Jacksonville Florida Real Estate

Fay is gone and our area is doing great!

As usual, the storm has passed through our area without the damage that is frequently experienced in other areas of Florida.

Riding through the World Golf Village tonight to eat at Caddyshack, the lack of damage was evident.  Sure, the rakes need to come out to clear up the small limbs that came down from the oaks and pines.  There was one large tree down in King and Bear but fell away from the road toward the perimeter.  There were a few very small oaks and pines that had fallen, some tilted traffic signs and a tad of standing water but that was it.

Some areas of Jacksonville and St. Augustine had power outages, but we fared well in World Golf Village, and kept our power the whole time.

Fay must like it here

I woke up this morning to conditions that are the same as yesterday. Strong winds and temperamental rain have been plaguing us now since Wednesday. As usual, we are quite fortunate in this area. We live in a newer home, and sometimes literally have to look outside at times to see that Fay's wind is still tearing through. We live in World Golf Village and we've had power the whole time Fay has been hanging around.

We rode out Isabel a few years ago in a new home in Northern Virginia (the DC Metro area) and that home talked to us the whole time. She moaned and groaned and creaked. We even lost power, something that was an extremely rare occurrence in that area. We never even lost power in snow storms.

In contrast, we moved back to this area, met Bonnie and Charley, and noticed right away the difference in the construction requirements. Here, the new homes are silent and don't generally complain. Florida is constantly updating the constructions standards for homes and it really shows.

The center of Fay is now reportedly in Alachua County, so hopefully we'll start clearing out here in the next few hours and life (and real estate) can continue.

Fay…where will you go?

We're on a tropical storm watch in the Jacksonville and St. Augustine area.   Yesterday when I was talking to people it struck me that everyone seemed to be so complacent about her.  As I'm sitting here starting to write this post a heavy band of rain from Fay moved in.

Okay, back to the complacency. We have been very blessed in this area. The hurricanes seem to have forgotten we exist. Because of that most area residents seem to just roll their eyes and mutter "sure" when they get wind of a hurricane. I guess it is the more dramatic of us who tend to buy Publix out of water…just in case, of course.

To throw an analogy at you, pretend we live on I-4 headed to Disney World. We see all of those cars passing, but know they are not coming to see us. They are simply passing by on the way to the place they really want to go. That is similar to northeast Florida's relationship with hurricanes. So many have waved at us on their way past…it seems that no one pays attention anymore.

Because of this I'm afraid our area is really in trouble if a bad one decides to stop in instead of going past us.

I'm not a weather forecaster and don't even pretend to be. None of us know what this (or any other) hurricane is going to do. Please stay tuned in to the threat and make the assessment about what is right for you and your family. The models change constantly, hurricanes are totally unpredictable…don't make assumptions. Be safe.