The Difference Between Living in Vero vs. Jupiter vs. Naples

Vero Beach, Jupiter, Naples, all beautiful communities. Lots of smart folks say they're all really the same, right? Wrong. Today we are going to drill down into the wonderful things about all three of these communities. They are all terrific, but they are all very different. I'm Sally Daley from The Daley Group at Douglas Elliman in Vero Beach, Florida. Today I'm going to help you understand some important differences between Naples, Vero Beach and Jupiter, to try to help you distill what might be the right community for you and your family.

Broadly, let's talk about how they live and how they feel differently. Naples, very well regarded, the oldest established community. Obviously west coast. Jupiter and Vero, east coast. It's an obvious geographic difference. Vero: barrier island, mainland. Jupiter: barrier island for, you know, Celine Dion and Tiger Woods and lifestyles of the rich and famous, really wealthy people, and a mainland area, frankly, which is really what most of us regular folk talk about. Naples: no barrier island at all. There are certainly barrier islands, but Naples per se is on the mainland. So those are geographic differences.

What about everything else, Sally? Well, density is going to make a difference in all three of them. Vero Beach is in Indian River County, which in 1977 said no in response to two high-rises that went up. Everybody said, we really don't want that, we don't want to become chock-a-block with high-rises. So in 1977 Vero famously instituted their still in place and beloved low density, limited commercial zoning policy for development.

What does that really mean? It means if you're looking at a condominium that's higher than four stories, it predates 1977, because everything since, what they did, it wasn't just height. They said, we want to be smart about shared wall apartments, condominiums, and we want to be smart about commercial, and we want to protect our industries like citrus and cattle farmers. So what they did is they developed effectively a master plan where there are only limited corridors where you can have commercial. All of your condos, no matter where you are, whether you're on the barrier island or on the mainland, may not exceed four stories. Single family may not exceed 35 feet. And there are only limited areas of commercial. So Vero is one of the only communities along the eastern seaboard, or Naples on the western seaboard, that is not built out to the Turnpike, and it really makes a difference in how it feels. We are still within the tropics.

Shoot down to Jupiter. Jupiter is going to be much more Palm Beach adjacent, if the Palm Beach scene is important to you. Jupiter is a lovely community comprised of a barrier island as well as a thriving mainland, with luxury country clubs and a whole kind of club development mindset, much like Naples. Vero, with limited density and heights, did not need to have clubs as an avenue to get to the waterways. As a result, Jupiter and Naples both are more club-oriented as a lifestyle in general. Vero certainly has clubs, and we've got many good ones, and I've got many videos already shot about them, I would encourage you to look on the channel, but it's not a necessity to get to the waterway. It's a want to have, not a need to have. And that's an important distinction. In Jupiter and in Naples, even a club is no guarantee of getting to the waterway with any more ease than anybody else.

Throughout this video, I chose some representative properties to show you what a million and two million dollars will buy you in Vero, Jupiter and Naples, and you'll see it with the naked eye, the big differences. Vero, in a nutshell: I picked one of my beloved listings on Oyster Bay on the barrier island, a private beach access that's only seven minutes away, and it'll knock your socks off. Concrete block, big backyard, impact glass, $949,000. [Recorded before the price change: 2130 Oyster Bay Drive is now $899,000.] Now, I'm not saying that's nothing, but compared to what that same dollar amount buys you in Jupiter and Naples, boy, does that make a difference.

In Jupiter, there's actually a very nice property that I chose to show you. I tried not to cherry-pick these, and said show me as close to the beach as possible. But this one in Jupiter, frankly, backs to a big road. It's more of a villa, backs to a busy state road, and you're going to be about a nine or ten minute drive to a public beach. Naples: this looks like a house, but it's actually condominiumized, which is great in terms of maintenance. It's called a club community, but there's no beach club, so you're still going to have to drive 15 minutes.

And again, a nine minute drive and a 15 minute drive in both of those communities is with a lot of other people around. In Vero, we don't have six lane roads. I love Naples. I love the whole Fifth Avenue district, it's charming, it's busy. And I've had people say, if we don't head out by 9:00 a.m. to get to one of the barrier islands, to get to a public beach, we're not getting there. So this one for a million dollars is lovely, but it doesn't include any privileges for a beach. You're schlepping to the beach along with everybody else and hoping for a spot. And the maintenance is not small. It's like $4,500 a month. The maintenance on the place down in Jupiter that's around a million is still 1,500 a month, and you're still going to have road noise, because you're backing to a busy state road. In Vero, the house on Oyster Bay, get ready: the maintenance is a whopping $117, and that includes your beach, and it's gated. So you can see very tangibly what your dollar will bear.

In the two million dollar range, you get more for your money no matter where you go. In Vero, two million. I'm choosing a terrific house with a terrific couple that I know, Tom and Mary. This is their home and it's very lightly used, maybe a year total, and it's a 2023 build, and it's just over two million. It's two million 999. It's a newer build, three-car garage, has a pool with one of those sexy beach entries, and it's in a lovely community loosely known as Central Beach, because it's the middle, again, on the island. Hike, bike, walk, golf cart to everything, from Riverside Park to the river to the Ocean Drive district to the farmers market. That's what a little over two million will get you.

Pick up that same amount of money and go to Naples. You can get a lovely house, and it's very sexy, but there's no beach anywhere near there, and the maintenance is not inexpensive. Fast forward to Jupiter, and the one I'm showing you there, again, is a lovely house, but it's a 1987 build, not a 2023, and the build codes have changed dramatically. It's quite unusual. It's got a little casita, it's got a lot of good things about it, but you'll see it's got some steps down, some steps up. It was really a thing in the 80s. And it's a lovely community, but again, you're about a nine minute drive to the beach. So these examples are kind of tangible. You can see with your eyes the difference in what your dollar will bear.

Who lives where? What's it really like to live there? Sally, am I going to be surrounded by all oldsters, or what's the deal, from youngest to oldest? And I will say, I think this is changing. I think in general it's all getting younger, as everybody increasingly is continuing the great migration that started during Covid, and rethinking onerous tax policies and pied-a-terre taxes, and they're voting with their feet. So I think all of it is getting younger.

As it sits right now, from youngest to oldest, it would be Jupiter. Jupiter is going to be the youngest, because they've got more housing stock. They've got communities like Abacoa where you can get 650 to 850 to 900, and it's close to all of the Wall Street of the South Florida offices that are opening. So it's more of a jobs-based economy. So for sure Jupiter and those quadrants is going to be younger. As you go up in price point into places like Old Palm and The Bear's Club and Admirals Cove, very well regarded but very expensive country clubs.

Vero is going to be somewhere in the middle. Vero is a combination of folks my age, I'll be 67 shortly, and young, getting younger. I have clients leaving places like Greenwich, Connecticut with young children all the time, coming here, living here full-time. The average age is now, I think, 55, and it used to be 65 when we were here 20 years ago. So it is old getting less old. The oldest, on paper anyway, is Naples, and I'm not sure that's going to stay the case, or perhaps the younger folks are migrating to some of the Naples outlying markets like Bonita that are happening, or maybe they're going to Tampa. But at least right now, on paper, it would be Jupiter, Vero, Naples in terms of the age of who lives there.

Well, the first thing I would say is you can only do so much online. You really do need to hustle your bustle and get down here and spend some time. A lot of people say, maybe I'll take a rental for a year. It's not a bad strategy, as long as you understand that's throwaway money. But if you consider it an investment in intel and research, it's really not, because it's an expensive thing, this real estate, and you don't want to make a mistake and say, I wish I knew then what I know now.

The challenge with that is it's calculated risk. Real estate is all about managing your risk, right? Well, our prices did not collapse. We lost about 5% since Covid, and our prices are going to be up this year, and our inventory is so thin. We never got back to pre-Covid levels. Demand is now exceeding the supply coming in. There are folks like myself who have been here for 23 years and have no interest in leaving, so there are not a lot of sellers with an interest in selling. And without a lot of new housing stock, particularly on the barrier island, there's not a lot of supply to take care of the demand, which is now bigger than it's ever been.

Because it's not just people from the northeast. We talked before, in earlier videos: places like Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale and Delray didn't used to be coming up to Vero, and now folks are doing that. They're doing retail arbitrage, selling Fort Lauderdale, selling Boca, coming up, taking that bag of money and only spending half of it. So there is now more demand than the supply can satisfy. And within the supply, really what everybody wants is new and done. And those houses, gosh, I had clients a couple of weeks ago, we prevailed in a multiple offer situation. You would say multiple offers, everybody says the sky is falling. So I think it's going to be a challenge for us for the next three to four years, and Jupiter and Naples a little less so, because they don't have the restrictions on development that we do in Vero. So over time it may be easier to stay the course, and it may be more affordable in Jupiter as you continue to go west of town. Right now it's not more affordable, but that's who I think is coming here.

And the question is, how do you make the right decision? I think you need to come and spend at least a week here. Don't try to do it in a day. There's too much to digest. Get a feeling for it. Try to stay in town if you can. You want to try to live like a local if you can. Wherever you are, whether it's Naples or Vero or Jupiter, make sure you're connected ahead of time with somebody like myself. I have trusted advisors in both neighborhoods that I can connect you with, and get with the lay of the land with somebody that knows not just what's happening, but what's around the corner, what's coming. Are there new projects I should know about? What is Fifth Avenue all about? Understand where the lay of the land is. Which club is hot? Which one is kind of viewed as yesterday's news? What do I need to know, like an insider? You need to hitch your wagon, in my opinion you're best served, hitch your wagon to somebody whose insider knowledge can become your insider knowledge and your secret weapon. So that would be my advice, to go about this due diligence.

So don't assume you know the deal. All three communities are terrific. They all live differently, they all buy differently, and they all have different folks living there who love it. What's important is you do good due diligence and you end up in a place where you love. I'm Sally Daley from The Daley Group at Douglas Elliman. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe to the channel, that would be great. And if you'd like to further chat, DM me, call me, or write to me at hello@thedaleygroup.com, and we can continue to discuss your situation further, to make sure you make the right move for you and your family. Until next time, take care.