Dunedin
December 11, 2013 01:23 PM
If you’ve been following this blog, you know that one purpose of our travels is to find that perfect little place where we’d like to spend the rest of our lives. The Denver area, where we lived a total of fourteen years, is great, but it’s expensive and busy and the winters are too long. Several west coast towns showed promise, but the cool, cloudy, wet weather is just too much for us. Asheville looked like the perfect place “on paper,” but the reality of the place was different—it’s a nice place to visit but not where we want to live. Pensacola offers a lot, but it’s a little remote and too spread out.
So we came to Dunedin cautiously hoping that it might be the place. We’d done a lot of Web research and had talked to a number of people who have spent time in Dunedin, all of whom spoke highly of the town. Our hopes were up, but they’ve been up before.
Well, it’s too soon to commit, but Dunedin may just be the place. On our first day here, Ann decided that she could live here, and I wasn’t far behind her. “It feels like home,” she said. No place is perfect, but this one is feeling really good!
First the positives. Dunedin is in a great location. It’s situated on the coast west of Tampa, north of Clearwater and south of Palm Harbor. It’s protected from Gulf of Mexico storms by two beautiful barrier islands, Caladesi and Honeymoon. The location provides easy access to just about anything a human could need. The old downtown is a few blocks long along Main Street, ending at the marina. The downtown area has a “village” feel about it, small and highly walkable. The people are noticeably friendly, the weather is wonderful, there are no vagrants, and real estate prices are reasonable, particularly for a coastal area. Oh, and it’s very dog-friendly, to the point that its nickname is “Dogedin.”
The other interesting thing is that Ann and I both immediately felt like we were in South Africa, Ann’s home of birth. I know the weather and rich flora has a lot to do with that, but there’s more to it than that. Dunedin was settled by two Scotsmen and retains its Scottish/British heritage to this day. The name, “Dunedin,” is a simplified form of "Dùn Èideann,” the modern Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, Scotland. The local schools all have one or more pipe and drum bands. In fact, the Scottish Highlander Band is one of the biggest and most prestigious organizations at Dunedin High School. Florida's largest and oldest Highland Games and Celtic Festival are held each April in Dunedin. This strong Scottish/British heritage, coupled with the tropical flora and the sunny coastal weather, results in a town that would fit perfectly along the Indian Ocean coast of South African.
Finally, there are two brew pubs and a craft beer tap room in the downtown area which, as you probably know, is important to me. One, Dunedin Brewery, is Florida’s oldest craft beer brewery. They brew great beers, serve great food, and have an exceptionally friendly staff. It’s the perfect place to spend some leisure time.
The negatives are few but important. Heat, humidity, and bugs are what you’d expect in any subtropical area—a nuisance—but hurricanes are a different matter. Although the last major hurricane to hit the Tampa Bay area was in 1921, Tampa and the surrounding coastal communities are number one on the list of cities “most vulnerable for major impact by a hurricane.” It may not happen for another 92 years or it may happen next year, but when a Category 5 hurricane does strike, it will devastate the little town of Dunedin. I’m not concerned for our safety. Given the fact that we’re retired and that forecasts of hurricanes come days or weeks in advance, we can leave the area with our “too precious to lose” possessions and sit it out somewhere. But losing a home we’ve fallen in love with will be tough.
But there’s another big and much more immediate negative: flood insurance. Homeowner’s insurance does not cover flooding, so if you own a home in a flood plain, you have to buy a separate policy. Until recently, FEMA subsidized such policies, making them affordable, but in 2012 Congress passed and the President signed into law the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act which eliminates the subsidy for newly-purchased homes, second homes, and a few others. Flood insurance was already expensive, with many people paying upwards of $2,000 each year for their policies, but now the price is expected to rise as much as 1,000%. In one recent example, a family’s $4,300 annual policy premium increased to almost $44,000. To be clear, let me state that this isn’t just a Florida problem. People living near streams and lakes in unlikely places like Colorado and Arizona will be also see huge increases in premiums.
So it seems like the solution would be to simply buy a home that’s outside the flood plain, but it’s not that simple. Many of the older homes in flood-prone areas are owned by people on fixed incomes who will not be able to pay the higher premiums. As a result, the market is going to be inundated with homes, lowering prices. Many will remain unsold and the owners will be forced to walk away, leaving the home in foreclosure. This will cause home prices to drop even further, resulting in even more foreclosures. The worst case scenario is a total meltdown of the housing market in impacted areas.
Will it happen, or will the government step in? Given the utter incompetence of our current Congress, one would be a fool to expect them to do anything. In any case, this means that if we decide to move to this area we’ll probably live in our motorhome, parked in a long-term spot at a local RV park, until things have settled.
So what are we going to do? We’re going to enjoy our remaining four days here and then move on to Disney World and then Key West. We’ll come back to Dunedin for a short visit in late January before we continue our travels north. We don’t plan to force the issue. If it’s the right place, it will call us back.
Oh, by the way, Muffin says she’d give Dunedin a thumbs up—if she had a thumb.
Alan
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