Green Real Estate

How to get to Florida

When moving to Florida, one needs to consider the mode of transportation to take. There are several airports available if one wishes to get to the state in the shortest time possible. International airports provide high-class transport services. They include Southwest Florida International airport and Tampa International Airport. One may also choose to take a train. Amtrak train, Sanford, travels through the Greater Orlando area, which comes from Lorton, Virginia. Two extra Amtrak trains operate between Miami, New York and Sanford. Another option available is by road.

How can one find accommodation?

Finding a house in Florida can be an uphill task but there are easy and practical steps one can take to make housing affordable. Houses in Florida range from apartments, water front homes, golf course homes, active adult communities, custom homes, town homes and master planned communities. The cost of buying a good home will range between $10,000 and $10 million depending on ones preference

The Florida Housing Corporation gives families loans to purchase houses at low interest rates. They have a home ownership program also known as Home Ownership Pool (HOP). First-time home buyers can access funds to acquire homes by subscribing to the program if eligible.

Rental housing can be searched online using online services like the Florida housing search. One can find information online about property vacancies, amenities, financial requirements for any purchase. The search also includes the details of the property and the physical location. There are also privately owned companies that provide home rental services.

What should one expect in Florida?

Caucasian Americans dominate Florida. They account for about seventy five percent of the total population. Others include Asians, Hispanics and African Americans who account for the remaining fifteen percent. The weather is subtropical and humid. The lowest temperatures are experienced in February. The coldest recorded temperature was -19 degrees Fahrenheit. The summer records a high of about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. It is known to have the worst extremes especially the lightening. Florida has been nicknamed the ‘sunshine state’ because of these extremes. Over the decades, it has recorded the highest number of tornadoes.

When one is considering Florida as a permanent residence, one must put the climatic conditions in mind. The choice of housing must be good for safety.

What you see - So far, so good! You may have not really bought your furniture from this store, but would have definitely seen those words on the huge hoardings across strategic locations (read: the one where loaded people reside or regularly travel to) in the city. Now this is one advertisement copy that we totally agree with since we found the sofas at Stanley Boutique really, really good.

However, what’s not good with this boutique is its location. Now though it is located at Babukhan Mall, Hyderabad you cannot enter it from there (the sales executive told us that he was new and so didn’t know why). You have to take the lane next to Mangatrai Jewellers and then turn right. Now if you are going to ask a potential customer who has already parked his vehicle at the mall to walk down that lane, you will have to hear Shania Twain’s song – That don’t impress me much!

What you get - Made of Italian leather, the sofas here are available in a large variety of colors. So don’t be surprised if you ask for dark green colored sofas and you find it right there in this boutique. And if you don’t, they would be willing to make those for you. Custom-styling options, therefore, are available at Stanley Boutique.

Apart from colors, you can even choose the thickness of the leather that you want your sofas to be made of (0.9 mm, 1 mm etc). You should check out the reptile and weave prints if you prefer your sofas with some designs. And if you are looking for the recliner variety of sofas go for the La-Z-Boy brand. On these sofas you can rock, recline or even sleep. Don’t even think of using these at your workplace for the sake of productivity.

It’s not just great sofas that you can find at Stanley. Check out their small but admirable collection of tables, chairs, cushions, clocks, lamp shades and other interesting decorative pieces. In fact, you can even get cushions with Swarovski crystals here. And as far as the tables are concerned, we suggest that you should take a look at the center and side tables with curved base. These look really sleek and are sure to make a great impression. Chairs look good too but we found them a little heavy to pull up. Clocks look like the ones you would see at a really old church.

Let’s give you some information on the sales executives here. They are friendly and know what they are selling. They will advise you on what would go for the office and what at home, what color you should choose based on the color of the wall that you have and will even make an instant call to their warehouse in Bangalore to find out how much time it would take to make a new piece of furniture. Great going guys!

Oh! And the biggest deciding factor – the price. Let’s put it this way. If you are looking for style, with great designs, then be ready to splurge a few lakhs in a jiffy.

If you have gone on camping trips in the past, you know what the RV life is all about. If you have only camped in tents or pop ups, or have not ever camped out before, then you are in for a real treat, living full time in an RV is like camping in a hotel! Well, maybe without maid service! You have chosen the vehicle you would like to have, the price is right, it’s within your budget, and the decor color works for your wife. You have told the kids about your plan and they didn’t freak out, so that hurdle is accomplished.

Next comes the big one…sell the house, or rent it? What to do? Depends on where you live and the housing market in your area. Do you want to move out forever, or leave just for the cold winter months to head for warm weather and then come back for the summer months? Or do you want to just head out and go wherever the road takes you?

This decision may have been made when you decided how much you could afford to spend for your RV. Assuming that you are buying an RV, you have looked at your monthly income and you know how much you will have available to live on and a vehicle payment may or may not be in that budget, so the money you get from a house sale will get you the RV of your dreams. Or, you may already have an RV and moving into it will be fairly simple.

Once that decision is made, then what goes and what stays? When we were ready to go full time, we found it best not to rush into selling every thing in the house, but we also didn’t drag it out. First, we tried to decide if there were some things that would work in the RV, i.e. cookware, electric appliances, dishes, etc. We went back and forth a few times on this, and there were still some items that we were sorry we brought, and some that we didn’t. What to do with the items that don’t sell…put them in storage, or give away? This is the time to make lists. Make lists for everything…what goes, what stays, what gets given away, what gets donated to charity, what goes into the trash.

For the new RVer, this process can be a bit of a crapshoot…two years later we were still disposing of stuff that we thought we couldn’t live without in the beginning! Fragile china and crystal may not be the best choice because of the constant movement when traveling, so if it’s an heirloom then maybe someone else in the family would really love to have it.

We gave ourselves one month to sell the furniture we would no longer need, so we made our list and put a desired price on everything, with the thought in mind that this should be flexible. If it didn’t sell right away then a price reduction to move it out would not be a big disappointment. Then we put the special mementos and pictures that will not be sold in one place that is securely out of sight during the sale. Trust me on this one, buyers will open drawers and look in closets, even with signs stating items in these areas are not for sale.

Plan an “estate sale” and place an ad in the local paper (another good source is Craigslist) and plan for a week’s duration. It actually only took us 3 days to sell everything in the house…make that 3 frantically busy days…but it was all gone nevertheless.

Time for The Big Move. The ideal situation would be if you are able to bring your RV home where you can spend a couple of nights in your driveway getting set up and also acquainted with the systems in your RV. But if you can’t, try to make an arrangement with your dealer that you can bring your things to your RV in several trips and have time to put them away. If you can’t do this, then you may have to stack all your boxes in your RV and move to a local RV park for a few days while you get set up.

Don’t forget to do a little grocery shopping before you move in. Also, note that it may take a few hours for the refrigerator to get cold, so plan to take an ice cooler along for perishables, at least for the first day.