This is purely anecdotal, but as long as I have been in Southern California, it’s seemed like I see a disproportionately large number of Florida license plates. One time I did a count in part of my apartment parking garage, and I counted five FL plates, one Colorado, and sixteen California. So that’s almost a quarter of the plates being from Florida.
Have other people noticed this? Why is it the case? Florida is a big state, but it’s all the way on the other side of the country. Texas is both bigger and closer, and I don’t see nearly as many TX plates. In fact, looking at the top ten states by population, I don’t recall seeing some of them at all, and the rest are relatively rare (and since I’ve become kind of obsessed with this, I pay a LOT of attention to out of state plates).
Florida’s climate is somewhat similar, so it likely draws some of the same people. But that doesn’t seem like the whole story. Is it really cheap to register your car there? Does FL attract a lot of scofflaws (who would fail to register their cars in CA when they move here)?
I don’t know why I’m fascinated by this, but I am.
I have a handful of friends who moved from here to California - mostly engineers looking for more stable work. I don’t know if they updated their license plates.
My friends from Hollywood (FL) were over at my house tonight. None of them seemed ready to go to Cali.
Are you near the Pacific Ocean? Or a Coast Guard base? Transferred US Coast Guard personnel would be my guess.
There is a heavy Coast Guard presence where I live and I see more than a few Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, Maine plates. I just assume that they are newly transferred Coasties.
We’re somewhat near the ocean, but both that apartment and our current neighborhoods are areas that I don’t suspect most military people could afford. And the cars seem to often be things like Bentleys, high end Mercedes, there was a Rolls Royce the other day. Not exactly the Coast Guard demographic.
A possibility for some of them: Tax avoidance. CA has a lot of higher taxes and fees for cars. Registering the car out of state is common, but you need a real address if you want to avoid suspicion. Perhaps these luxury car drivers have a 2nd home in FL and are registering their cars there?
(Yeah, to me and you, if you’re wealthy enough to be in this situation, you can certainly afford the extra fees. But that’s not the way a lot of people think, regardless of income.)
Also these cars might not pass CA emissions, so it might not just be about fees.
The real reason: Florida is full of old folks. To get home from the bingo hall, they know to go to the corner, turn and drive until you see the ocean out your windshield. A wrong turn at the corner and, bam, California!
There are a disproportionate number of Florida plates in New England as well. The most common reason is that the people that have Florida plates have two homes - a summer one in the North and a winter one in Florida. Even if they live in Florida most of the time, they still may be from New England originally and drive back frequently to see family.
Florida is full of retirees originally from other states and it is a fairly inexpensive state to live in. Retirees have time to travel. I would imagine that most places have a disproportionate amount of Florida plates on their roads for that reason alone. That would even apply to California because it is a whole lot cheaper to retire in Florida and drive back to California regularly than to stay there full-time.
I don’t think it’s snowbirds. The weather in FL is not that different from SoCal, except for humidity. My guess it that it’s similar though: people with lots of disposable income who want to live in warm areas, but have the wherewithal to take off across the country if they want to, to a more tropical place.
There’s a reason why Fark has a “Florida” tag for posts. Although usually those crimes are more of the “methier” type.
I haven’t paid for registration in CA for several years, but it can’t be that bad, unless there’s some weird surcharge for fancy cars (wouldn’t put it past them). I can’t imagine the difference would be that big, almost certainly smaller (much smaller most of the time) than 4 figures. Not worth going through the hassle of maintaining a separate empty home in Florida, or trusting your tenants to mail you stuff.
No, the real draw is no income tax! But that still does not make sense, as Nevada is a hell of a lot closer and also doesn’t have income tax. The tax rate in Clark County is 2.1% higher than Florida’s base rate, but that seems like a lot of hassle for saving $2100 even if you spend $100,000 on crap every year.