DUNEDIN LOVE | Best Places To Live in Tampa Bay

So you're considering making a move to Tampa, Florida, and you're wondering what the best cities are. Well, and today I want to take you on a wonderful tour of one of my favorite cities in all of Tampa Bay. And you guessed it, it's beautiful Dunedin, Florida. So in today's video, I really wanted to give you a really good sense of what it's like to live in Dunedin, Florida. And you can see, we started outside, we popped inside, we're gonna get back outside. And I got some really cool things to share with you guys today. But I really wanted to focus on why. Why is this city so desirable? Why does it show up on niche.com's best cities to live? Why does it get an A minus score? I want to share all these things with you guys today. And I really wanted to hit the streets as well as come in here and make sure that we're giving you the proper info. But hey, if we've never met before, my name is Juan Alcala. I'm a licensed real estate agent and a team leader here with The True Living Group. And we help people just like you buy, sell, relocate, and invest here in the Tampa Bay areas. And most importantly, we make videos that are all things Tampa Bay. What it's like to live here, what it's like to work here, what it's like to play here. The food, the dining, the outdoors, the beaches, and the sunshine. And if you have any questions about what it's like to live here in the Tampa Bay area, do not hesitate to reach out. All of my contact information is listed down below. Heck, there's even a link to my calendar so you can get ahold of me that way. But let's get into today's topic, which is Dunedin, Florida. Dunedin is this beautiful little coastal town that is located about 45 minutes due west of Tampa, Florida. You'll cross over the bay. You might go over the Howard Franklin Bridge or the Veteran Memorial Highway to get over there. It's just north of Clearwater Beach. And this is one of those absolute stunning towns, y'all. It is anchored by this beautiful marina where you can go and dine. And there's a gorgeous little park there. There's actually a park that walks all the way along the intercoastal waterway, which is just so beautiful. It's sandwiched in between the barrier islands, the Caladesi Island and Clearwater Beach and the intercoastal. And it's just such a gorgeous place to come hang out. The downtown is absolutely alive. When you go down there, I mean, it is just, there's people out moving around, having a good time, living life. The sun is shining. You can hear the gulls in the background. There's plenty of dining and entertainment to get into. And I'm gonna take you guys into a lot of those specifics today. But I really wanted to kick this thing off and just share with you. It's a small town, about 36,000 residents. You know, not too big in terms of geography either. It's only a few miles deep and a few miles tall. It's not crazy in terms of geography, but it is a great little coastal area. And the way that I can best explain this, and I've got some stories that I'm gonna share with you guys about Dunedin today and why it's got, why it has my heart in some sense. But it's got this vibe, okay? When you come into Main Street, you park your car and on both sides, there are bars, restaurants, boutiques, shops, and people, okay? The Pinellas Trail runs directly through Dunedin, giving you a lot of access. And you guys will see as we tour this community today between the breweries and the restaurants and all the things that's happening, it's really hard not to enjoy your time in Dunedin. So I wanna get into some of those specifics with y'all today. And first thing I wanna start with is the food, the dining y'all, because I don't know about you, Kate and I, we love to go out. We love to eat and drink our way through new cities and the ones we love as well. And Dunedin happens to fall in that category. Dunedin is one of our big three. And I'm gonna share this with you because if you're new to the channel, you may have never heard me say this before, but Dunedin, St. Petersburg, and Tampa are the cities that Kate and I love to take our date nights on. Why? Because we know we can plug into some great entertainment. We know that there's gonna be a good mix of people out and about, nice and diverse. And we also know that there's gonna be plenty of good food and dining. And that combination for us is what it takes to get us out of our house, away from our beach, and out into that world. And Dunedin definitely offers it with over 30 restaurants in this small little village town. It is absolutely incredible. And some of our favorites are Hog Island Fish Camp. When you go there, make sure you get the shrimp and grits, y'all. You will not be disappointed. The grits cake is fried. Oh my goodness, it's so good. Casatina, which is this authentic, fresh Mexican. And they only use the finest ingredients, organic ingredients. They're very focused on their ingredients. But I'm telling you right now, that food, it is so good. We love going to Casatina's. There's the Lucky Lobster. And they have this lobster BLT, which is, it's overly decadent, to say the least. But man, you've gotta come try this. And there's so many more. It has seven breweries and one distillery. You've got the Dunedin Brewery. You've got the House of Beer. You've got the Seventh Sun Brewery, which we really love. They make some incredible beers, y'all. And they have a distillery. And all of this is in walking distance, which is bananas when you wrap your mind around it, right? That's something really cool to be able to plug into. The entertainment that you have in Dunedin is absolutely world-class. The Blue Jays come down from Toronto every year and do spring training in Dunedin. So you can go catch a ball game at TD Ballpark. And it's a cool little setting, right? It's right inside the neighborhood. Beautiful ballpark. Definitely worth checking out a game. You've got the Farmer's Markets. You've got the Pinellas Trail. You've got Honeymoon Island. You've got Caladesi Island. I mean, there are parks galore, which we're gonna get into in a minute. But there is just so many things to do. It's very difficult to walk out of the door in Dunedin and not be able to plug into some form of food or entertainment. I mean, as you walk down to the West End District right there, there's this little taco shop, and it's called Taco Baby. It's literally like an, I don't wanna call it a shed because that wouldn't be appropriate. They've done a better job than that. But I don't think the thing is 10 feet wide, okay? And it might be, correct me if I'm wrong. If you guys know Dunedin, put it in there. But it's called Taco Baby. It's this little tiny taco stand that's standalone. And you can get some great tacos as you're walking down to Edgewater Park, going to the marina or going downtown and connecting with the trail there. There's this great place that makes these lemonades that's, they turn an old rail car and you can get these fresh lemonades right on the Pinellas Trail. I mean, it's just so awesome to be able to do that. And again, to go down to the Edgewater Park and play with the kids, they got a great tot lot there while you're looking at the ships and the intercoastal and so much going on and to do. One of my favorite places to go is the Dunedin Coffee Shop. Beautiful mural on the side of this building that I think that you'd really enjoy. There's some good art down there, but it's just one of those great little shots. Make sure you get the energy ball when you go. It's really nice. And then I had their quiche there as well. So really, really good quiche. I would strongly encourage you to check that out when you go there too. But what does it take to live in Dunedin, Florida? That's a question that a lot of the times we get asked. When people call us about moving to the Tampa Bay area, they always ask, hey, what are some great places to live? If I wanna live by the beach, where should I live? If I don't wanna be exactly on water, where do I live? And the thing that I always like to answer is like, well, hey, what type of lifestyle are you trying to accomplish? Because ultimately, that should be your primary focus. If you are able to match your ideal lifestyle, the way you wanna live with the ideal community, houses tend to take care of themselves. And I share that with all of our potential clients because I think it's super helpful. But at the time of this recording, right now the average home in Dunedin is a three bedroom, two bath, 1,761 square foot, and they're selling for right around $575,000. Now, you can find homes less expensive than that. You can get condos in the two and $300,000 ranges. Townhomes tend to be a little bit more expensive. They're selling up in those high fives as well, and you can find a two bedroom, two bath, single family home in roughly that 400 to 500 range on average, that's what I'm seeing right now. But I have noticed that Dunedin is becoming extremely competitive again, and for good reason. Dunedin was recognized by the Zillow's best list as one of the best places in America to retire. Actually, it was rated the best place in America to retire, which is awesome. But the thing I want to share with you is maybe you're not anywhere near retirement, and you hear something like that and you're concerned because you hear that Florida's full of old people. Well, that's true, by the way. However, not all the areas are, and we've spoke about this before, but when you think of Tampa, people think of Tampa, Florida, and they go, well, it's a bunch of old people. Well, that's not true. Tampa, Florida, the city of Tampa is on average 36 years of age, which is very young. When you come over to Pinellas County, which is, again, we're crossing over the bay, getting near the beach, that's where Clearwater Beach is, St. Pete Beach, where Dunedin is, the average age, the median age here is 46 years of age, right? So not old at all. Now, but we have retirees here, right? So keep that in mind because everybody's trying to get to Florida, which is awesome. It's most people's dreams. They work their entire life to get here. But the thing I wanted to share about that with you is because actually having said that, Dunedin's pretty darn diverse. When we go down there, we will definitely see kids, right? We will definitely see young families. We will see young professionals. We will see people on vacation. We will see people who have lived there their entire lives. Like this is normal. And I don't feel, again, you can go look at the data, go check out the information your own. Niche.com is a great resource to do that. I put the link in the comment below. I'm giving you my anecdotal evidence from what I see, and I read the numbers, but it's a great mix. There's a fair amount of diversity in that community, which I think makes it really interesting, right? You've got some really artistic things with the mural. You've got an opportunity to plug in with some casual dining, some fine dining. You can obviously do some sport fishing because you got the marina there and just a lot of life to be lived. And one of the things that we really loved about Dunedin, and I wanted to share this with you because we'll get into my story here about Dunedin specifically when we're talking about the parks, but the amount of parks that there are and the access you have to not only the Gulf Coast, but also to one of the most beautiful state parks we have in the entire state of Florida and one of the local community parks for Pinellas County that is absolutely stunning as well. We're talking about Honeymoon Island, which is awesome. On the north end of Dunedin, there is a two and a half mile causeway that takes you out to Honeymoon Island. Now, this is a state park. It's absolutely gorgeous. It costs a few bucks in to get for the day. You can check out the community. It's stunning, go check it out. But on the way there, the Dunedin causeway has beaches on both sides where you can launch a boat, you can launch a paddleboard, you can launch a kayak, you can drive your car down and do that. There's actually a little restaurant and a bathroom right on the beach there. Now, this is in the intercoastal. It's not on the Gulf of Mexico. When you get out to Honeymoon Island, that's where you have access to it. But there's also Caladesi Island, which the only way to get to it is by boat or by paddleboard or kayak. But you can't drive a car there. It's cool. You can camp there overnight. You can bring the dog. I mean, it's just such an awesome place to live. The other thing is it's super dog friendly there. So those are two great parks that you wanna hit. Another great park is the Edgewater Park that we were talking about, which is right downtown at the end of Main Street at the marina. And then the one that is near and dear to my heart, and I can't sit here and say that it's the best, but it's a great park. You're not gonna be disappointed, is Weaver Park. And I'm just gonna take you guys there and share it with you here in a second. But this park is very near and dear to us. So I definitely wanna share that. But I also wanna remind you, hey, if you're getting any value out of today's video, please don't hesitate to hit that like button and click that little bell. And also while you're down there, hit that subscribe button. That way you don't have to go checking out new videos like this. They come right to your inbox every day. But let's head over to Weaver Park so I can talk to you about that. All right, y'all. So I'm down here at Weaver Park. And the reason I wanted to share this with you guys today is because this was the place that really solidified it in my mind and Kate's mind when we decided we were gonna make the move to Florida. We came down, like we've shared so many times before, we fell in love with Indian Rocks Beach. And while it's unbelievably beautiful and it's our home beach now, we're glad that we chose to, you know, move to that area. Can we have ice cream? Yeah, baby! We tried to move to Dunedin first. And this park was the reason why. Because we came out here and we brought Cora, who at the time was right around five or six months old. And we came to this park and, you know, beautiful park here sitting on the Gulf of Mexico, right on the intercoastal. I don't know if you guys can see it behind me, but we were down here at the end of the evening and there was families everywhere. Kids are running around the playground. There was a peacock literally just standing up on the playground, hanging out with the kids, with us. And we were from the North. We're not used to that. We were like, what in the world is happening? But the sun's going down and this beautiful scene, you know, it's got, you know, a place to work out and families were running around everywhere. And Kate's talking to families about the area and we just fell in love. And like I shared with you guys before, I ended up writing two offers on homes here in Dunedin. Didn't get either one of them, except it. It was just like so many people over the last few years. And then ended up getting another home. Like I said, we love that place, but man, this place is gorgeous, y'all. I mean, imagine coming to the park with your kids, staring at the beautiful intercoastal waterway, seeing a sunset. It's just unbelievable. Dunedin is stunning. And hey, if you have any questions regarding Dunedin or any other cities in the area here, make sure you check out these videos right here. Just know when it comes to relocating, moving, or investing in the Tampa Bay area, we here at the True Living Group got your back. And until next time, go out and live that Tampa life.