Today’s NY Post listed affordable beach towns, shown in this graphic. Made me wonder if these are nice places in the opinion of Dopers. I’ve never been to any of them and know little about most. Canada still has some nice, affordable towns with beaches in some provinces, so I don’t want to draw any conclusions. Popular places obviously do tend to be pricier.
I have been to Atlantic City, New Jersey and Ocean City Maryland. Maryland was years ago and I have no idea how much it has changed since then.
Atlantic City pops up on the local news now and then. I could be wrong, but my impression is that is craptacular. If you venture outside the areas meant for tourists, there is widespread poverty and has been for a long while. IIRC the local folks who work at the casinos protested the loophole that allows patrons to smoke. I consider Atlantic City the opposite of nice.
I have not ever been there, but I’m surprised to see Atlantic City on this list; it suggests that the article’s author was solely was looking at pricing and proximity to the ocean.
My understanding is that AC has become a seedy, run-down city, overly dependent on gambling, and is particularly dire once you get outside of the casinos and boardwalk.
This Reddit thread has comments from a number of people who appear to have first-hand experience, and none of them have much nice to say about it.
Yeah, this. I live in Philly. Atlantic City pops up on the local news every now and then. It is never for anything good.
My aunt used to live in Long Beach, Washington. She was right on the beach, and walked up and down every day for exercise. It was probably affordable at least then, she didn’t have much money, and it probably stays relatively cheap because it has typical Pacific NW beach weather – cloudy and chilly. I can’t speak to how nice or otherwise it was or is. It looks to me like a typical beach town, the main north-south drag with gas stations, food joints both for tourists and locals, and whatever stores and offices the town may have. The side streets would be narrow and almost strictly residential, with maybe a few motels on the beach side in the central part. I expect it’s very quiet except in the (probably short) tourist season, and it doesn’t seem to be on the way to or from anywhere. If that’s the kind of town you like, it probably is nice.
10-15 years ago, I liked visiting Long Beach and Ocean Shores in WA, but I’d have gone crazy if I’d had to live there. Take that for what it’s worth.
There’s a reason they’re “affordable.” Low demand for permanent residency.
Port Richey is a perfectly fine small town on the ocean, but I’m not aware of any actual beaches there. There are a shit-ton of such places north of Tampa on the gulf coast, so I’m not sure why Richey was chosen.
I’d probably have picked Tarpon Springs, just to the south. At least there you have excellent dining options, especially if you like Greek Food.
I would never call Port Lavaca a beach town. It may have a couple of feet of semi-sandy beach here and there, but it sits on Lavavca Bay. Lavaca Bay is an offshoot of Matagorda Bay which barrier islands separate from the the real beach on the Gulf. That puts Port Lavaca about twenty miles as the crow flies from the Gulf surf. But you can’t drive to that beach because the only access to those islands is by boat. The closest drive to a real beach would be about seventy road miles to the east.
Only ones I’ve been to are Corpus Christi and Myrtle. IMO, CC is a bit of a shithole - as is that whole armpit region of Texas. Plus, used to have a regular influx of spring breakers.
Myrtle has a lot of golf and nature in the vicinity. TONS of touristy stuff - think big vacation rentals and mini-golf. Never really thought of it as somewhere to live.
I get the feeling that for a few of these locations, hurricane insurance would knock them down a few pegs in a realistic “affordability” list.
The Delmarva peninsula beaches you choose your spot based on the experience you are looking for. You want the classic crowded beach resort, Ocean City MD is what you want. As you get older you might want to visit the quieter beaches further north in Delaware: Lewes, Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany, or south of OC on Assateague or Chincoteague islands. Rehoboth is still definitely a beach resort town but is much smaller in scale than OC. Personally I prefer Lewes.
I grew up in Baltimore and going to Ocean City was a big deal, tho as I recall we only went twice (with 5 kids, my folks couldn’t afford a yearly vacation there.) Mostly I remember tons of t-shirt shops, and bike riding on the boardwalk before 9AM before it got full of pedestrians.
More recently, my husband and I have spent 3 long weekends there in the winter, just to get away. Being winter, most places are closed, so dining options are limited. As such, “affordable” is not a word that comes to mind. But gas and groceries aren’t too obscenely high compared to what we pay at home. I have no ides what real estate and rent is but I expect it’s higher than our rural county.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a nice place to visit, off season, but not some place I’d want to live.
The article absolutely was looking only at proximity to the beach and price. I find it hilarious that Atlantic City is described as having “high-end resorts” in an article about where "vacation-home buyers will get the most bang for their buck. Outside of the casinos ( if you want to call them “resorts”) , I haven’t noticed any high end resorts in or around Atlantic City and I haven’t really seen any vacation homes either. If you go even a little bit outside the tourist area, ( and by that I mean a block away from the boardwalk) it’s obviously run-down and poverty stricken. There really isn’t much to do that’s not at the casinos - although there is one former casino that is now a hotel with a waterpark.,
It’s not really a beach town where one would buy a actual vacation home - sure there’s a boardwalk, and you might make money buying a house and renting it short-term , but a traditional summer house where people spend a couple of weeks and mostly every weekend? Nope - people don’t buy those houses so far from the beach that you have to drive.
Apparently, it was more of a beach town before gambling was legalized.
My niece had a “destination wedding” in Long Beach last summer. On the beach side of that north-south main street is a motel in which each of the “rooms” is a restored classic RV trailer, like Airstreams or similar. The whole experience was sort of whimsical and very pleasant. The beach experience tends to include a lot of four-wheelers, which taints an otherwise very lovely stretch of natural beauty. Cloudy and chilly says it well, sort of moody, but for folks who like that sort of thing Long Beach seemed reasonably nice, with little pretentiousness.
One doesn’t hear great things about Atlantic City. I don’t know a lot about it. But few beach towns contain “city” in the very name. I’ve never thought of it as a beach town.
Port Lavaca must have a decent beach or two. After all, the local high school teams are called the Fighting Sandcrabs.
A.C. has nice* casinos…& not much else… well, unless you include poverty as there’s tons of that. Can’t forget corruption, there’s lots of that, too with many mayors being arrested. Those things tend to drive property values down, so yeah, it is a lot more affordable than neighboring towns. They are also the only town around that doesn’t require beach tags but then they don’t comb their beaches so make sure you have good beach shoes lest you cut your feet on all of the broken shells.
-* Nice if you like flashy & gaudy.
Just for giggles, I looked up real estate in OC, Md. Condos that are smaller than my 2-car garage have average asking prices in the $250K range. And from the photos, the look an awful lot like two hotel rooms that have been merged into a single apartment/condo.
Rentals of similar sizes (under 600 sq ft) look mostly to be in the $3000-$4000 range. In what parallel universe is that affordable? I’m guessing they’re aimed at potential Air B&B investors.
AC has been a seedy, run-down city my entire life. I remember going there a couple of times as a kid in the 60s and even as a kid could tell it was a dump. I think it was a big deal when my mother was a kid, and AC in the 60s was running on the fumes of that era. Gambling was supposed to revive the city, but ignored the fact that the casino developers had zero interest in improving anything that would induce their clientele to set foot outside the casino. They wanted you to pull into their parking garage and not see the light of day until you pulled out of the garage to go home poorer than when you arrived. Plus one of the major casino developers was a well-known scam artist who went on to bigger scams…
Bottom line: AC has been all Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues as long as I can remember.
South of AC (Margate) was much nicer (low bar) but if it is still that way it wont’t be “affordable”.
For Atlantic City (AC), while I would not want to live there, this article was for affordable vacation beach homes and it would be fine for that in the right parts of the city. Has the beach, the resort and a pretty good airport nearby.
Counters, if you were going to try living there, their schools are some of the worst in NJ. Taxes are about average for NJ, but high for most of the nation.
A good chunk of AC is likely to seriously flood over the next 30 years.
They pulled the crime data from the Real Estate sites, but I found this:
So OK for a Vacation Home, not good to live there.
I would rather spend extra and get into Cape May or Spring Lake or to save money, down in Delaware or the Carolinas.