AVOID Moving to The Wrong Neighborhood in Vero Beach, Florida!

Don't make a mistake. I don't want you to come to the time and trouble to move to Vero Beach, think you can figure it out on your own, and then you get to where you're getting, and you buy a house, and you go, "What did we do?" I'm Sally Daley from the Daley Group at Douglas Elliman, and today I'm going to break down mistakes to avoid and neighborhoods you might be looking at and some things that you may not have thought before you put pen to paper, so you don't make a mistake that you regret.

Let's get right to it. Let's say you want to be on the barrier island, and you say, "I love this Central Beach area. There's no HOA. I love everything about it. I can walk and bike to everything. There's so much good about Central Beach." What you need to understand about Central Beach or anything that doesn't have a homeowners association, what does that really mean? Well, it means, number one, you're allowed to rent in a 30-day increment. So, if you live next to someone that rented the house, there wouldn't be a darn thing you could do about it.

Would you be okay with that? An association, broadly, is not going to permit that frequency, with some exceptions. The other thing I want you to think about with Central Beach is, what's the age of the house, and what are my neighbors all about? What do I mean by that? Central Beach, if you understand the provenance of it, it was developed in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, cuz it was the central part of the beach. It's a pretty traditional plat, not a lot of curves and green space as you see in newer subdivisions.

It's pretty much road, lot, lot, lot. That said, most of the lots are bigger. There's no HOA. What I want you to think about is, what's the age of my structure, and has it been renovated, and has my plumbing, air conditioning, electric, and roof, have they all been updated? Because you want to protect your investment. Most people do, right? So, even if you are going to self-insure, and you're not going to pay an outside underwriter for insurance, you want to make sure those four things, the four points as we call them, of a house, are new, newer, or updated.

Cuz anytime you buy, I want you to be thinking about capital outlay zero to five years. So, I want you to think about house by house, what's the elevation my house is at? Am I in a flood zone? Am I not? In addition, I want you to think about two things. Number one, what's the rest of my neighborhood like? What do I mean by that? Well, within Central Beach, some blocks are more transitioned than others. What I want you to think about is this. If you live next to a bungalow that's circa 1969 and it's aqua and has funky whatever, there is no guarantee it's ever going to change.

Whoever owns that house could sell it to someone who thinks it's fabulous the way it is. The owner could pass away, heirs could receive it and say, "Yay, we have our beach bungalow." So, you need to be okay with the block as she sits right now and assume it's not going to change. The with Central Beach before you commit and make a purchase is, am I really okay with no association? Associations are really meant to keep values consistent and quality of life great for everybody and home values that support each other.

So, what that means is with no association, usually there are rules and regulations for use. You need to scratch off Central Beach, frankly, or any community that doesn't have an HOA. So, be as diligent about your neighbors and understanding how you like to live and what you can tolerate and what you cannot tolerate before you commit to Central Beach. Fearnley Beach Country Club, now we're going to talk about one of my favorite neighborhoods in Vero. The old Vero Beach Country Club neighborhood is just off the barrier island in between the two bridges and it is surrounded by a very well-regarded country club called Vero Beach Country Club, it's an Audubon club, very well regarded.

Moment has a bit of a waiting list, beautiful golf course. The houses that rim around it, generally speaking, were developed in the '60s and '70s. What that means is, as we just talked about with the elevation mandate not being super high back then, Vero Beach Country Club area, broadly, is known to be a little subject and vulnerable more to floods than other parts of Vero. So, if you fall in love with a rancher or a charming golf course house, and it's 1969, but it's been renovated and it's fabulous, I want you to please, please, please find out the base elevation, and then find out the cost of insurance, and more importantly, is it in a flood zone?

FEMA, smartly, started re-scoring all of its flood maps, and it wasn't just arbitrary. It was based on perceived risk, and a lot of the houses in the Vero Beach Country Club got re-scored. And at the time this occurred, there were homes that were maybe, this is pre-COVID, that were worth three, four, five hundred thousand dollars. And after the FEMA re-score, the flood requirement was three thousand, five thousand dollars a year. And what that did is it put a rock on the value of these houses. So, if you fall in love with the Vero Beach Country Club, please, please, please suss out base elevation, and am I okay with the total buy box if I need a mortgage for whatever that flood insurance is going to be.

So, fall in love with the country club, there's so many good reasons to, but please, please, please do your due diligence before you contemplate falling in love with it and making an offer. As you go south, you've got Castaway, Sea Grove, Shorelands, Sand Point. They're all the same, right? No. Castaway, for example, has shallower lots in the backyard. It's almost like four mini neighborhoods in and of itself, anyway. Castaway Cove, you need to buy stock in the Hershey Candy Company. It is throbbing with kids, and it's a super, super fun vibe.

And it's going to be highly variable depending on which section you're in. For example, this is why you need a local, you know, the mayor of Vero to help you. One of them, you can look at the river, but there's no access. Another one of the sections actually has a river access where you can park, drop off a trailer with your little hitch to and get to the river. And and then you got to go park. So, there really are nuanced differences both in the amenity set and in the houses.

Shift down, Shorelands. You've got Shorelands East, you've got Shorelands West, Shorelands North. What with all these Shorelands? These are all lollipop communities that were developed largely in the '90s. Many of them still on septic. Many of them frame. Lots bigger beach access. And there's access for the river for the folks that are on Shorelands North and Shorelands West. So, the values of the houses is going to be probably a little bit more than the Castaway, broadly, depending on age and condition, higher progressively in price point. You're going to see a theme here, just stick with me.

That's Shorelands. Very well regarded. Lots of live oaks, big yards. Then we're going to get to We're going to go past a couple Lost Roads, which are old roads that have no HOA. Hop over those, and we're going to get to Sea Grove. Sea Grove is really a thing, and it's worthy of your consideration, but it's important to know some nuances about it. You've got Sea Grove East, which is a very large community, and Sea Grove West, which was developed across the street, uh not quite as large. Sea Grove West, you're either on the lake in the middle, and it's a big lake, kind of like Cash Cay, bigger than you expect it to be.

Extremely varied architecture in here. Houses were built in the '90s to early 2000s. There is a guard, there's an HOA, there is a marina where you can have a boat slip if you want to, and a tennis court. But, you know what you don't have in Seagrove West? The ability to get to the beach. This is like a local thing that only an insider would know. Seagrove West cannot use Seagrove East beach access. But, however, Seagrove East can lease slips over here. So, that's a quirk that you really need to know about because beach access is important to you by bike or by foot where Seagrove West is located is not close within walking or biking distance to a public beach.

Seagrove East on the other side is the older original section and the houses are all getting zhuzhed up to highest and best. On the ocean, they're all on an acre. Now, many of them are older frame from the '80s and early '90s. They do not have a requirement where you have to have a side-load garage where your garage goes like this. And if that makes you crazy, that's not your neighborhood. There's a fair bit of frame in there as well, and it doesn't hurt values, although you may not like it, but it's not considered an outlier.

So, you're going to see in there, rather than your typical straightaway, there's lots of curves and there's decided undulations, and that's how they have dealt with stormwater drain management. So, it's a community worth your consideration. But again, age, condition, block or not is going to make a difference on pricing. Last but not least, Sand Point, where I happen to live, has East and West. It was started in the late 1990s and filled built out really through like the early 2000s. Most of the houses are block or frame with stucco over top of them.

There is a private beach access, and on the sister community across the street, there is a little river access. So, there's maybe 62 homes on Sandpoint East, Sandpoint West, I think is probably a little bigger and newer and there's still some building going on. So, let's talk about pricing. Castaway, again, depending on age, condition, 950 to a million five to two million. If you're on the water, obviously, you're going to be multi-million either way. Depending age and condition, Shorelines, you're going to be a million one to a million eight to, obviously, probably multi-million if you're on Western North and you're on the water.

Seagrove, depending on, again, if you're older and renovated or not, East of Bay 1A is going to make the prices a little higher. You know, probably 1.1 to about 1.8 to two to four million to multi-million on the ocean. So, it depends what you're looking for. There is a wildly popular neighborhood that doesn't come up very often, known as Old Sugar Mill Estates. Couple of things I need you to understand about it before you sign on the dotted line. It's fabulous. There's a very nominal HOA. The lots are all an acre.

The architecture is charming, yet diverse. It doesn't feel cookie-cutter. There are single stories, handsome two-stories. It is kid-ville. You definitely need to buy candy for Halloween. It's fantastic. What you need to understand is most of the homes here are frame. It doesn't hurt values. The community is so revered that people buy almost in spite of the frame and they just make sure that you can do a couple things if you want to if you fall in love with a frame house. Number one, you can clad it in cement board that looks like wood.

That is called Hardie Board. And in some cases, your insurance company will say, "Now we insure it almost like as if it were a frame house." So, that's a possibility. Number two, the roof, the roof, the roof. So, make sure your roof is new, newer and/or in good shape and has lots of legs left to it. Same thing also with a neighborhood called Kings Way, which has acre lot houses. Many of those are older, too. You don't need to be fearful of them if you ask the right questions. Last but not least, let's talk about acreage.

If you decide you want to live on acreage, number one, with a few exceptions, there are a handful that we could discuss, there will be no HOA, period, hard stop, by definition. What that means is you could live next door to the Clampetts who keep 50,000 cars on their property and there isn't a darn thing you could do about it. Would that make you crazy? Then maybe you need to consider a mini ranch hat where we have like three to five acres with some HOA nominal HOA restrictions, we can talk about those.

Broadly, though, no HOA. Number two, utilities. I was showing property to a lovely couple and they had a yen for more acreage for their young kids and the reality of getting out there and seeing it and realizing that they had a private well and private septic and another well to water the acreage and a lot of that water has a high sulfur content in it, so you need treatment facilities. It It quickly be a lure was off and the bloom was off the rose and they said, you know what? I think maybe this is not for us.

So, that's another proviso. Now, let's talk about critters. It's Florida, baby. I mean, there are going to be things. If you have a lake and a lot of people love the idea of a lake, you're out west enough town by where the canals are, unlike our river that's brackish and generally the alligators don't like it, you could have alligator or his wife alligator in your yard and you need to be okay with that. Number two, there are other critters. There are wild hogs way, way, way west out and they are really big.

One community's known to have peacocks. So, there are going to be critters and it is Florida and you need to understand what they are and what to do if they pay a visit to your property. And if you're okay with all of these things, fantastic. Be a gentleman farmer, explore what it would take to get any kind of ag offset, talk to the tax folks, that's not my area of expertise, see if there's any way you could farm it, you could keep chickens, whatever you want to do, knock yourself out, but make sure you're asking the right questions.

So, that's my report. Give me a holler or write to me through our contact form or DM me if you want to talk more about some of my insider secrets for you guys to think about, but nuanced knowledge makes a huge difference. I don't want you to make a mistake. I want you to come here and love Vero Beach if this is the right spot and I want you to love where you are. Until next time, take care.