Investing in South Florida real estate is a choice you're not likely to regret. With its tropical climate, glorious beaches, and easy contemporary pace, Florida has much to offer and is a wonderful place to call home. More than likely you're coming in from out of state, exchanging snowplows for orange groves. Buying property in South Florida is a sound decision indeed!

You might want to settle up near Lake Okeechobee--the country's third-largest interior body of water--in Palm Beach County near Boca Raton. Another option, somewhat closer to the Everglades, is the Miami Beach and Coral Cables area. Broward County lies in between, offering Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and a host of other prime South Florida real estate choices. No matter your final choice, you'll enjoy wonderful Atlantic beaches and balmy temperatures year round.

South Florida Real Estate: Debunking the Hurricane Myth

There's a certain amount of hype about South Florida real estate you need to dispel from your list of worries. Certain myths--an endless cycle of devastating hurricanes, for one--are pure bunk. Bunk, as neatly defined in a recent Jiffy Lube radio ad, is something that just isn't so.

Although the lyrics of My Fair Lady are accurate in asserting that hurricanes hardly ever happen in Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, they (meaning hurricanes) do of course come to south Florida. But they do so no more frequently than elsewhere along the Atlantic Coast. This is not to belittle the damage they do wreak. Nonetheless, if you want a great chuckle, read Dave Barry's hurricane preparedness column in the Miami Herald.

The column is written with owners of South Florida real estate in mind, but is sure to prove, as he puts it, "just as useless to residents of other areas." Today's weather trivia, incidentally, is that the storms that we in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic call hurricanes are known in the western Pacific as typhoons, and in western Australia as willy-willies. Willy-willies are no reason to stay away from Florida. If they were, the East Coast would not be the densely populated region that it is.

South Florida Real Estate: A Quick History Lesson

Florida has a long and interesting history. Ponce de Leon was the first European known to have come to the peninsula. When he did so in 1513--searching for the Fountain of Youth that no one has yet found--he arrived in spring. This, translated from the Spanish (Pascua florida) means "season of flowers." The name, thanks in large part to the lush tropical vegetation, has stuck. In 1521 he returned to establish a colony on the western coast of South Florida real estate, near today's Fort Myers.

Both the Spanish and the French made repeated attempts to settle both north and south Florida real estate over the next 50 years. The Casula and Creek tribes defended themselves aggressively against various Spanish settlements, just as the Spanish massacred a party of French Huguenots after founding St. Augustine in 1565. The English arrived in Florida in the 17th century, securing "title" in 1763 (no one consulted the Seminole) in exchange for Havana, and dividing it into East and West Florida.

In 1783, however, the entire peninsula was ceded back to Spain. In 1803 West Florida was ceded back to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase, and in 1819 East Florida was bought outright. In the midst of this came the Seminole Wars, which the Seminole sadly and eventually lost in the 1820s and 1830s. Only in 1845 did the exhausting flip-flops and struggles end as Florida become the 27th state.