agree with bnb that if we have a general idea of where you'll be working or what other things are important to you, we can give you some ideas.

lol, I agree, dangerous if you are trying to Not Shop!
I loved Winter Park, a beautiful area..the lake is so pretty and the homes are lovely. We were there after a hurricane had done some damage and it was still beautiful.
Go to the Morse Museum ( Tiffany) I could have gone back again and again.
I would not have minded living there at all..if I wanted to live in Fl .

http://www.morsemuseum.org/

The Morse Museum is known worldwide...just fabulous! Yes, knowing job issues...who, where, when...would help. Going toward the east coast there are still some "rural" and lower priced areas. Those too are getting built up and could be a rough commute depending on where the job(s) are located.

Winter Park is lovely and a nice place to live in the Orlando area as it is further from the tourist mobs than the communities along the Butler chain of lakes. I personally love Windermere but it might be too expensive.

This site is good for objective data regarding cities and towns;
http://www.city-data.com/city/Winter-Park-Florida.html

HG

"Winter Park" and "dangerous" hardly ever appear in the same sentence together. You have nothing to worry about.

Now that we have THAT straightened out, let's address the beach issue: Orlando is about as far from the beach as you can get in a long, skinny state like Florida, because it's practically in the center. That said, it's only about an hour from a beach--is that what you'd call "terribly far"?

I live in Winter Park. Have lived here for 18 years. Nice area. The more affordable neighborhoods are on the northside, in Seminole County.
The schools are great. The shopping, as previously mentioned, is very nice.
If you are looking more country setting, you might try Oviedo. Just north of Winter Park, it has grown rapidly in the last 10 years or so.
Both are about 45-50 minutes from the coast.

The most dangerous thing in Winter Park is opening your property tax bill. With the number of "teardown/rebuilds", friends in the area have seen their property tax triple in recent years!

If you want to research beaches, the closest ones are: Daytona, New Symrna, Playlinda, and Cocoa Beach.

What area of the county are you moving from? People from the Northeast and California would find most of the houses in the area "a steal", but moving from some of the Midwest states, you might think the market is high priced.

Wow, you guys are so helpful. I'm really glad I came here. About the job thing, I'm just a vet assistant and my fiance is a dental assistant so that's why we're looking for such an affordable neighborhood.
And thanks for the tip on Oviedo, from what I've found it looks really promising. Now, riddle me this...does Florida have ANY kind of winter?? Or is it really hot all year long?

The joke is that we have two seasons: Northern summer and Southern summer. But yes, we do have a winter. This year I remember a week of 50 degree weather in Dec or Jan. That may not sound cold, but when you're used to 70s, 80s and 90s, believe me 52 feels cold.

South of Oviedo (even closer to the Beach access roads) is the East Orlando area. We have Waterford Lakes, Eastwood and Stoneybrook developments that are very nice. The schools are great and we are extremely close to highway access and good shopping. This is one more area of Orlando's suburbs and might offer good job opportunities for you and your husband. I have a 15 month old and find there are many other young families here. Good luck with the planning. Trust me, the couple months when it does get cold, will be enough! You won't miss it at all. (If you want to MapQuest the area, check intersection of Lake Underhill Rd and Alafaya Trail.)

Sure we have seasons: hot and hotter. Ha-Ha!

As to affordability, Oviedo is probably more affordable than Winter Park, in general.

labrynthlily-- Do the both of you have jobs waiting when you arrive in the Greater Orlando Area? If so it would help if you would let someone know the approximate location. Driving many miles commuting can be time consuming and expensive with the gas prices and toll roads.

Labrynthlily-Have you looked at wages in the Orlando area, they tend to run lower here, compared to the rest of the country.

One of my nieces is a vet tech, and makes $9.00/hr. A friend is a dental hygienist (sp?) and makes $26,000 a year. You would need a huge down payment to afford a home in Winter Park with those kind of wages; the average price for a single family home starts at $300,000 and goes well over $1,000,000.

ChrisF101 mentioned the Waterford Lakes area in East Orange County. You might be able to find a reasonable house in some of the older subdivisions in that area (average around $160,000 right now). Otherwise, your best bet would be a townhouse or condo.

As 321go says, once you've lived down here awhile, anything under 60 degrees seems cold. I grew up in Michigan, and thought it was funny seeing kids waiting at the bus stop in winter coats and hats in 50 degree weather! Now, when October arrives, I start putting throws on all the sofas and chairs to snuggle under because we're chilly. I've seen it snow once here on the east coast, but the flakes melted before they reached the ground.

If you live down here long enough, you do start to recognize subtle changes with each season. Our yard is full of oak trees. The odd thing about Florida oaks is that they don't lose their leaves in the fall-they do it in the spring. The new leaves push the old ones off the tree! And no bright colors, they just go from green to brown and back to green. What we get in the fall are acorns-tons and tons of acorns! Sometimes, it sounds like a hail storm outside...

Dangerous?
Winter Park is lovely.

No, we don't have jobs lined up yet. It will be almost a year before we have the money to move and then it will be into an apartment.
Thanks rascat for the info on the housing market. It will be a long while before we can afford a home, but I was wondering if we ever could in florida. Everything I've seen has been 300,000 or more, which is obviously far above our means.
As for the wages though, we live on the southern ohio, northern kentucky border right now and the wages couldn't get much lower. There are places that we could get paid more, but florida holds so many other advantages for us (ex.,disney season passes:) that we think it would be worth it to buy a old fixer-upper, and fixer-up.
I hope you guys are right about not missing the cold. I'm not a bikini model, so I'm not particularly comfortable in short shorts and a bikini top, so hot weather can be really uncomfortable. But honestly, it's nearly as hot here and the humidity is just terrible.

You don't need short shorts and a halter top to start enjoying the Florida weather. Find a job you'd like and then find a community near by and start enjoying the time you have together.