To answer the other question...
The east coast of Florida north of PBC is a mixed bag. The mid-coast used to have plenty of middle-class engineers and techs, VRB has Piper and most of the other places were a mix of touristy and retirement communities until you got to JAX, which is a big military town. The long and the short was once you got north of PBC, it was a fairly consistent mix of retirement areas, tourist spots, AF/NASA support, and rural areas. It had been like that for decades.
There's been a shift in the last 10-15 years. The high dollar part of Palm Beach County has pushed into Martin County, with the more moderately priced communities getting pushed farther north. Daytona experienced some pretty huge & rapid growth as being part of the I-4 corridor and there have been some pockets of high dollar spots grow up as people move north of PBC and south of JAX.
On the other hand, with the pullback in NASA ops, in conjunction with the real estate bust, some places have been hit really hard. There are some REALLY tough spots along the coast. The places that have built up have done so in the irritatingly homogeneous way the SW part of the state did after the completion of I-75 from TPA south through Ft. Myers/Naples area.
Orlando sucked in some stuff and changed the mid-State dynamic as it grew from a wide spot in the road in the 70s to a 2nd Vegas. The rural areas of native Florida savanna have been essentially overrun.
Not to say that there aren't some cool and/or kitschy spots, but do your due diligence.
JAX is a difference scene, as is the Dade/Broward/Palm Beach area, which should really be considered a different state.
The west coast/Tampa/points north are different still, and the points north of Orlando along the line connecting Ocala, Tallahassee are even more different. The panhandle has two strips: "coast" and "not coast" and they couldn't be more different from each other. Travel 30 miles west of TLH and you might as well be in rural Arkansas (nothing wrong with that).
Pensacola has more in common with JAX than the rest of that part of the state.
Richman
