What is going on everyone, are you sick of the big city?
Wanna find a nice rural town, get a mortgage and live the American dream,
or just retire away from the big city who doesn't right today.
We're looking at great rural towns in Florida, Florida is an interesting state.
It has some great cities, fun things to do,
and a bunch of crime tested Backwood towns that should be avoided by anyone,
not in the alligator trades.
Those lame small rural towns created a big problem creating this list. Great,
small towns were hard to find in Florida now to be totally transparent, Florida.
Isn't a total mess.
When you compare their big cities to other states with similar size cities,
they aren't that Miami does have some crime just like all cities,
but it has amazing food, amazing beaches, and a bunch of entertainment.
Tampa is a solid coastal city along with Fort Myers and St. Pete.
And then you have Orlando, which has far too much stuff to do. Like I said,
in the other videos, I normally do top 10 lists,
but not all states have 10 good rural towns.
And I don't wanna waste time with some towns that are pretty much a reach just
to get to 10, besides the crime in their small towns,
a lot of their small towns are really attached to a Metro area.
So that kind of knocks 'em off this list.
The focus of this series is rural towns that normally implies it's a good
distance outside of Metro area. With the towns in these videos,
we are looking for that sweet spot,
a decent place to live that isn't too close to any major cities.
It's easy on the crime rate and it's not five hours away from any kind of
healthcare. And they also can't have horrible internet.
Those are the requirements for these videos.
And those are the things that also knocked a lot of small towns off this list in
Florida. We found five for this, which I believe is the lowest we've so far.
All right, let's take a look. Number five, BLUs town,
Florida BLUs town sits about an hour west of Tallahassee in the Florida
panhandle.
This is a quiet rural Florida town that sits near the Appalachia Cola river.
This is a great town. If you like to fish, by the way, the river is right there.
And I've watched some videos where people pulled huge cat fish outta the water
there.
Blu town was originally named for a Creek Indian chief who had been given the
land by Andrew Jackson for aiding Jackson and his battle against other native
Americans. Today's the,
city's primarily known as the home of the Calhoun correctional Institute,
which sits just south of town. This place, uh, you know,
Florida's always going to be getting hurricanes and different to the state,
get hit all the time.
So it's not like you gotta worry every single year that your house is gonna get
blown over, but it does happen on October 10th,
2018 BLUs town was hit by a category five hurricane. It was hurricane Michael.
It struck town in just about destroyed this place.
If a hurricane does hit good news, they got some medical care in town.
They have Calhoun Liberty hospital and a few other clinic type places.
Calhoun Liberty hospital has an emergency room, 24 hours a day. All that.
It's not the biggest thing, cuz this is a small town,
but it looks like it could do the job for just about anything,
anything past what they can offer you.
You gotta go into Tallahassee about an hour away.
So when it comes to healthcare, blunts town gets a thumbs up.
Blunts town only has a population of about 2,500 residents and they got a crime
rate that is 25% lower than national average.
So they get a thumbs up when it comes to their crime rate because Florida in
general has a pretty high crime rate in most small towns. Like I said,
at the beginning of this video, when it comes to real estate,
they get another thumb up there too.
They have a few homes right now that are going for 150,000 to 200,000 and they
look decent and you might have to do a little bit of work, but they are livable.
And there's something to have in the last few months, January, February, March,
they had sold other homes around 300 to 400,000 that were really nice.
So they get a thumbs up for real estate.
Now where they dropped the ball is their internet.
They don't have the best options. They have HughesNet and via,
via stat via whatever that's satellite internet, which I don't advise to anyone,
but they have one called consolidated,
which is DSL that covers a hundred percent of the town.
And that only offers 50 and BPS. That's not the best. Like I've been saying.
Gig is normally the standard in rural areas.
Hundred MVPs is pretty much the standard.
So they get a faded thumbs up for internet. They have it.
It's not only satellite,
but it's not the best one interesting thing I did learn about BLUs town.
This is where corn Griffin was born.
Corn Griffin was a boxer who fought James Braddock.
Have you ever seen the movie Cinderella man?
He was one of the boxers that James Braddock beat on a, his, uh,
late in the career March to the championship. Number four,
Frostproof,
Florida Frostproof is a small town with a very interesting name in central
Florida sandwich between two lakes.
They got lake clenched to the west and Rey lake to the east. Again,
if fishings your thing, this could be your town.
If you wanna find it on the map. It's about hour and half east of Tampa.
The settlement in this area was established in 1850 and it was originally a
Fort. This is how most of central Florida towns got their start.
This one in particular was called Fort clench.
The settlement and Fort clinch were abandoned after only a few months of people
being there. Then in the 1880s,
Frostproof began seeing its first permanent settlers had as home setters that
were attracted here because of all the fishing and hunting.
The name Frostproof was a marketing employee to convince potential land owners
that the town has never had and never would have any frost that could destroy
their citrus crops. They spoke too soon,
only a couple years after naming it Frostproof,
they had the great freeze of 1895 that most the citrus in
the area, I guarantee the clown that decided to call it Frostproof.
Or the one that suggested in the first place was run outta town.
They got a little over 3000 residents living there right now and they have a
crime rate. That's 37% lower than the national average.
They get a thumbs up for that. When it comes to healthcare,
they got a couple family clinics and you know, family practices,
they also of the central Florida healthcare Frostproof is here in town.
Anything major,
you're gonna have to head up to lake Wales about 20 minutes north,
where they've got legit hospitals up there.
So they get a thumbs up for that because 20 minutes is not that far away.
Realistically, if you know anyone from Florida that lives in the back woods,
that's really a seven minute drive.
The way those people drive there is alarming.
Sometimes when it comes to internet, no problems there,
they got Xfinity offering one gig to about 98% of the town.
They also have frontier that covers about 75% of the town offering 150 MVPs.
So they get a thumbs up for internet.
It's good to see a rural town have gig internet. It comes to real estate,
pretty reasonable here.
If you wanna get something livable that probably needs a little work.
You're looking around $220,000. When you get up to about $250,000,
it's gonna be okay, realistically, if you want something nice,
you're looking at about $320,000 on up right now.
They have some lakefront property going for $650,000. Give you an idea.
This was lakefront property. Anywhere in California,
it would probably be a million and a half.
They got a lot to choose from right now,
including some newer homes that are going up.
So plenty of stuff on the market and different ranges.
So they get a big thumbs up for real estate. Number three,
high Springs, Florida.
High Springs is small town. About 30 minutes Northwest of game Waynesville.
High Springs was a town that popped up in the early 1880s.
When the train came this way, you also had mining in the area.
So the town was settled pretty fast. This town has had a few different names.
First it was Santa Fe,
spelled S a N T a F F Y not even kidding.
Once someone came to town that could spell and knew their way around a
dictionary, they pointed out that it,
they needed to change the name to the proper spelling before everyone in town
grew a mullet. So they did. They changed it to the proper spelling of Santa Fe,
unable to escape the jokes from the earlier spelling.
I guess they changed the name again to O' Ryan.
A couple years after that someone said, why don't we change the name?
O' Ryan's too hard to spell.
And we're really not even sure for spelling it properly since the dude with the
dictionary left. So they decided to go with Springs,
not sure where the high came from, but now it's high Springs.
High Springs is a great place to live.
They only have a population of 2,500 residents that enjoy a crime rate.
That's 45% lower than the national average.
They get a big thumbs up for crime rate. When it comes to internet,
they get another big thumbs up. They get Cox offering one gig to 99% the town.
They also got kinetic giving DSL at a gig. They say,
and that covers 99% of the town as well. When it comes to healthcare,
they have a few family practices and a couple doctors in town.
So that's kind of nice. It's not a terribly big place,
but you're gonna have to go to Gainesville if you need anything major like
emergency room type stuff. So they get a thumbs up for that too,
because they're not too far away real estate. You got a lot of options here.
There's about eight places available right now, starting off at about $185,000,
which is a three bedroom. One bath doesn't look bad,
looks livable all the way up to one.
That's about 500,000 on the outskirts of town and everything in between 2 25
looks decent 2 45. So they get a thumbs up for real estate.
Cause they got a lot to choose from. Number two, Bristol, Florida,
back up to the panhandle. We go right across the river from blunts town.
We have the town of Bristol.
Bristol is a small town of about 1100 residents and it also sits on the AACH
Cola river.
Bristol is another one of those water tower towns that I seem to like for some
reason, they also have, what's really cool. One of their parks,
they have one of those little railroads that you take the kids on.
You could ride goes around the park.
I like little unique things for communities like that.
That's always something that's special for anyone that grew up in a town like
that.
I love that this town's about 50 minutes west of tower Hassey or 25 minutes.
If you learned to drive from a Floridian dad,
according to a lawyer back in the 1950s or so this area was the site of
the biblical garden of Eden. Yeah.
He also thought that he found some wood left over from Noah's arc. Yeah,
just rowing around in the back woods of Florida,
come across some wood from the arc, happens all the time.
The crime rate and Bristol is outstanding.
It's 56% lower than the national average.
So they get a big thumbs up for that where they kind of suck is their internet.
They have consolidated, which gives 'em 50 MVP for 99% of the town,
50 MVP that you can get your work done. It's just not great.
So they get a faded thumbs up for that. When it comes to healthcare,
they also kind of get a faded thumbs up because they do have clinic and a doctor
in town. Also you have over there in blunts town right across the way.
And they got the Calhoun county hospital,
which is good size and should be able to take care of anything.
You need anything. They can't, you got Tallahassee 50 minutes to the east.
They also get a thumbs up for real estate. I mean,
they have four things for sale right now that are decent. You're starting money.
You're gonna wanna look at something at least 200,000. That's where it starts.
And it goes all the way up to 400,000.
They had some outstanding places sell earlier this year for like 250 to
$300,000. And they were great, nice places ready to move in. So like I said,
big thumbs up for that also
right before we get to number one, don't forget.
We have another channel called on this day. Head on over. Watch some video,
subscribe, give some videos, big thumbs up. There's a link down below.
All right. Onto number one. And number one, Disney world.
Just kidding. Keystone Heights, Florida.
Keystone Heights is a small rural town of about 1500 residents.
About 30 minutes east of Gainesville on lake Geneva,
not the Swiss French lake Geneva, a Florida one. Yeah. Wisconsin has one too.
This is another town. If you like everything to do with water, fishing, boating,
whatever you wanna do, you could do it around here.
You could also live on the cheap cost.
Living here is 12% lower than the national average, which is outstanding.
Their crime rate is even better. It's 62% lower than the national average.
They get a giant thumbs up for that one. You know what else?
They get a giant thumbs up for internet.
They got Xfinity there that covers 99.9% of the town.
And they get one gig there. They have a couple other options there,
but none of them go above 50 BP. When it comes to healthcare.
Keystone Heights is outstanding. They've got a couple family practices.
They also have an urgent care, a dentist. They're good to go. Anything else?
You need pass that you got Gainesville right down the road and they can cover
everything. So they get a thumbs up for healthcare too.
When it comes to real estate,
they do a pretty good job of having everything from 129,000 for a house
you probably don't want, but might take anyway all the way up to like 700,000.
But I'd say if you want something decent in Keystone Heights,
you're probably looking at about 300,000.
Somewhere in that area will get you someplace nice.
And it might even be on their golf course. Yeah.
This place has homes for about 300, 320,000 on a golf course.
So they get a big thumbs up for that one.
Originally of Keystone Heights was called Brooklyn because they have a little
lake there called lake Brooklyn. So they just called it Brooklyn.
This is a great place to live,
especially if you want to have that small town vibe for a while,
because since 1990 they've only gained a hundred residents.
I think it's gonna continue to stay under 2000 for quite some time.
All right. That's today's video. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Hope you got some information out of it. Now go out, have a great day.
Be nice to each other.