Blog > What's It Like Living In Sebastian
If you are planning to move to Florida and wondering what it is like living in SebastianThis video is for you! Watch till the end.
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If you’re thinking about making a move to Florida and you’ve come across a little town called Sebastian, that’s what this video is all about. We’re going to tell you what it’s like living in Sebastian, Florida.
So what’s the deal with Sebastian? I mean what is it like living here? That’s where we live. We’ve got two girls and a business right here in Sebastian and we’ve been here for about 15 years. We love this town and we’ve seen it grow a little bit. We’ve got a lot of folks moving here, so what is it about this town that people love?
We’ve made a long list of some things and we’re going to go through them.
- Obviously when you think of Florida, you think of the beaches, so we’re really close to the beach no matter what part of town you live in. In Sebastian you’re going to be a maximum of 15 minutes away from the beach, so that’s a really nice feature. I mean you just hop in your car, pack all your beach stuff and drive down. Grab some snacks or a sandwich and you’re down at the beach. Like I said, 15 minutes and it’s a really pretty drive, by the way, to go over the Wabasso Bridge. Vero Beach actually has all the beaches. Sebastian doesn’t have any beaches so as soon as you cross over the bridge you’re in Vero Beach. That little drive over the bridge is beautiful and it’s called the Wabasso Bridge. You can see the Indian River Lagoon and beautiful homes on the island and there is great scenery. That’s actually one of my favorite spots, is when you’re on the 510 Wabasso Bridge, when you’re on top of the river and you can see the ocean as well as both bodies of water, it’s magical!. It’ll only last a second because you’re traveling over, but it’s one of my favorite spots.
- Huge perk! How clean are our beaches? Are they so clean people really take pride while they’re visiting? When visiting the beach, bring a little bag and pick up whatever little trash you do find, we all appreciate that! You don’t have to pay for parking. I know a lot of people that come to Florida, you go to big towns like West Palm or down in Miami or over on the West coast, you are paying the machine money to park your car, and then you’re fighting for space on the beach. It’s not like that here. It’s kind of like old Florida. You can still go to the beach, find a parking space, mostly ride on over to the beach, not pay anything for parking and just enjoy your day. The only place you will pay is if you go into the state park but then obviously there are more amenities and it’s a state park.
- Fitness: we have two gyms here in Sebastian. Plus, just tons of outdoor opportunities like places to walk, great parks, and lots of sidewalks to ride bicycles on. Wait, we don’t really have sidewalks in the neighborhoods. If you come from an area where you have a lot of sidewalks you’re going to be disappointed because we don’t have a lot of sidewalks in our housing neighborhoods, unless you’re in an HOA Homeowners Association. But we do have sidewalks near the main roads. We’ve got a great sidewalk that runs along the river. You go hit up that Indian River Drive again, it’s awesome and it’s marked so you know how far you’re going and plus while you’re walking, you can see tons of bunnies and dolphins. I don’t know, it’s weird, there’s like so many it’s crazy. There are two gyms and two boot camps at least that I know of. I’m a part of two and I am so excited about these I only started probably a month and a half, two months ago in the boot camps and one’s free, one is not. They do it in the evenings at a different park. Starts at 6 pm, it’s outside, under the trees. It’s like, the breeze and the temperature is surprisingly at six, just magically becomes nice. Right now it is June and it is hot during the daytime, like around 4:30, that’s like the hottest part of the day, but then when it comes around like six o’clock it just starts to cool down real nice. If you’re interested in those boot camps and you want to know the link so you can get in just send us a message. I’ll be happy to hook you up with the trainers.
- If you can play golf, you’ll love this place. I love this place you know and obviously it’s just like the better you get at something the more you like it and I guess maybe the more you do it the better you get at it. So that’s just kind of where I’m at in my golf game. I’ve always been sort of mediocre and I’m still really mediocre but I love that game and we’ve got a cool little golf course here, the Sebastian municipal golf course. For those Pickleball players right across the street from the golf course there’s a brand new Pickleball court which is a lot of fun. We haven’t gotten into that yet but I’d like to try that sometime. I’m kind of digging on the golf. Actually, golf is fine. We like to go out around the end of the day at five o’clock, just play nine-hole, have fun with our friends and just like we were talking about earlier, the weather starts to get really nice during that time. You know it’s hot around five o’clock, four thirty-five o’clock but then as the sun starts to come down, the little breeze comes in and it’s just beautiful. We love doing that out there, so yeah, great golf course here in Sebastian.
- If you don’t have your own pool and you know it’s hot like you said Zac, we do have the North County Pool which is pretty world-class and it was actually just closed for a month and it’s been reopened. They did some resurfacing and major renovations. I don’t know how long they are but they’ve got all these lanes. They’ve got diving boards and then they’ve got a separate pool with slides and activities for the kids, and the concessions there, it’s a lot of fun. It actually is a really great community pool because it is big. It’s an Olympic-sized pool, you’ve got a really high diving board then you’ve got another, a little regular one there. So bringing the family there, it’s a lot of fun. It’s great and if you have teenage kids, they’re hiring people for lifeguards or hiring kids. Our friend of ours, her daughter, was just hired. She’s on day two at her new job and just a great place for the summer for kids to be. There’s also just down the street from there a shooting range, if you like to do a five-stand shotgun, where you know, shoot the clays up, that’s a lot of fun. It really is cool and they also have a firing range where you can set up there and practice with your handguns and rifles and stuff.
- So we’ve also got some healthcare here in our little town. We do have a major hospital, Sebastian Medical Center, and then we’ve got a bunch of little specialty healthcare doctors. We’ve got a Thoracic Surgery Center and we’ve got Primary Care doctors here, pediatricians, and diabetic centers so there is definitely decent health care here for sure. If you can’t find what you’re looking for here in Sebastian, we’re just a short drive down to Vero Beach where they’re going to have what you’re looking for.
- Sebastian also has some really great choices in schools. We’ve got quite a variety of preschools, elementary, middle obviously and one high school and they all rank really well. We have a lot of caring teachers in our town and some really great kids football team, band, all those are top-notch at our high school and lots of extracurricular activities for the young ones. There are sports, cheerleading, and gymnastics so there’s a lot to do for kids. Actually, you mentioned the world-class band in our little town at Sebastian High School does some music.
- For those of you who love your furry friends and your dogs, we’ve got a great little dog park here in Sebastian. We’re a dog-friendly city. You can actually walk your dog out by the river and the docks and stuff that we have out there but we do have a dedicated dog park here in Sebastian. And although we haven’t really taken our dogs there that much, we do know a lot of people that do and you know you can also take your dogs to quite a few of the restaurants. Just make a phone call before you go and just make sure that they do accept dogs but we’re a dog-friendly little town here, just pick up your poop.
- If you’re big, bad and brave you can jump out of a plane with a parachute to skydive Sebastian, that’s here and it’s super cool and when the weather is great, it is just people jumping all over people coming from all over the world to go skydive Sebastian. I mean why not when you jump out of a plane and when you can see the ocean, the river, the golf courses, and all the other greenery around. People know Sebastian for skydiving. It’s an awesome place, like Tonya said, it’s world-class. The cool thing is you can see it from everywhere in Sebastian. You can see the skydivers diving if you look out the front of our office, right here at the front window, my office manager gets to sit there and watch the skydivers all day long. Super cool, so cool and definitely while you’re on that golf course, it backs right up to the skydivers. They’re dropping all the time there, you can hear them, you can hear the parachutes open. It’s very cool. Planes are going up and down. It’s a lot of fun. We haven’t tried it yet, I mean we’re parents, we have two young kids. We’re in our late 40s now and got to be around for our kids, you know? Not to say that it’s a high risk. I’m sure there’s probably more risk in driving a car down the highway but probably not for me so after you jump out of the plane or you want your buddies to jump out of the plane, you can go over to the Zoo Bar which is right there and celebrate, they have some pretty big New Year’s Eve parties there too.
- We actually have some fun nightlife for such a small little town. If you go over on the street that runs right along the river, that’s Indian River Drive, you’re going to see and hear some music. You’re going to see people walking around having a good time. There’s always something to do or something going on. It doesn’t matter really what day of the week, you know. I know there are some towns where the streets roll up at eight o’clock, it’s a quiet town, it’s not crazy but if you’re looking for something to do at night you and want to go have a couple of pops or a soda or whatever you can find here which is really cool. There’s a phrase that they say here “Sebastian is a drinking town with a fishing problem”.
- Also along with that same thoroughfare the Indian River Drive is like happening. We’ve got the 4th of July parade, which is coming up soon, and that usually starts in the morning at about 8 a.m and then ends at Riverview park. so people go like to the Tiki and grab a Bloody Mary and bring your chairs and bring the kids and let people you know just run around and throw beads and whatever you do at a parade. There’ll be another parade at Christmas time and we’ve got “Light up the Night”, that’s always fun. It’s cool because you got the local businesses who participate in Light up the Night and they’ll stay open and people can come in and explore the local businesses. What they do is meet the owners and the proprietors of these companies and it’s great! It’s got a super neat little neighborhood vibe and it’s easy to meet people when you go to these events. One of the big questions that people ask us is “how do you meet people out here going to these events?” Because there are a lot of people there and then you start to see people on a regular basis because it is such a small town. You’ll find that people actually are very friendly. Here it just takes opening up and saying hello and I’m sure you’ll get a hello back, and then you can go from there.
- Sebastian also gets some pretty big names. Well, I should say Captain Hirams gets some pretty big names at concerts. Summer’s just starting so we’re just getting ready to kick off their summer Reggae Fest. It’s every Sunday we actually just bought tickets to the Passafire concert. We love Reggae and our kids love it. It’s fun. So that’s every Sunday at the sandbar and tickets are online. It’s like 15 bucks a show so it’s super inexpensive and awesome. You know what’s really cool is if you’re into boating too, you could be out on your boat at the sandbar and then bring your boat up to the dock, dock it up, walk up to the Sandbar, sit down, have a couple of drinks and enjoy the show. It’s a lot of fun going to dinner and everything.
- Actually at Hiram’s they’ve got a lot of stuff going on too. That’s kind of a big place here. They employ a lot of locals and they have great food. They have a Sandbar where the concerts are and they have a restaurant and a hotel but they also have boat rentals. That’s really cool, so you know you might be visiting or maybe you don’t have a boat yet, you can rent a boat, you can rent jet skis there, you can actually even catch a chartered boat to go out and do river tours there so that’s a kind of a really fun thing to do here in Sebastian. Even if you do live here it’s fun to just hop on a boat, go take a tour and enjoy the day. There’s some great scenery out there if you do have a boat. We’ve got some great boat launches, two of them in particular and then there’s one down in Wabasso which is not considered Sebastian, but it’s close enough, and you can park your trailer and walk. You know after you drop your boat in the water and walk right out to the dock, get on your boat and it’s really easy, it’s not crazy, you know, “California” high stress. Very boat friendly and super convenient here.
- The majority of Sebastian is filled with local businesses and we really don’t have a ton of chain businesses. I mean, of course, we have Dollar Trees and Dollar Generals. There are probably too many of those and there are probably too many auto parts stores. Those are our big chains and obviously, we have Walmart. Other than that we’ve got a lot of smaller boutique-type shops and salons and spas and restaurants. I think our only chain restaurant obviously besides Burger King and Mcdonald’s is Ruby Tuesdays. I think that’s the only chain, the only major chain like a sit-down dining restaurant that we have. Pretty sure that’s it. We only have like those three, so the rest are all small independent artisan kinds of craft, restaurants which are really cool and we are definitely looking for more. I think we’ve said this in a past video. You know if you’re an entrepreneur come because the growth opportunity is here especially a restaurant because we do have that environment for local restaurants. It is not a big chain restaurant thing, we’ve got the Dominoes and the Papa John’s and the pizza joints but in the sit-down places we only have Ruby Tuesdays and we could use some more restaurants. You know one of the sweet little charming things that we have, we’ve got a couple of fruit stands. They’re just local and they’ve been here for a long time, one family, in particular, the Kroegel family, that’s my favorite produce stand there under the oak trees. It’s sort of an outdoor market kind of feel where you just pull up and get a basket. They pretty much know you by name and we’ve got lots of fresh fruits and veggies. Sometimes fresh eggs and just seasonal things and local things and it’s a sweet place and the produce is just delicious. Check out Kroegel and Jung, those are the produce stands.
- The hub of Sebastian is probably Riverview Park, which is situated between US-1 and Indian River Drive. While you’re in the park you can actually see the river, hence the name, RiverView park always has something going on whether it’s local craft shows or fine arts craft festivals and music heists. The high school band performs there, bigger names perform there, the Clambake Sebastian is a really big event and all kinds of vendors come out there, something always happening. We got Fridays in the park which is really cool, Friday at the end of the day you can go over there and they always have a live band playing and during the season, they have a live band and you can bring a bottle of wine, get a pizza, bring your chairs and just chill and listen to the music and it’s all free. That’s what I love about our little town. It’s free, it’s sweet and it’s awesome. We have a good Chamber of Commerce here too.
So if you’re thinking about moving here, don’t mess up the sweetness. Be sweet! Do you want to come to our town? You have to be sweet.
- So I know this is a really big question for a lot of folks, what’s it like politically here? We don’t really talk a lot about politics, so much but you know, it’s a public record. We’re primarily a red county and a red little town here, we’ve got different beliefs and different thoughts everywhere but primarily that’s where it is. So we might have touched on this already but here in Sebastian it’s very non-pretentious. We don’t have like any major high style Gucci type of stores. It’s nothing like that. I mean, you can go to Orlando and find that, you can go down to West Palm and find that, or even Stuart you’re where you know you’ll see most people wearing shorts and flip-flops and maybe t-shirts and that’s pretty much it. Shoes are required for dining but flip-flops are acceptable.
- Another thing here in Sebastian, is we don’t have a lot of houses, relatively speaking I mean we’ve got 12 000 homes. New construction is really big right now in Sebastian. We’ve got 94 current permits. I just spoke with the building department a couple of days ago. We’ve got 94 current permits and then there are more lots just being cleared right now. So more permits are coming, that’s huge! Got a lot of new builds coming. We’re going to talk more about that in another video about new construction. We’ve got one major development: it’s called the Spirit of Sebastian. They’ve already cleared it, they’re on phase one. There are 61 new homes going in on phase one and then I think they got another 140 something homes going into phase two. It’s not going to totally change the face of what Sebastian is right now but we are going to have more people here on a more consistent basis that’s going to give a little relief in this housing pressure to find a home so sure and although we do have a lot more people looking for homes.There are homes for sale, we are still in a deficit but nonetheless we are building, we’re growing here in Sebastian. The secret is out!
- Another great thing I love about Sebastian, we don’t really have a huge disparity between lower housing and super luxurious homes. In some areas, we pretty much stick around in the range of like 200 like maybe 550 range for the average prices of homes here in Sebastian. That’s what you’re gonna see, there are some million-dollar homes, there are definitely some upper-end homes and those are along the Indian River Drive, Indian River Boulevard, and then along the Sebastian river. So you know those waterfront homes, they’re higher end, like no major mansions you would see in Vero Beach or even going down Hutchinson Island. And even then you know I mean what do you have, maybe two dozen of those really high-end homes, it’s laid-back.
All in all, Sebastian is just a sweet quaint cute little town and we want to keep it that way. Growth is inevitable, and homes are being built but I feel guilty if I don’t say this, you’re welcome to move here but you need to be sweet and nice and kind that’s all! It’s a little gem and it’s one of those things that you will appreciate if you’re looking for that kind of thing. If you’re looking for big-city stuff with high fashion and all kinds of stuff to do all the time, this isn’t going to be the place for you. But if you like to fish and you like to relax and you like to meet new people and be friendly. Maybe you have a pet, maybe you like to go surfing or fishing. This might be the place for you!
Also read: Buying Agricultural Land in Indian River County
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