Even before the pandemic brought waves of Northerners to Florida, Anne and Linus Chow knew they wanted to leave the cold weather and constant rat race of the Washington, D.C., area.
Seeking a new place with abundant sunshine, where someone’s proximity to power was not their only commodity, the couple immediately homed in on Florida, where they had enjoyed vacationing. Ms. Chow, 41, a mental-health therapist, loves theme parks, so in late 2020 she and Mr. Chow, now 51, moved to Celebration, Fla., a suburb of Orlando.
But after two years in the master-planned community, which was developed by the Walt Disney Company, they soured on it. Celebration wasn’t close enough to anything but Disney World and the satellite theme parks, and a daytime burglary had left a bad feeling.
“It was just very touristy, too, once you left the Celebration bubble,” Ms. Chow said.
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Last year they went on the hunt again, determined to find the right fit.
They wanted to be close to amusement parks — that part, Ms. Chow said, was “nonnegotiable.”
But the couple also wanted some of what they had missed about Northern Virginia: good Asian restaurants, gourmet food and nearby movie theaters. They yearned for a walkable neighborhood, but they knew that could be tough to find in Central Florida, where gated communities without sidewalks abound.
“We wanted a newer home, one that had been updated,” Ms. Chow said. “We were on the fence about a pool, because we didn’t know about the maintenance, since we had never had a pool before.”
They also needed a yard for their dogs, a Pomeranian named Bella and a Chihuahua named Vito. (The couple, who married in 2013, don’t have children but plan to start a family.) Both work from home (Mr. Chow is an enterprise architect), and they wanted dedicated office space. They figured they would need at least three bedrooms, if not four, and considered the pros and cons of the local gated communities.
Factoring in the sale of their Celebration home and their savings, the couple decided on a budget of roughly $1 million, with about half of that earmarked for a down payment to avoid too big a mortgage.
“I broke it up into three different things,” Mr. Chow said. “One was, how good is the house, meaning is it move-in ready? Another category was location overall, meaning location to stores, etc. And then the third was location, meaning the local commute.”
Among their options:
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