It’s Finally Become Impossible to Move to Old Riomar, Florida

No gates, no HOA, no listings. What am I talking about? I'm talking about one of Vero Beach's most coveted neighborhoods, known as Old Riomar. I'm Sally Daley from The Daley Group at Douglas Elliman. And if Vero Beach is on your radar and you're besotted by Old Riomar like everybody else, this video is for you. Let's dive right in. Why has Old Riomar become essentially impossible to buy into? Well, let's set the scene.

First of all, for those of you who are not familiar with Old Riomar — Vero Beach is a barrier island 28 miles long, and right in the middle, you're driving along and you see enormous stately live oaks twisted all over, shell path roads, stately houses. You wake up, it's Saturday, you hop on your bicycle or your golf cart and you toodle two minutes down to the farmers market on Ocean Drive, or you go to the beach at the corner of Ocean and Riomar. That's what it's like to live in Old Riomar, and one of the many reasons why it's so coveted.

Old Riomar sits between two bodies of water, like everything on the barrier island. You've got the Atlantic to the east, the Indian River estuary — our intracoastal — on the west, and in between you've got, oh, I don't know, six or eight or ten streets in the official neighborhood known as Old Riomar. There is a club with a golf course. Nine of the holes run along the Atlantic. It's just a vibe.

Old Riomar is one of the very few neighborhoods in town that truly is what we call car optional, meaning you could fairly well bike, golf cart or walk anywhere — from Riverside Park to the west, Quail Valley Club, which is also on the west, to the beaches that are always free of charge and not crowded on the east, to our darling Ocean Drive district for drinks, the Saturday farmers market, going to a boutique, getting a spa day. It's all right there. So the appeal is really easy to see.

Old Riomar is one of the oldest parts of our barrier island. It started around 1910, 1915-ish, and families generationally have stayed there and revere it and love it. So if you understand that provenance and how it developed, you can understand why it's so difficult to actually scoop up a property there.

So let's talk prices, shall we? If you like Old Riomar, you've got great taste. A fixer or a lot is going to be 2.5 to 3 million. I know that's not small change. If you picked that up and put the same kind of vibe in, you know, Sea Island, Georgia, or Coral Gables down in Florida — the same kind of vibe with the live oaks — it would be materially more expensive. Homes that need work, you know, 4 million, 5 million. Renovated homes, or new homes that look like they're original — there's a huge respect for architecture in this neighborhood, which I love — 6 million, 7 million, 8 million. Again, I'm not going to lie to you and say that's small change. It's a lot of money. But relatively speaking, compared to say Port Royal, or certainly the island of Palm Beach where a lot just listed for 99 million, it's a fraction. So that's kind of where the pricing is.

So with that backstory, why is it getting harder to move here? Well, it's always been tricky to move to Old Riomar because very often properties never change hands. Families for generations have loved the neighborhood, loved the house. They often stay inside families. Even when the original owners pass away, the heirs keep it and say, we're so glad to be here, and it reminds us of many happy times. So there is not a rush to bring houses to market. And oftentimes deals trade on what we call off-market, where somebody knocks on your door and says, Sally, if you ever want to sell, please — here's my number. And this happens a fair bit. For those homes where the owners don't want to keep them in the family, in general, many of them do not come to market.

So what's a girl to do, or a guy to do? If you're interested in Old Riomar, two pieces of advice. One: please, please, please — I've talked before about the importance of hitching your wagon to a broker that's embedded in the market and has long-established relationships with owners as well as other brokers. If there were ever a case where that would be sage advice, boy, this is it. You do not want an out-of-towner, or somebody that just got licensed and has no relationships. They may be fabulous, but you're going to be at a disadvantage. What you need is somebody who understands the lay of the land. This may be coming up. This person I've done deals with. Would you ever want to sell? Please keep me in mind. They can go direct to owners, but they can also lay out seeds with other brokers that say, if you ever have something, please call me before it comes to market.

Now, the challenge with that is kind of the Zillow make-me-move strategy, right? The challenge is one of leverage — as in, you're not going to have any if it's not on the market. But you want to box out other buyers. You need to understand your leverage is going to be very minimal, because you're basically paying a premium to make sure no one else has the opportunity, so you can either pursue or not pursue it. So just keep that in mind. You need to understand when you have leverage and when you don't. And oftentimes customers will say, well, you know, nobody's paying full price in this market. Well, they are. I just had one that closed last month. And I said, look — if there are multiple people in pursuit of the property, or there would be if it came to market, sometimes the win is securing the house. Just make sure you feel like you're not stratospherically overpaying for it, and then it's a long-term play. Crunch those numbers and make sure.

That's number one. Number two is: be creative. Is there some alternative location? Well, Sally, what do you mean by an alternative location? I always say think of a glass — as it starts to get full, it spills over and looks for a new place to go. Really about ten years ago, Old Riomar started becoming very desirable, and buyers increasingly started saying — two ideas for you. Number one: if you looked on Google Maps for Old Riomar, you would see roads that emanate off of Club Drive. At the end of Club Drive on the southern end, there are two roads named Tulip and Mango. They are not officially, legally in Old Riomar. If you look on the tax rolls, their address is not in Riomar. But guess what? They're kind of Riomar adjacent. And look, it's really close, and the values are going to be materially less money. And increasingly, people are going, oh, maybe that's where I need to go, because it's one block over. Who cares? If this house was one block behind me, it would be $500,000 more, and maybe I don't care about that premium. So consider the Riomar adjacent roads right off of Club Drive.

That's number one. Number two: think about to the north. If you have Old Riomar here at the end of Riomar Drive, the very next road is called Iris Lane, which is Central Beach. That part of Central Beach is the flower streets. So you've got Iris, Gayfeather, Hibiscus — all of those roads that are also east of A1A, easy to get into town. They are not a through street to the ocean, so they don't have as much traffic, and are all increasingly becoming interesting alternatives.

So is it going to be harder or easier if you really do want Old Riomar? I think it gets harder. Our inventory now is even more pinched than it was at the start of the year. At the start of the year we had about 200 houses for sale. Now we've got 135. And it's because of two things. Demand is off the charts. The Northeast, seeking a respite from onerous tax policies and old man winter — they're coming big time. Big time. But guess who else is coming? Californians. People from South Florida. We've talked about this before, doing retail arbitrage, because we're 40% more affordable. We now have folks — and we didn't used to, and this is a thing — we now have buyers coming up from Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Delray, places like that, that are saying, we're going to sell, bring our big bag of money up, and only have to spend half of it and come to Vero. So demand is dramatically bigger than it was even a year ago.

And yet supply is rather pinched. A lot of boomers are in their houses either with 100% equity or a 3% mortgage, happily ensconced, and they're not interested in selling. And we don't have a lot of new builds, because the island's basically built out. And then when you're talking about a neighborhood where families want to keep the houses and they never come to market — well, that's a lot of pressure on a limited amount of supply.

So I would encourage you to think creatively about alternative locations. Hitch your wagon to somebody like me as a trusted advisor, that's embedded and knows people in the neighborhood, has good relationships with other brokers, that knows things below ground that are never going to be publicly known. And you need to understand that when a house comes to market, there will be multiple people interested — frankly, even if it needs work.

One of the things I quite love about Old Riomar — and this is really true for all of Vero — is that we as a policy try to respect what was. We've got height restrictions, density restrictions. Our mangroves are protected. Most of our riverfront that's not developed has been acquired by the land trust. Well, buyers are kind of the same way. And it makes sense — if that policy would be interesting to you, it's going to attract like-minded people. So there's not a rush to get a wrecking ball in Old Riomar. There are new houses for sure, but when there's a new build, there's great care taken with architecture and design to be respectful of the environment and make it look like it was always there.

But many of them are original houses that get expanded over time. The front parts of the house often still have an eight-foot ceiling, and then you traverse to the back of the house and it's got an expanded family room, which is fabulous. One just sold on Painted Bunting that had that exact same scenario, and it doesn't hurt the house at all. So I quite like that there's not a rush to get a wrecking ball. Sometimes it does happen, but everybody does very thoughtful design, which is why the community has aged so well and continues to be among our Beverly Hills.

So that is Old Riomar in a nutshell. Work with an agent that you trust. Be flexible on what you'll buy. Understand you're going to have limited leverage if it's off-market — and even if it is on market, consider alternatives. That is the secret to getting in or about the Old Riomar community. I'm Sally Daley from The Daley Group at Douglas Elliman. I hope you found this video helpful. If you want to drill down even more specifically about properties and neighborhoods and sections of Old Riomar — there are even sections within Old Riomar that are different from others — give me a call, text me, or write to me at hello@thedaleygroup.com, and together we can figure it out. I also did a driving tour not that long ago, of me in the car in Old Riomar showing you. So if you want to see physically what it looks like, check it out. Until next time.