Pensacola input appreciated.

[taichi]

I've been watching the Pensacola realestate listings for about a year now and found what looks on the internet to be a nice townhouse just a few blocks north of the NAS on 414 Creary st. - the place has a view of Davenport Bayou - I'm a retired serviceman and plan to do a casual working retirement in Pensacola. I would make full use out of the NAS sailboat marina and the fishing boat marina too. It's close enough I could ride a bicycle. I've been through the NAS and have visited both NAS marinas a number of times, but never in a hurricane nor looked at it from a buyers perspective.

Before I start spending money and fly down there and/or put in an offer I would love to get any local input on the NAS Marina, and/or the neighborhood around Creary st. I had heard somewhere that they are a bit strict as far as beer drinking and staying overnight goes. Is it all at sea level that it would be 10' under in a hurricane? (I mean Creary st - I think I know that the marina is at sea level - funny!)

Thank You all!

 

[Stu Jackson]

We had some friends who moved there a few years ago. After sailing here on San Francisco Bay, they found the lack of wind and the heat to be oppressive. They kep their boat at NAS. Personal choices, I guess.

 

[kloudie1]

Pensacola.. great place.. Thin water but good boatyards .. Water is warm enough to swim in and there are no tides (ok they are less than a foot, (except when they are called "storm surge") to deal with .. A fine place to sail ! Ya learn to use a spinnaker for the summer and the rest of the year has pretty good wind.. A good bimini is essential .. Looking at Creary St.area, I would talk to some folks who actually live there about flood.. I suspect it would have a problem in a hurricane.. Looks like places around there are up 5-6 feet .. Ya might want to check carefully to see how bad the insurance would be .. My brother (a base physician several years ago) lived in Seaglade, a bit west and south .. they didn't have a problem at that house for many years.. then Katrina put 5-6 inches of water in the place.. Talk to folks there.. yes it gets hot in the summer.. but ya get used to it.

 

[taichi]

The last time I chartered there - we had way too much wind! - Good idea to learn about insurance rates there - Thanks!

 

[kloudie1]

Your 23 should be fine there, TaiChi.. It is really cool to anchor off the base on the south side and watch a Blue Angel's show.. Some of the areas around the base can get a little rough, just like around any military base.. I do not think Creary area is that way.. but it is not too far from there.. Check out Palm Lake area, just west of the base off 297 and Bauer Road .. had some buddies who had a place there and loved the area.. no flooding.. reasonable prices..

 

[willardj]

Pensacola is a great town. I lived there for 12 years or so in that area around NAS Pcola. You do have to watch out for some shallows but not to bad in smaller boats. We still have lots of friends that live there and sail all the time.

 

[taichi]

Thanks again

 

[robertsapp]

The Bayou Grande marina at NAS is very nice. Good rates and they don't charge extra for power or water. It's a very well protected marina with floating piers that was completely replaced after Hurricane Ivan in 2004. When they rebuilt it, they made sure the pilings for the floating piers were taller than the storm surge from Ivan so that it could withstand another storm of that magnitude if we were to ever have one. It's where we keep our boat.

The area where you're looking to live is an older part of town that has remained relatively upscale due to its proximity to the Pensacola Country Club and Star Lake. I'd estimate that most of the homes in that area are 1960's vintage. The only negative I could see is that it nestles up against a not so nice part of town called Warrington, aka "the hood." As you travel Navy Blvd to the main gate of NAS, you'll see your typical droopy drawered wife-beater wearing underwear hanging out street thug types wandering about.

The areas of town considered the "nicest" to live in are the East Hill area along Bayou Texar if you like big old southern homes, or the "east side" by the airport or the "north side" north of Nine Mile Road if you like a relatively contemporary home.

Google Earth says the elevation in the area you've indicated is only about five feet. I think you'll have a devil of a time getting homeowners insurance. Most homes south of I-10 are impossible to insure now, and require you to go into the state's high risk pool. It's not uncommon to see people who's property insurance is almost as much as their mortgage. Check with the listing agent and see what he/she says. FYI if you're ex-military, USAA won't write a policy on a home south of I-10.

 

[Benny17441]

Stu, the conditions your friends describe are those encountered in the summer months from June through September. The 8 months comprising Fall, Winter and Spring of are quite good for sailing. Swimming in warm crystal clear waters is possible 10-12 months out of the year. The proximity to tropical destinations also makes it an attractive venue. For me cold weather sailing is having to done a foulie which may happen twice in the winter months; I rather like sailing in swimming trunks and a t-shirt.

 

[taichi]

Thanks RobertSapp - that is very valuable knowledge. Probable why the realestate seams cheap!

BTW sorry I never called you last spring when I was down there - I wound up out in Navarre Beach for the week.

 

[robertsapp]

Stu, the conditions your friends describe are those encountered in the summer months from June through September. The 8 months comprising Fall, Winter and Spring of are quite good for sailing. Swimming in warm crystal clear waters is possible 10-12 months out of the year. The proximity to tropical destinations also makes it an attractive venue. For me cold weather sailing is having to done a foulie which may happen twice in the winter months; I rather like sailing in swimming trunks and a t-shirt.

Just to be clear in case others may be following this thread, I would equate the climate in Pensacola more to coastal Carolina than Central Florida. Early January through mid to late March pretty much sucks for sailing unless you're a masochist. We have a blessedly short but very real winter here, with temperatures into the 20's occasionally and fronts that bring strong north winds. We've actually had ice in our marina, and a 30 knot north wind on a 35 degree day is not this sailor's idea of a good time. April - June and Oct - Dec can be delightful, and July - Sept is OK provided you can handle being on a boat in 98 degree temps with 100% humidity and daily thunderstorms. Personally, we find sleeping onboard very difficult this time of year, because we haven't yet purchased a generator to run the A/C at anchor.

 

[robertsapp]

Thanks RobertSapp - that is very valuable knowledge. Probable why the realestate seams cheap!

BTW sorry I never called you last spring when I was down there - I wound up out in Navarre Beach for the week.

If you want to move to Pensacola (and it does have a lot of redeeming qualities) I'd recommend giving up the notion of being within walking distance of NAS, and look instead on the north side of town not too far from I-10. Any place with convenient access to the interstate will let you get to pretty much anyplace in town in 15 or 20 minutes. And with the thunderstorms and temperatures we have from May to October, you really don't want to be traveling in anything except an air conditioned vehicle anyway.

As to cheap real estate, no idea what it's like up north or what your budget is, but you can get a terrific new or nearly new three bedroom two bath for $150K to $200K, with hundreds to choose from in that range. Pretty nice homes are even available in the $120K to $150K range if you shop around. But when you start getting down around the $100K range, the neighborhoods start to get a bit questionable, even though the property may be pretty nice. But in many places in the country, that won't even buy you a room over a garage.

There is a very nice luxury apartment complex less than a mile north of the NAS rear gate that would be a great place to rent for a while and get to know the area before committing to a mortgage.

 

[taichi]

Thanks again - the place I'm looking at is a 3 story townhome that I thought would be a good start just to get my foot in the door down there, and then later I would find something nicer & use the first one for rental income. I will be giving the realtor a call today and find out about if it's even insurable - I doubt you can get a loan on it if it's not. Realestate prices there seem cheap compared to up north but then again we all have basements up here and the homes are insulated with furnaces too. I think pretty much everything down there is on a slab. I have a brother who went down there a couple years ago to do a working retirement also - They rented for awhile and then found a really nice home with a pool for 187K - I really don't like the idea of renting and it seems like it's a buyers market there so that's why I'm leaning more toward buying. You may very well be right though that it wouldn't kill me to rent for 6 months or a year to find out where I really want to be. A lot actually depends on if I want to bring my dog or leave her with family up here - hate the thought of giving her up.

 

[Benny17441]

^

 

[robertsapp]

I got a call once early one morning from a telemarketer. It was just a few minutes past 8AM. Shocked, I said, "What the hell are you doing calling me at this hour? You can't call people before 9AM." He replied, "Sir, I have a clock in front of me that tells me the time in 24 time zones, and it's after 9AM in Florida." The idiot didn't know that Pensacola was in the Central time zone and not Eastern time, and was actually argueing with me about what time it was in my own house.

That's sort of how your message makes me feel.

 

[robertsapp]

Thanks again - the place I'm looking at is a 3 story townhome that I thought would be a good start just to get my foot in the door down there, and then later I would find something nicer & use the first one for rental income. I will be giving the realtor a call today and find out about if it's even insurable - I doubt you can get a loan on it if it's not. Realestate prices there seem cheap compared to up north but then again we all have basements up here and the homes are insulated with furnaces too. I think pretty much everything down there is on a slab. I have a brother who went down there a couple years ago to do a working retirement also - They rented for awhile and then found a really nice home with a pool for 187K - I really don't like the idea of renting and it seems like it's a buyers market there so that's why I'm leaning more toward buying. You may very well be right though that it wouldn't kill me to rent for 6 months or a year to find out where I really want to be. A lot actually depends on if I want to bring my dog or leave her with family up here - hate the thought of giving her up.

Homes here are all built on slabs (or even off grade if they're really old) because if you dug a basement, you'd have a swimming pool. The water table is usually only a few feet in most places. I get your point on it being a buyers market, but I really don't see that changing for many years - there's just too much inventory on the market. So I don't think you'd suffer financially by renting first. Plus it would let you check out some delightful nearby communities like Gulf Breeze, Pace and Milton that might not even be on your radar right now, but are very desirable nearby towns.

I'm not sure I get your point about insulation and furnaces. Anything built here in the last 50 years will be well insulated, and the total energy cost for air conditioning a home in the south is considerably less than that to heat a home up north. It takes less energy to cool a home twenty degrees than it does to heat it fifty degrees.

 

[taichi]

Up here in Wisconsin it's not uncommon to run the furnace at night and the AC during the day. We would much rather sail in the cool weather than be out on a dog day when you just sit and bake in the sun. The humidity is high here too, And then there are the mosquitoes...
Oh, and after every snowstorm in the winter which is once or twice a week you waste the entire next day or two plowing, shoveling and/or blowing snow in 20 below zero - cold & wet - There's ice fishing if you like to sit and stare down a hole...
In all my travels about the most perfect weather I've been to was when I was stationed in Hawaii, but then there a cheeseburger is about 20 bucks! I was in San Diego for 8 years and it gets really hot, lots of crime, plus it's expensive too.
It's always a compromise...
We have a lot of water up here but the sailing season here is only about 5 months & it is really depressing to be putting your toys in storage so frequently - I'll be happy to get away from the cold and live my life in shorts & sandals.
Pensacola seems to be a pretty friendly town, some crime but pretty clean otherwise, unlike a lot of southern places they don't seem to mind a Yankee if your military. I can do my shopping at the exchange & commissary which is a plus. Gotta love that emerald blue water.
In Wisconsin we sit in the bar when it's cold & play pool, darts, bowling etc, been told that down there they do it when its hot... At least you can go outside and not freeze to death.

 

[taichi]

Thanks for all the input guys - this is great. Was told by the broker that the place I'm looking at needs to carry an extra flood policy & its easiest to transfer the existing policy from whoever is insuring it now. He couldn't give me a price though on what the owner is paying for it, he's gonna find out. I realize that you can't believe everything a broker tells you so I would call the insurer and make sure. But you are right that I could probably find a great place to rent awhile and let the landlord worry about flooding.

Thanks so much - very cool to be getting this kind of advice from fellow sailors.

 

[Stu Jackson]

We're renting until we figure out what to do when we grow up!

Buying something and then trying to sell it shortly thereafter make literally no financial sense in this market. You will lose money. Yeah, you can buy cheap, but then you have to go through finding another buyer who likes just what you do - hard to guess if that'd happen. Think about it.

Good luck, wherever you choose to go.

 

[robertsapp]

If you're a social boater, you'll love Big Lagoon. There's a protected bay just south of the Naval Air Station that dozens and dozens of boats anchor in on most weekends. Sometimes a hundred or more. There'll be BBQ on the beach and lots of people dinghying around visiting with each other. Launch Google Earth and search on Robertson Island Pensacola to see it. It's a great place to sit on your boat and watch the Blue Angels fly.