Exclusive Driving Tour of Vero Beach (The Hamptons of Florida)

You've probably heard of the Hamptons and Billionaire's Row. What if I told you there was a barrier island known as the Hamptons of Florida that you may not know about? We're talking about Vero Beach today. We're going to hop in the car and we're going to see an inside peak at some of the top neighborhoods that you need to know about if Vero Beach is on your radar. So, Vero has a couple all deep water communities and this is an important one for you to know about. It's known as the moorings.

And what's happening in here? This is an example of where all of the interest is going in. This is a little culdeac known as Cutless Cove. And what you're seeing are either brand new houses or houses that are older that have had major renovations because everybody's buying for these live oaks, the wider lots, 145, 150 ft private dockage. And as we get to the point, you see how the redevelopment is super obvious. And what's happening in here, this is a nonha neighborhood. So, increasingly buyers are saying, "Yes, please. I'd like no HOA.

These two little thumbs, Cutless and Compass, are among the most desirable parts of the entire Moorings community. The other thing about the Moorings is that there is a country club with two golf courses, a marina, lovely, right on the river, and as the crow flies, it is right down Harbor Drive, right down here. So, if you lived here, you were lucky enough to live here, you could hop on your bicycle or your golf cart and you could get to the club and go for a workout or have a lobster roll in the afternoon or go to Sunday brunch.

So, the club does not require a real estate purchase. What's great about the club is that you're going to meet people from all over the place versus a club where you need to live within a certain community, which is great, but you tend to see the same people over and over again. here. Most of the people from the middle and the southern part of the barrier island choose that club. Super diverse. They've got a great kids program in the summertime. They even have a try and buy in the summer where you can see it.

And here's the other little thumb called Compass Cove, the sister community. So, increasingly, these nonHOA wider frontage lots with private dockage are prime prime opportunities for folks that want privacy and water. and they're super super popular. Now we're going to look at the southern part of the barrier island which is nicknamed the estate section. Why is that? Well, when you see it's among our best beach. It's accretive, meaning it's naturally gaining sand. And as a result, if you're going to invest millions and millions in a house, you want to make sure that ocean is going to be there for a long time.

This section of the island, you'll see some of the most expensive real estate in all of Vero Beach. One of the reasons is the lots are all 150 wide and it's an accretive beach. So it supports redevelopment of very very substantial estates. So as we get down here, back in the day it was known as Windemir and now it's just loosely known as the estate section. And you're going to see most of these lots go A1A where we are presently all the way out to Ocean Drive. So no HOA again.

That's another commonality. and build what you want because there's no HOA to govern what your build and architectural guidelines need to look like. So, we're just kind of coming to it. We are on the barrier island going south. We are along A1A which goes north to south. It's our main thoroughare. It would parallel US1 on the mainland. So, here we are in the heart of the estate section. Some of these the lots are so deep you can't see. That one has a guest house at the front of the property. Tennis court across the street.

Beautiful house. And there is a real bopper being built now on a double lot. That's a beautiful one. A1A to the ocean. Rather contemporary. There are some very, very substantial houses being built. This is a great example of a freeof charge public beach. No charge ever to use our beaches. If you're from the Northeast like me, that's a shocking business model. You don't have to pay to play or park. The beaches and the riverways are always free. And again, some of these houses are very, very substantial. That one's kind of set back.

Look at that. You can't really see that one that just got finished. Darn it. I wanted to show you guys that one. That is quite the house. We are now in the estate section of Vero Beach, Florida. So, I wanted to show you this other part of Vero that's important for you to know about. This is the moorings east of A1A. There's no gates. There's not even an association. But an important road is known as Reef Road. It's basically their ocean drive. And I just wanted to show you what the houses look like.

Many substantial houses on the ocean. And increasingly redevelopment is hopping even across the street to the homes across the street from the ocean. Beautiful neighborhood, very, very well regarded. There's a beach access. Again, if you're not lucky enough to live on the river or the beach, there's always freeof charge ways to get to the ocean. Some of these are from a Cuban builder back in the day. They have basements. Boy, that's not a great idea in South Florida, but you know, what can I say? He thought it was. This is a beautiful neighborhood.

Again, it was developed in the 70s and 80s, so the lots are wider and deeper and the HOA is optional. All things that are supporting the redevelopment. That one has been redone, obviously. That's an older one with a new roof. This one has had major renovation. That's this is the model where I love the neighborhood and I'm going to host closing, renovate the house to make it of the moment and more what I want it to be cuz I want I'm buying for the neighborhood and the floor plan. It's a very common buy model here in Vero Beach because a lot of our houses are from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

So now we're going from the southern part of the island north towards the middle. The first bridge will be at the 17 bridge causeway. We're coming up on my neighborhood. This is St. Edwards, by the way, a lovely independent school, K through 12. It drives a lot of the younger families here, such as it did us, to this end of the barrier island. So this is our neighborhood. And why did we choose it? Well, we wanted proximity to the school that I just showed you. We wanted rules and rags that were reasonable but not crazy.

You know, we just wanted no purple houses, no RVs, and other than that, leave us alone. We maintain our own properties. So, the amenities, quote unquote, would be the gated entry and a beach access that I will point out to you. So you see the great thing about having architectural guidelines if they're not too severe is that the houses look like cousins, not identical twins. So they're aesthetically pleasing. Nobody looks junky, but but they're all quite different actually. And this is just a loop. We also didn't want a community that was giantly big.

So we're not going to get out and see it, but right down here is a private beach access. That's super cool. We even have a tiki hut and that's all part of what you get by being a part of the community. Prices here are going to be 1426 for dry lots. Ocean multi-million island have a different vibe too. Like this is more full-time residents. The northern part of the island tends to be folks that are not here full-time. And why is that? Well, part of it is because there is a kind of housing stock up there we call a villa or zero lot line community.

What does that mean? It means you've got a fully detached house. You own your dirt and all the improvements on it. So, it's not a condo. It's not a shared wall, but the lot is going to be much more dimminionative like by, you know, by a lot half the size of this. And what it means though is very commonly those communities include a community pool, a clubhouse of some sort, fitness of some sort, sometimes a day dock on the river, and goodbye maintenance. They take care of your yard and your irrigation usually.

So that tends to skew to a person that's not necessarily here fulltime. And so it lives a little differently than the southern part of the barrier island where we are right now where most folks are here full-time or if they go away they go away in the dog days of the summer up to say the mountains of North Carolina like Cashiers or Highlands. And here's a tiny little bit of commercial cuz we just it's not permitted. Tiny little bit behind here is a great public beach known as South Beach. Fantastic lifeguards, plenty of parking, bathrooms, vending machines for snacks and water.

And now we're coming to our very first way to get off the island, just loosely known as the 17 bridge. But what I want to show you is we are coming up upon one of our most desirable communities in all of Vero Beach, and it's known as Old Riomar. And legend has it that Henry Flaggler and his buds were in Chicago and they wanted to come down to Florida and they were traveling by rail, but Palm Beach required a tuxedo. So legend says they wanted a place where they didn't need a tux.

So they started the original Riomar Club. Everybody had cottages. There were no kitchens cuz you dined at the club. This is old Riomar. The golf course still exists. It's to my right. The sister community known as Riomar Bay, which is all water. We'll see that in a minute. That's another really important community for you to know about, is over here on the west. But boy, if you want to show people some beautiful drapey live oaks and some fabulous properties, this is almost like our Beverly Hills. So, we are just getting into Old Ramar on our right, and I want to take you down some of the roads that are so unbelievably fabulous.

This is one of the main thoroughares. You see the live oaks right away. Again, we're north enough in Florida that the live oaks thrive, but we're also tucked right inside the tropics, so the palm trees grow, too. And here, one of the things everybody loves about old rimar is that there's no homeowners association and there's not a rush to get out the wrecking ball. there is some respect for what was. So, it's not uncommon to see part of a renovation in say the back of a house, but the front you still may have the 8ft ceilings and it doesn't hurt property values.

You can see how diverse the architecture is. A lot here is going to be probably a million and a half to two. A fixer is going to be three. And new builds can be multi multi-millions. I want to show you. We're on Club Drive now, which is paralleling A1A. Going to take you down one of my favorite roads. Look at these live oaks. How cool is this? And each house, you can see, is a little bit different. So, it's not cookie cutter. Each one is more handsome than the next. It is just unlike anything else we have in Vero Beach.

So, it's easy to understand why it's one of our most desirable. So originally these would have all been little cottages with Henry Flaggler and his buds going to the club to eat. Really none of the cottages exist anymore, but the panache lives on. This is Sandfly. This is another one of the beloved streets in old Riomar. The live oaks are just sensational. I can't tell you how many baby engagement, wedding, you name it, photos these are a backdrop for. A lot of these houses stay in families for generations andor never really hit the open market because they're so desirable and they often sell privately very quietly.

And it's easy to understand why. From here, you could have a golf cart and get to the Ocean Drive district or take your bicycle with your basket and go to the Saturday Farmers Market. Golf courses here to my left and also on my right. It is a private club. You can get in. You're going to need to make some neighborhood connections and have some established relationships. We can talk about that. This house is one of the only ones available. There's usually very, very little inventory available for sale here. And a lot of these are original houses that have had major renovations, as is very common here in Vero Beach.

There's a custom home being built there. We don't have a lot of speculative building here. We generally have homes that are commissioned by owners if they're new or major renovation. And this is another very, very desirable street. Super cool. And these estates are all on the ocean. Very, very deep lots. There's one available that needs a renovation for 15 million. That's just about land value really. So, this is old RMR. There's a lot available for sale at 8 million. In general, that's uh going to be a couple years to get a house on the ocean built and you need FTE and others involved.

We have great relationships with the finest engineers and builders so could put together a package if that was an interesting thing for you to explore. That one just hit the market that's available. That's a major renovation. That's 5.5. So to my left, we would get to a beautiful public beach known as South Beach. to my right. If I went straight ahead, as you can see, that would be the first way to get on or off the barrier island. Now, what I want to show you is I talked about before, we don't have many all waterfront communities.

Usually, it's dry lot houses with a handful on the water. Well, we started off and I showed you the moorings. That's an all deep water community. We are now going to go into Riomar Bay 2, which is the sister community to Old Riomar, which we just were. It's right by a very popular club known as Quail Valley. And there's a couple of sections. There's a gated section. We're going to go into the first section known as Riomar Bay. Then there's Riomar Bay 2. Golf courses over there. The water's over here.

And it's ironic that this non-gated section actually sells a little bit higher in price even though it's not gated, but the lots are big and the water is super deep. To my right is a brand new build that just finished. You can see some of the yachts that are there at the club. This one literally just got finished. They knocked down the original house. This is a very very desirable area. So that was a custom build. Again, they commissioned it. If it was available for purchase, it would be well over 10 million.

But this is a location play as much as anything. So you've got water either side. Everybody has private dockage. There's no association. Rioar Bay 2 does have an association. This one does not. And it's just a thinker. We're at the end of the point. And that house, I wish you could see the views that that house has. Holy Toledo. That's on the point and it has 360 degree views. But these are all fabulous. Rarely come to market. Absolutely utterly coveted. So this is Remar Bay and again from here golf cart is just fine.

You could walk and bike or golf cart to just about all things Vero. From the club there to a church that's nearby to the farmers market on Saturday to the downtown little ocean drive district with all the restaurants and the art galleries and the beautiful shops. So this is the old rimar neighborhood that we saw with all the live oaks and the shell path roads. Just beyond it is a part of town loosely known as central beach well because it's the central part of the beach and it is kind of the polar opposite of old rimar.

This is an oldfashioned kind of development where the roads are straight. There is not a lot of curvature. The houses were built in the 60s,7s and 80s, but they're going through a renaissance. And so this central beach again, no HOA. That was an old house that got knocked down and it's getting redeveloped. So you see unlike where we were in old rimar it's a fairly straight pathway but some of them some of the li some of them do have live oaks and these houses are now a million to one two for a fixer but the redevelopment is a thing and it's happening and I drove down this block to show you new build over here new build just after it new build to the left.

Whole house rebuild here. And then what do we hit? We've just come upon the small commercial area known as Ocean Drive Retail District. It's small by design. Don't forget, we've got low density, limited commercial, but you've got some very cool things. There's a beautiful art gallery there that sells all of their wares. You've got a wine store here. You've got a fun bar, a micro brewery with beautiful food, great restaurant with outside dining, and what you're seeing is some old condos. If you're here in Vero and you see anything higher than four stories, like that building, it's because it predates the 1977 mandate for height restrictions.

Now, condos such as the one right across the street can only be four stories high. and we're just going to take a little drive down this darling, darling district. The parking lot on my left is home to the farmers market on Saturday. To my right is a very typical public beach with free parking and lifeguards and it's super fun. So, this is the little downtown Ocean Drive district. Kind's there has great ice cream. Shout out to there. My office we just passed. Shout out to Douglas Element. And all these little boutiques and eeries are fabulous.

And I we all love that they're independent. This is where we have the Christmas parade. Once a quarter they have music and they shut off traffic and everybody brings a beach chair. This is Castadeste where Gloria and Amelia Estfan redeveloped an old hotel and made a beautiful resort out of it. They have beautiful food as well. Fun music. We're coming across a restaurant known as Bobby's, which is kind of like our cheers. Everybody knows your name when you go into Bobby's. The same fella has run it for decades and decades.

And I just want to show you these highrises that stick out kind of like a sore thumb. Here's the Kim Hotel, by the way, Ver Beach Hotel and Spa. Beautiful property. But right next to it, what do you see? You see a high-rise. Well, Lord be, look what happened. Those went up in 1977. and the whoever was in charge at the time wisely said we don't want that for Vero. So let's institute height restrictions and density restrictions and an urban service line to keep our agriculture and our ranchers and our citrus in play.

And so that's what happened. And so actually we should be grateful for those buildings is my position. These are all on the ocean. These are all single family houses. That's super contemporary. So those two buildings are what caused our low density policy to be in effect since 1977. And Vero is the only county on the entire east coast of Florida to have such restrictions. If you went to my beach and you look south, you'd see highrises in the distance and you would know you were out of the county and into another county.

We have some old housing stock here and our fun little boardwalk. A lot of people walk this boardwalk every day. No charge to park. No charge to use the beach. No need for a seasonal pass. This was shocking to me when I came here from the northeast. I thought you had to pay certainly free of charge and plentiful parking and covered pavilions and places to have a barbecue. So I want to show you Riverside Park. I promise I'd show you. This is a really interesting part of the barrier island. We are coming to the city of Vero Beach Marina which is over here and the Vero Beach Yacht Club which is private and has super fun parties and it's you know very affordable.

There's baseball diamond here, dog park which is fantastic. We love our animals here in Vero Beach. And just under the bridge, we're coming to the middle bridge known as the Barber Bridge. There are places to put in your boat or your kayak, whatever you want to do. It's all free of charge. That building is a brand new Right over there is a brand new sailing facility and rowing for people of all ages. It's super cool. So that's right there and the all the water is right here. This is the middle bridge.

If I took a right, we'd be exiting the barrier island. Took a left, it would put us right into the heart of the little Ocean Drive district. But I wanted to show you Riverside Park. It's a really important asset for Vero Beach. It has two personas. One is athletic, one is cultural and artistic. We're going to be entering on the artistic quadrant first. We're going to be home to kids theater. They have their own building for their own performances. We also have actors equity theater that I think I mentioned before, which is fantastic.

They have comedy nights. Actors equity Broadway shows come on. They travel. And to my right here is our museum of art. So it's very very well regarded, very well funded and supported by everybody in Vero. So this is the cultural side. And as we get to this side on the north, this is the athletic and physical side. Straight ahead, you've got all kinds of activities and fitness trails. Here to my right out of you are places to park and have a barbecue and put in your kayak. We used to put it in our kayaks here all the time.

But I wanted to show you this is actually an island known as Memorial Island. It's an honorarium to everybody that died in service to the country. Foot traffic only. We have Veterans Day services. But I wanted to show you this is one of many free spots to put your boat in or launch your kayak. And I wanted just to pull up to show you how surprising and how wide it is. This is not a canal. Look how wide that is. And you can see in the distance the south bridge. And what you're seeing ahead of you are little islands that are all preserved that can't be developed.

They're called spoil islands because they were from the spoils of the dredging and they're filled with pines and mangroves. And you never know what you're going to find in there. You can put your boat there and hike around it and see all kinds of stuff. If you get a permit, you can even camp there overnight on some of them. So, all of these islands are preserves that can't be developed. So, what you see is what you get. And look how broad those expanses of the waterway are. And then this end is a really active tennis really big here in Vero Beach.

This is a USTA tennis facility and it's easy to pick up a game if you want to keep playing and you don't have anybody that you know. So this is Riverside Park and it is really a gem for everybody in Vero Beach. This is where they emanate the fireworks for July 4. This is truly the heart of the barrier island. If you want to learn more about Vero Beach, hit subscribe to make sure you get videos as soon as they publish about all things Vero Beach. I'm Sally Daley. DM me, text me, or write to me through our contact form so we can connect and I can help you find your slice of paradise in Vero Beach, Florida.