WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Affordability and the high cost of living in Florida are issues that WPTV has covered for years. This week, we spoke with a local couple who decided to leave the Sunshine State.
About 700 miles from Palm Beach County, Rene Barajas and Sydney Buckley found their dream home in Greenville, South Carolina.
"There was no single family, even starter home, that was within our budget," Buckley said, referring to their brief South Florida home search before pivoting north.
WATCH BELOW: First-time homebuyers flee Florida, find 'much cheaper' home in South Carolina
Buckley outlined why they finally decided to make the move.
"We started looking seriously at homes in the Carolinas and seeing how much more affordable they were, even with state taxes and new things you have to pay for here, it still comes out to be much less money."
The couple, who are in their early 30s, had been renting in Boynton Beach for about $2,000 a month before buying their new house in the Palmetto State last September.
They said they bought a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house with a backyard for a base price of $315,000 before then adding on a screened-in patio and updated appliances.
"It was still much cheaper than anything we could have gotten in Florida," Buckley said.
North and South Carolina are popular destinations for many Florida residents who are feeling the financial pinch of living in the Sunshine State, especially with high housing costs.
"What we've seen is Florida has effectively chopped off the bottom two rungs of the ladder, and there really is no place for people to go," former state Sen. Jeff Brandes of the Florida Policy Project said.
Brandes said reform is needed to remedy the problem.
"It's a really interesting time in the market, a challenging time, definitely one that needs state policy to rethink and come up with a comprehensive statewide policy for housing, it doesn't have one today," he says.
Brandes recommends new policies that allow for smaller lot sizes and multi-family dwellings that can look like single-family structures.
"There is a lot of luxury development," said Samir Goel, founder of Esusu, a financial technology company, referring to Florida. "The affordable bedrock of housing is less invested in right now."
Esusu is currently partnering with Zillow to help make rental payments count towards credit ratings, offering a boost for renters to become homebuyers.
"It's a product called Credit Climb, and that makes it accessible to any renter regardless of who your landlord is or who your renter is," Goel said
A recent study by Consumer Affairs ranked Florida dead last for renters in the country, with residents spending 37% of their income on housing.
Goel said his firm's research found 67 percent of Florida renters felt like they were treading water, just making the rent every month.
Barajas and Buckley said that's how they were feeling last year.
"It did feel that way in Florida," Buckley said. "We got a notice before we left, and they were raising the rent, and I'm sure they were doing that everywhere."
