Moving to Orlando- I'm almost there! Update 1/4 Arrival

Reading along and I'm so jealous! We're currently house shopping. Looks like you're budget is close to ours, and you have WAY better options. We have a total seller's market right now, so $250k gets you a house that needs $50k in updates. I'm so annoyed.

I had an issue with Equifax too. I had a credit card that fell behind almost 7 years ago (dog was in ICU and ALL my money for a couple months went to saving her). I paid it off as soon as I wasn't paying crazy vet bills and closed it. I noticed when we circled around buying a house earlier this summer that they had it marked as an unpaid charge off so I disputed because it was paid before getting to the point of charge off. The other two fixed it in days and Equifax took the full month. Then when they fixed it, they fixed the status but re-aged it so that even though it should fall off in October it was saying it would report for another 6 1/2 years! So I had to dispute again (the long way since I couldn't do it online a 2nd time) and they took ANOTHER month to fix it. I was SO angry.

Luckily it updated before we actually found a house worth bidding on and we were able to get approved for a 2.5% interest rate. Unfortunately we got outbid so all that stress was for nothing. Gah.

Anyway, long story to say I TOTALLY feel your pain with Equifax. These companies make billions collecting and selling our data--they should be held more responsible for maintaining accurate records and quickly rectifying when disputed.
 
Not to hijack the thread but I had been renting in an apartment past year when I moved to Orlando, now I just bought a townhome! So excited.

But orange county is crazy expensive, property taxes are insane
 
I've always wanted to move to Florida but I know I never will, only 2 of my 3 kids want to make the move so I won't go if they all won't move (they're all adults, I'm not leaving little kids).

One thing that I've noticed from people chiming in is that nobody has mentioned snakes. I've been told that they are pretty bad down there. If I would every move there, I wouldn't be able to do a house b/c I'm deathly afraid of snakes so I would most likely have to look for a condo or townhouse. Florida residents - is my information wrong about this?
Yep, there are plenty of snakes/lizards/frogs/bugs, part of the Florida experience. This is one reason that, if you get a house with a pool you want it to be in a screened room. You get pretty tired of fishing frogs and bugs out of the pool. Funny, I'm typing this and a snake just slithered past the screen room door. They are surprising, but are way more afraid of you than you are of them, (the black snakes, not the rattlers). They will take off really quickly if you get near them.
 
We've been in Florida for 9 years, it's grown a lot but there are a lot more houses now to choose from. The Clermont/Minneola area has plenty of shopping and restaurants for you. Davenport has also grown, they have a some nice new shopping and restaurants. We've lived in Kissimmee, Davenport, Clermont, Eustis and now Lakeland, all of them are growing. If you want to be near Disney, Clermont or Davenport would put you pretty close. I'd avoid a development with a lot of vacation rental properties, it's great when the houses are vacant in-between rentals but annoying when renters are getting home from the parks at midnight and make a ton of noise by the pool. They probably didn't realize the neighborhood was full of home owners that had to get up early for work. You'll enjoy living here so much, hope it goes smoothly for you.
 


My daughter spent about a month trying to get them to clear up the same thing you are working on with no success. She ended up going on LinkedIn and finding an Equifax VP. She sent an email and explained the situation and said "Please help!". I think she only had a week left before her closing. Someone replied to her email and cleared it up in a day or two.

I hope you can get this cleared up quickly and good luck with your move.:)

I'm so annoyed. I keep wanting to call but have been holding myself back. That is a bit ridiculous you have to go so far as to contact a VP in order for them to do their job :(

We're not in that dire of straights yet, we are going to house hunt in early October but we would like to go ahead and get the pre-approval letter sorted and figure out which bank we're going with for the mortgage.

This thread title caught my eye. 😀

As a frequent visitor to Florida from Scotland I've got to ask, what is 'Florida Man' ? Im guessing its not very complimentary ? 😂 🤷‍♂️

The way Florida Man works, I believe, is people put in their DOB or anything else and google 'March 2 Florida Man'. And there is usually always a wacky newspaper headline of people doing weird/stupid stuff in Florida. You know how on the news, they'll say something like....New York City man handed out ten dollar bills to people on the subway today.

Reading along and I'm so jealous! We're currently house shopping. Looks like you're budget is close to ours, and you have WAY better options. We have a total seller's market right now, so $250k gets you a house that needs $50k in updates. I'm so annoyed.

I had an issue with Equifax too. I had a credit card that fell behind almost 7 years ago (dog was in ICU and ALL my money for a couple months went to saving her). I paid it off as soon as I wasn't paying crazy vet bills and closed it. I noticed when we circled around buying a house earlier this summer that they had it marked as an unpaid charge off so I disputed because it was paid before getting to the point of charge off. The other two fixed it in days and Equifax took the full month. Then when they fixed it, they fixed the status but re-aged it so that even though it should fall off in October it was saying it would report for another 6 1/2 years! So I had to dispute again (the long way since I couldn't do it online a 2nd time) and they took ANOTHER month to fix it. I was SO angry.

Luckily it updated before we actually found a house worth bidding on and we were able to get approved for a 2.5% interest rate. Unfortunately we got outbid so all that stress was for nothing. Gah.

Anyway, long story to say I TOTALLY feel your pain with Equifax. These companies make billions collecting and selling our data--they should be held more responsible for maintaining accurate records and quickly rectifying when disputed.

Where are you house shopping? Not Florida?

That story is crazy. I really hope they resolve my problem without having to open another dispute. Sigh.

Not to hijack the thread but I had been renting in an apartment past year when I moved to Orlando, now I just bought a townhome! So excited.

But orange county is crazy expensive, property taxes are insane

Where did you buy a townhome?! That's awesome, congrats!
 


I love both of those house options, they're so different from each other! The first one has classic Florida vibes with all the tile and warm neutral beige tones (plus HELLO to that screened in back yard). But the 2nd one is just so cool looking, with an older more classic vibe.

Hopefully your credit stuff gets sorted out soon, that's so annoying.
 
Yep, there are plenty of snakes/lizards/frogs/bugs, part of the Florida experience. This is one reason that, if you get a house with a pool you want it to be in a screened room. You get pretty tired of fishing frogs and bugs out of the pool. Funny, I'm typing this and a snake just slithered past the screen room door. They are surprising, but are way more afraid of you than you are of them, (the black snakes, not the rattlers). They will take off really quickly if you get near them.

And that's why I don't think I could move down there:scared:, at least I could never have a yard which would make my dogs very sad.:(
 
Where are you house shopping? Not Florida?

That story is crazy. I really hope they resolve my problem without having to open another dispute. Sigh.

I'm in WV so a TOTALLY different market and you'd think would be significantly cheaper than central FL. But we have a booming market right now. If a house has been listed for more than a week before going Pending you have to question what's wrong with it. It's insane. I guess we just didn't get hit with layoffs and unemployment in this area like some others because everyone is buying right now.
 
I have been reading along with your moving posts and am excited for you and your family! I thought I wanted to move to Florida but after living there near Kissimmee briefly from Aug-Dec we were so ready to get away from the humidity. We ended up moving to central VA and still didn't escape the humidity much. We were originally from the Pacific Northwest so it was quite a change for us. Good luck with your new home! (I also wanted to just share to be careful and not list the address or show pics of where you actually will be moving to on here - just a side of caution to keep safe :) )
 
How exciting for you! Following along...from KC! My husband looked at me just yesterday and said "When are we going to finally just move closer to Disney?" Uh tomorrow??? Unfortunately our baby needs us for instate tuition if he goes to a MO college but he has been eyeballing University of Kansas and if he decides on that maybe we could head that way! Imagine, no winters. Also a solution for all the anti snake people: get a Jack Russell. We were overrun with snakes because of building going on around us and we got Daisy and not a snake in sight for 12 years!
 

Equifax finally dropped the delinquent account off my credit report!

Full steam ahead with figuring out who we want to use as our lender and getting our pre-approval letter.

We've confirmed our Orlando dates with our realtor, Sean from the DIS' Moving to Orlando group. As soon as we choose our lender and get our pre-approval letter we are good to go.

We are going to spend a lot of time this week and the over the weekend finalizing which houses we would like to tour. We're also going to make up a plan of which neighborhoods we want to drive through and visit.

I think we're also going to be bad and take a day/morning away from house/neighborhood hunting and do 1 day at Universal to see the HHN houses. Right now Bride of Frankenstein and Tooth Fairy are open, but there are some heavy rumors that the Icons house and Beetlejuice houses will be open for October. Fingers crossed.

Right now our plan is to leave here on Friday Oct 2. Then we'll be in Orlando house hunting until Thursday, then we'll head out. Hopefully with a house, or at least some options and a good familiarization with neighborhoods.

I love both of those house options, they're so different from each other! The first one has classic Florida vibes with all the tile and warm neutral beige tones (plus HELLO to that screened in back yard). But the 2nd one is just so cool looking, with an older more classic vibe.

Hopefully your credit stuff gets sorted out soon, that's so annoying.

I just wish I could teleport the Haines City house closer to the parks. But I guess we can't have everything.

I have been reading along with your moving posts and am excited for you and your family! I thought I wanted to move to Florida but after living there near Kissimmee briefly from Aug-Dec we were so ready to get away from the humidity. We ended up moving to central VA and still didn't escape the humidity much. We were originally from the Pacific Northwest so it was quite a change for us. Good luck with your new home! (I also wanted to just share to be careful and not list the address or show pics of where you actually will be moving to on here - just a side of caution to keep safe :) )

I haven't lived in many places that don't have bad humidity during the summer. I grew up in PA, went to college in Ohio, then moved to Austin. They don't really have humidity, but they think they do. Then back to the midwest for Kansas City, which does have humidity. Maybe we should have tried the Pacific Northwest, sounds nice.

Yep, that is a good reminder for us not to show our final address. I'll prob show a picture of the final house, but you're right, I should be careful about the address or any other identifying info.

How exciting for you! Following along...from KC! My husband looked at me just yesterday and said "When are we going to finally just move closer to Disney?" Uh tomorrow??? Unfortunately our baby needs us for instate tuition if he goes to a MO college but he has been eyeballing University of Kansas and if he decides on that maybe we could head that way! Imagine, no winters. Also a solution for all the anti snake people: get a Jack Russell. We were overrun with snakes because of building going on around us and we got Daisy and not a snake in sight for 12 years!

He can look at Florida colleges hahahaha.

We had a taste of no winters, having lived in Austin for 2 years. Winters are so overrated. We'll still visit my family in PA for Christmas, so it's not like we won't have a chance at a white Christmas. Though to be honest, it's been a while since I've seen one of those.

Hmm, so if we see a lot of snakes...get a Daisy :) Good to know.
 
We will be empty nesters soon and we have decided that we want to live near Mickey. When we tell friends and family they think we are nuts. I do not see WDW as a theme park it is an escape and a happy place. When my husband I took our kids< our dream is to work on Main street USA. We will be moving to Florida in 2022 and are going in December for a trip to WDW and to research areas. We are returning in June for a cruise and more research. I look on Zillow regularly. Best of luck to you!!
 
Celebration has an all suite ( condo & hotel rooms ) Resort that many do not know about. Melia Celebration has some owner units and also some for hotel bookings and allow pets., in case you have to find temporary.
A discount code might pop up with initial search . I drive past all the time and think it might be great for my daughters family when they visit.
You will see them For Sale also on realtor.com and I laugh at monthly maintenance shock!
We did almost the exact thing Nov 2018 from Phoenix. Searched for a quick weekend trip in October and found something to rent temporarily and still searching. I am thinking about waiting for the new Celebration Island Subdivisions currently being built for a condo or townhouse.
You really should not rush into that decision unless you find something perfect. The traffic and getting a feel for the different neighborhoods and Towns, is a lot. I can see the traffic coming to a standstill every morn & night on Interstate from my balcony! That would be my first priority.
Location Location Location ( You will get the reference when you watch the new Awesome Planet Film in the Soarin’ building at Epcot)
Good luck! Keep us posted with daily trip report.
 
I've always wanted to move to Florida but I know I never will, only 2 of my 3 kids want to make the move so I won't go if they all won't move (they're all adults, I'm not leaving little kids).

One thing that I've noticed from people chiming in is that nobody has mentioned snakes. I've been told that they are pretty bad down there. If I would every move there, I wouldn't be able to do a house b/c I'm deathly afraid of snakes so I would most likely have to look for a condo or townhouse. Florida residents - is my information wrong about this?
We live SE of Orlando and in 6 years I have never seen a snake on our property.
 
Hi everyone.

Sorry I've gone MIA lately.

So we just got back this Friday from our house hunting trip. I am beyond worn out. My project for work ended in Sept, so we had a monstrous final week on the project with several work nights until midnight. My boyfriend and I then left that Friday to drive to Orlando. The drive turned out to be pretty brutal, about 18 hours in all so we spent one night at a hotel on the road each way.

I am so wiped out. It wasn't your typical vacation either, we spent 18+ hours on the road to get there, then spent tons of hours each day in the car driving around neighborhoods and visiting houses.

To get immediately to the point, we do not have a house yet. We did put a bid on one, we bid asking price minus 5k in closing costs. I am not sure what the winning bid offered, but it was over asking.

So this is what our schedule ended up being:

Left KC at 2 on Friday Oct 2. Stayed overnight somewhere in Tennessee.

Arrived in Orlando around 10 pm Saturday night. We stayed at a new La Quinta near Sea World on I drive. It was very nice and the rooms were fantastic, we had a nice sitting area and a desk to do our house hunting. We chose La Quinta because we also brought our dog. He is getting older and would much rather do a long road trip and stay near us in a hotel than be in a noisy and chaotic kennel. Last time we left him he did not eat and lost about 5 pounds (he is only 32) and was very skinny.

Sunday morning we talked to our realtor and discovered that out of 30+ houses on our house hunting spreadsheet that we had worked on 5 days previously, only 2 were available.

That was a nice 'welcome to the Orlando housing market'.

So on Sunday we slept in a bit to recover and then went to see a house in Minneola first. The house itself was nice, but we didn't like the neighborhood at all. It was about a 40 minute drive to the parks. We didn't want to be that far away unless the house was fantastic and we just didn't like the neighborhood.

Next we went to see a house in the 4 corners/Champion's Gate area. They were asking $284 for the house. It was only 1621 square feet and seemed small and underwhelming for that high price, so we passed on that one as well. It did have a screened in pool but no fence, and we'd really like a fence for our dog and privacy.

531894

That was it for the day with houses and it was starting to get dark, so we went to Disney Springs to get some dinner and go shopping. Springs was pretty crowded, we went into Uniqlo and the Co-Op then ended up doing a mobile order from D-luxe Burger. The food was just ok and we were pretty tired so we got back to the room and went to bed early.

Monday morning we had no houses to look at, so we spent the morning driving around and checking out neighborhoods. We focused on Kissimmee. We discovered that we don't like most of the Kissimmee neighborhoods. We liked the Eagle's Point area and that was about all. We also went to the Hunter's Creek area. We liked a lot of those streets, but the houses there are usually above our budget (300k max).

Since we were tired of being in the car and we had no houses to see, we spent the rest of the day at Epcot. I can write more about the park days and include pics later.

We were back to our hotel around 9 and to bed early again. We woke up around 6 on Tuesday and drove out to Clermont. Once again, we didn't find too many neighborhoods that really leapt out at us. We did like Eagle Ridge and Orange Tree. Even with the eventual bypass that will be built to lessen the drive time to the parks, Clermont seemed far away and didn't jump out at us. We did go to the downtown area just to look around. One of our favorite houses was in downtown Clermont, the arts and crafts that was at the top of our budget. It was already pending.

531893

We had one house to look at this day. It was in the 4 Corners area. We were in love with the neighborhood and really liked the house, so we decided to put in a bid for asking plus some money for closing costs. We ended up getting word on Wednesday that we did not win the house.

After we spent the morning driving around, we went to MK around 1 pm and stayed until closing. Then we had dinner at the Wave at the Contemporary and then back to bed early.

Wednesday we finally had some houses to look at that had come up for sale over the past 2 days.

We started out by driving around Davenport. We finally found a bunch of neighborhoods we liked in the 4 Corners/Champion's Gate area. We had five houses that we couldn't get in to see, but we drove by the houses to see if we liked the neighborhood. Big surprise, we only ended up liking one of the neighborhoods. We couldn't get in to see it before we left, but our realtor said he would do a virtual tour for us when he could get in.

Just to be sure we decided to drive to Haines City to see what it was like. Our initial favorite house in Haines City had just been taken off the market a week before.

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Apparently it's in a neighborhood called Storybook, which turned out to be so amazing. It was by far our favorite area but it was so far away from anything.

We decided to drive through Celebration right as it was getting dark. I had no idea that Celebration is like townhome central. So many townhomes. We ended the night going to Earl of Sandwich at Disney Springs to take dinner back to the room.

Next day was Thursday and we were up pretty early to drive back. We spent the night somewhere in Illinois and got back to KC right at noon, which is when our rental was due back.

Even though we didn't end up leaving with a house, I feel like it was still a valuable experience. We found some neighborhoods we liked and found others to stay away from. I think we settled on the 4 Corners/Champion's Gate area and we now know to focus our search there.

Since we got back, our realtor gave us a virtual tour yesterday of a house we absolutely love. We put a bid and should hear back late tonight or early tomorrow. So fingers definitely crossed.

We also had a virtual tour of another favorite today, it was in a great neighborhood and we drove past before we left Orlando. The inside ended up being...not great. We decided not to bid on it.

So that's pretty much where we're at right now. Fingers crossed we get the nice house and we can be done with all this.
 
I'm enjoying watching this journey. My wife and I are thinking of retiring down here down the road, and always interesting to see the different things that people find important (or unimportant).
 

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