Here is a nice facebook photo album of the Tennessee Titans Cheerleaders , during a photo shoot on the beach and at some of my favorite places to visit in Seaside, Florida.

 

Highway 30A is a 20 mile stretch of scenic highway running along the shore between Destin and Panama City Beach Florida.  It is known for its beautiful beaches, restaurants and planned communities including Rosemary Beach, Seaside and Watercolor just to name a few.  30A.com is a website that promotes these communities and this region and is full of good information for visitors to the area. The music video below, Life Shines (The 30A Song) is a tribute to this beautiful part of Florida and is currently featured on 30A.com.



                                

I don't have the same abilities in financial analysis as the Flounder does but while doing a little of my own research, I found an article from about.com:   A Run Through How a Rental Property Can Provide Financial Returns, which may be a helpful place to start for someone considering buy in a rental property.

I also found a nice little post on Tips for Buying a Condo in Destin.

Have you noticed the huge drop in prices of real estate while on vacation?  Two years ago I was vacationing in Destin, FL and I noticed how much cheaper condos were than when I was last in Destin a few years earlier.  I then started looking into buying an ocean front condo for an investment.  I searched the internet to find an example of someone getting a similar condo to cash flow.  I found that most property owners don’t put this information on the internet.  The only examples I found were from real estate companies who manipulated the numbers to be more optimistic than reality.  My partner and I bought a 2bedroom/2bathroom oceanfront condo on Miramar beach 2 years ago.  This particular condo was 6 years old and had previously sold for about double what we paid for it. We bought this in a short sell and the process took 6 months.  I will list my expenses and income from the condo.  This condo is currently being rented through a rental agency. 

Cost of condo 275,000
Down payment 10%
Amount financed (5.0% 5 year arm amortized over 30 years)

Monthly Cost
Mortgage 1365.00
Telephone 40.00
Association fees 620.00
Electric 125.00
Insurance 75.00
Rental Company commission 150.00
Rental Company maintenance and misc.  300.00

Income
Gross rental company income 1500.00

Monthly Cash flow -1175.00

Yearly loss 14,100

Out of the 14,100.00, about 3600.00 per year is going towards the principal of our loan.  We have a net loss of about 10,500 per year.  Our condo needs to appreciate 3.8 percent per year to break even.  This is not entirely accurate because there are tax issues that make this a little better deal, but that is complicated and I will discuss that later. Our projected rental income is lower than we were told when we were buying our condo.  We had the BP oil spill that affected income last year.  We changed rental companies this year and this has probably hurt us some.  We do expect the yearly income to increase by about 5000.00 over the next year or two.  Our condo has been rented out most of June and July.  We had few rentals the first part of the year which I attribute to changing rental companies during that time. 

The answer to my question is no.  It is very difficult to get a condo in Destin to cash flow.  The carrying costs are about equal to the revenue generated.  It would take getting above average rental income and/or paying much more down to achieve a positive cash flow.  My hope is that prices will increase over the next few years which would still make this a good investment.
                                 

I just love time-lapse videos.  This one is of Miramar Beach and includes both day and night.  It was made using a fisheye lense from the balcony of a condo at Miramar Beach.

Thanks Webiocosm

If you are curious about how the beach at Destin is looking at any particular time, you can go to Destin Florida Web Cam for live shots.  You can even get streaming video and control the camera yourself.  To control the camera, just look down at the bottom of the module at the spot where the round blue dot with the i is and then move your pointer over the icons for information about the controls. 

The Whale's Tail also has a live streaming video web cam right on the beach.  You can control it as well.  Sometimes I have tried to go there before when the camera wouldn't connect, probably too much traffic.  But when it is running, I like it better.

Other nice Beach Cams:
DestinCam at the Lucky Snapper Restaurant at Destin Harbor
Miramar Beach by Ocean Reef Resorts near the Majestic Sun
Sandestin Beach Web Cam

The Urbanspoon has a listing for Destin that appears to be a good place to start if you are looking for places to eat.  Listed categories include best fine dining, best casual dining, and best cheap eats.  There is also a top 100 restaurants in Destin list.  Most of my favorites including Bud and Alley's, The Red Bar, Cafe 30-A, and Pompano Joe's are on the list, however I think a couple of them may have artificially low ranking due to multiple entries with slightly different spellings.  Also my favorite Irish Pub, Johnny O Quigley's Irish Pub and Grill currently is hanging in at number 98.

Here is a great time-lapse in HD of the beach from a condo or hotel on May 19, 2011.  My favorite part aside from all the people zipping up and down the beach, was watching all the action of the parasailing.  Nice job napnet!

 

Here is a nice clip of this year's fireworks show in Destin on Sunday night from AJ's.