Large Sinkhole Swallows Street and Threatens Homes in Spring Hill Florida

It’s scary to think you could find the perfect house and then realize there is something terribly wrong!  Normally the “big” items are caught during a home inspection and you either receive leverage on negotiating the house’s price or you have Sink hole opens up north of tampa in spring hill communitythe opportunity to walk away.

The only problem is when it happens to be a sinkhole it is difficult to predetermine the problem.  Sinkholes in Florida are much like floods or even hurricanes, you know if you live in an area that is prone to these “acts of God” but you cannot tell the future so you never know if or when a sinkhole will actually occur.  This is exactly what happened in a neighborhood just 50 miles north of Tampa and no, this won’t be the first or the last.

On July 20th a sinkhole opened up in Spring Hill, FL right in the road and adjacent front yards 40-yards wide and 30-feet deep.  County officials will investigate the hole to determine the next action.  Engineers will look at geological test to ensure the hole is not going to grow even further.  No one was hurt but until the investigation is complete three of the closest home owners are awaiting the results and the fourth homeowner is planning to move out.

For homeowners the most important things to keep in mind about sinkholes are:

  1. Insurance costs and effects the sinkhole would have.
  2. Acts of God can happen almost anywhere.
  3. Knowing your neighborhood is more important than how much you love the house.

Bottom line is Florida is all limestone and when the water table drops the cavities under the surface can open up forming a sink hole.  With an increase in property development, water management (or there lack of) and erosion it is sometimes a recipe for sinkholes.   There is an upside though, you can get this information and have the ground tested by professional engineers.  There is always a chance something not so favorable could happen but do your due diligence of the areas you are looking to live in.  Much like living in flood zones, sinkholes are tracked and state geologists are working on creating a statewide map showing where sinkholes are most likely to form.  The fieldwork they completed has offered a “relative vulnerability” map that has proved to be 93 percent successful in the plot area predicting where sinkholes will form.  The plot area includes 230 locations in the Columbia, Hamilton and Suwannee counties.

If you are in the process of searching for a new home you will definitely benefit from the information provided on our MoveMap! You can research all kinds of information about your potential home, neighborhood and surrounding community so you can make sure the home you buy is the perfect home for you!

Should You Buy a Home Close to a Fire Station in Florida?

When you’re looking for a new place to live, moving close to a fire station has both pros and cons.  Essentially, the cost-benefit analysis comes down to two factors: noise and response time to an incident.  Let’s discuss the noise issue first.  Fire Buying a home near a fire stationtrucks are…loud.  Truck operators blare their siren/horn in order to alert oncoming traffic that the truck is entering the street and to warn motorists to get out of the way, so that the truck can get to the accident scene as quickly as possible.  Individual city noise ordinances vary, but in most cases fire trucks activate their sirens as they are leaving their station, regardless of the time of day.  Therefore, you can safely assume that the fire station near your home will make noise and you will simply have to deal with it.  Resident annoyance due to sirens/horns is not a major concern for the folks who are fighting fires and saving lives.  Since you can expect noise, the operative question becomes how much?

In order to answer this question, you need to ask a couple more.  First, how many fire stations are in your community?  Have a look at our MoveMap to see the number of fire stations in your area.  If you live in a sprawling suburb and there is only one fire station, you can bet that it’s going to be fairly busy.  On the other hand, if the fire stations are distributed evenly throughout your area, you can expect less noise.  Next, inquire if the fire station is full time or part time.  Additionally, ask whether the station just responds to fires or if it offers emergency medical support as well.  In Florida, fire stations do much more than just fight fires, so knowing which events the station responds to is crucial to determining how busy it will be.  If you’ve got a couple of hours to kill you can always sit outside and observe or ask the neighbors.  This will provide a little firsthand experience to supplement answers to the above mentioned questions.

Although fire stations can present noise problems for some people, living close to them offers benefits as well.  The most obvious among these is reduced response time to an incident.  While incident response time depends on many factors, such as the amount of traffic, time of day, and staffing level, residents living close to a fire station can generally expect faster service in the event of an emergency.  In fact, folks that live sufficiently close can have lower insurance premiums than their more distant peers!  Insurance breaks aside, proximity to a fire station or hospital is an important factor for elderly persons and those with unpredictable medical conditions.  A more esoteric, but still important factor to consider is simply the peace of mind that comes with knowing that if an emergency occurs, help is only a few blocks away.  Finally, Florida is prone to hurricanes and emergency response centers like fire stations have a very high priority when it comes to repairing the electric grid.  If your home happens to be on the same part of the grid as the fire station, you can expect to get your power (and therefore, air conditioning) back more quickly than your neighbors.

So we’ve established that living very near a fire station presents both benefits and costs.  Whether or not you should live close to one depends on your unique situation.  Anecdotally, most people say that they get used to the truck noise and that it doesn’t wake them up at night or bother them all that much.  However, if you plan to resell you home in the future you should take time to consider the perceived impact proximity to the station will have on your home value/time on market.  While no definitive study has been done (to our knowledge), the common perception is that living close to a noise source like a fire station can negatively impact home values.  On the other hand, close proximity can actually be a selling point for people with certain medical conditions or concerns about fast emergency response time.  We encourage you to check out our MoveMap and take a look at how close your prospective home is to a fire station.  Then consider how much things like noise and response time matter to you.

Homes Near Correctional Facilities In Orlando FL: Should I Be Worried?

Prisons, jails and work-release centers are prime examples of so-called unwanted land uses.  Unsurprisingly, many home buyers and Orlando Correctional Facilitesrenters try to avoid living in areas close to a correctional facility.  The reasons are not hard to imagine – prospective residents fear a higher crime rate in neighborhoods near a prison and that they might have a hard time reselling their home.  By looking at the MoversAtlas MoveMap you can see that neighborhoods close to prisons in Orlando, FL  have median income and home ownership rates slightly lower than in other areas of the community.  What’s interesting is that this link is not nearly as pronounced as might be expected.

The relationship between prisons, property values, crime rates and other statistics that affect homeowners is actually quite complex and a fair amount of debate revolves around the subject.  As we discussed earlier, most peoples’ perception is that the presence of a prison in a community lowers property values, increases the crime rate and reduces quality of life for residents.  However, at least one study conducted by Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University in conjunction with the US Department of Justice found that these beliefs are false.

The study examined 7 prisons across the country and using statistical techniques (a regression analysis) found that in all but one instance, the presence of a prison did not have a statistically significant effect on property values.  Interestingly, Realtors were also surveyed about how the presence of a prison affected their ability to sell a home.  Generally speaking, Realtors believed that correctional facilities had little to no impact on the sale price of a home and only two reported losing a sale due to the presence of a prison.

Likewise, the study found that prisons did not adversely affect residents’ quality of life or increase the crime rate (in many instances the crime rate was actually lower around prisons).  Using the median income and home ownership figures on our MoveMap as a rough indicator of neighborhood economic health seems to confirm the study’s findings.  Stay tuned, we’re working on adding parcel values to the MoveMap as well, so it will be interesting to see what actual home values look like in areas close to a correctional facility.

Now we’ll briefly discuss what types of correctional facilities are located in Orlando.  Of the 6 points you can find on the map, 5 are work release centers and 1 is the Orange County Jail.  Work release programs are designed to gradually reintegrate inmates back into the community by allowing them to work at legitimate jobs towards the end of their confinement.

Generally speaking, inmates convicted of the more serious violent crimes are not eligible for work release programs; only sufficiently trustworthy prisoners or those who can be adequately monitored are allowed to do work release (a full breakdown of who is/is not eligible can be found here: http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/inmates/wr.html).  There aren’t any perimeter fences around work release centers, but inmates have to remain at the center when not working or attending programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.  Inmates participating in work release are allowed to leave jail for a work and return to serve their time during the evenings or weekends. Below is an example of one of the work release centers in Orlando, Florida:

Bridges of Orlando is located at 2011 Mercy Drive Orlando, 32808.  It is a work release center that specializes in treating people with substance abuse issues and drug related crimes.  Their program entails interrupting chemical dependence, initiating physical and mental rehabilitation and implementing a long term recovery plan.

Jails are a bit different than work release centers as they are designed primarily to hold persons awaiting sentencing.  Work release centers on the other hand, house inmates that have already been sentenced and in many cases are near the end of their confinement.  Jails typically hold inmates for short periods of time, such as when they are awaiting a trial or serving a brief sentence of one year or less.  Counties generally operate jails.

We hope that this blog post has been informative; if you’d like to see if there are any correctional institutions in your area, check out our MoveMap.