Moving to Panama City, FL

Not to be confused with Panama City, Panama, if you’re moving to Panama City you will find yourself among some of the most beautiful beaches in Florida. Aside for natural beauty, the city is awash with things to do and places to see.

Panama City, Florida has a glorious history that dates back to the year of the start of the Civil War, when it was a thriving city of Florida with the establishment of a booming industrial sector, which saw large and small sailing vessels coming to collect lumber, cotton, and fish.

Seeing the derailing popularity of Panama City didn’t sit well with the remaining residents of the community of St. Andrews. The small community located in Panama City launched a campaign in 1885 to attract people to take up residence in their city.

Now, people from all over the country come to Panama City to bask in its warmth, live along the bay, and soak in all its history. Panama City put itself back on the map, establishing itself as a contributor to the production of seafood, paper, chemicals, and other products.

Panama City has a colourful history, and is the largest city located between Pensacola and Tallahassee; which is no surprise, as it continues to grow in the number of people who’ve taken residence up there.

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Job market

Panama City receives most of its revenue from the industrial, real estate, military, retail sector, aerospace, and tourism sector. The industrial sector is located in Bay County where employers such as Gulf Power, Rock-Tenn, Arizona Chemical, and Eastern Shipbuilding have established long running industries contributing to the city’s economy.

People based on military sites will find better luck living in Panama City, as the city’s closer to the Tyndall Air Force Base.

Apart from this base, Panama City also hosts the Naval Support Activity Panama City, the facility for training and research projects. People may also find work in the Panama City Mall, the primary retail center.

According to the report published in Forbes Magazine, unemployment is at 6.1% with the potential of job growth at 0.5%. While the cost of living stands at 1.0% below the national average and the average household income after taxes is at $22,088.

Transferring money to Panama City

If you’re thinking of moving to Panama City, you’ll probably need to convert some of your British pounds into American dollars.

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Property information

21.04% of properties in Panama City are owned while 22.5% of properties are rented out. Compared to the national average, people rent more properties than they buy.

Miami, keep in mind that rent prices are 47% cheaper here than in MIA – and the population is a heck of a lot smaller.

Presently, there are 1,004 homes for resale with 941 homes up for auction or foreclosure. Popular neighborhoods to consider buying a home in are Bunkers Cove and Old Orchard.

Neighbourhoods

Panama City is a diverse city consisting of Germans, Irish, Italian, English, and Scottish ancestry with the greatest number of people being White followed by African-American ethnicity.

• Family Friendly: Cove is described as a suburban and coastal neighborhood with medium sized houses, apartment complexes, and single-family homes.
• Upmarket: Allanton is described as an expensive neighborhood to live in as compared to others in Panama City. It is both a rural as well as coastal neighborhood. Mostly, people in the military take up residence there.
• Hip and Trendy: Baker is a neighborhood that usually lodges students and tourists. Many apartments are empty for majority of the year due to them being rented to students or visitors.
• Up and Coming: Glenwood neighbourhood is made up of the working class, as the majority of the people living here are service employees, fast-food workers, and salespeople.

Schools and education

With a city so large, there was bound to a countless number of schools there. In Panama City, you can find 39 K-12 schools, 32 public schools, and 7 private schools. According to Forbes, 89.1% attain a high school degree, 23.4% attain a college degree, and 7.7% attain a graduate degree.

From all the schools, North Bay Haven Charter Academy Elementary School stands out from the rest with the rating of nine, having enrolled a total of 442 children.

Universities in Panama City, Florida

Florida State University established in the 1980s and since then, at least 1,500 students have graduated with 15 bachelor and 19 graduate degrees. In 2000, the university introduced a full time daytime program. The main campus is located in Tallahassee, which is 100 miles away from Panama City.

The Florida State University is recognized for its variety of graduate programs in several different academic areas, which include sciences, film, social policy, engineering, business, arts, law, and politics. Additionally, it’s also known as the university that discovered Taxol, an anti-cancer drug.

Moreover, the university, so far, has won several accolades for its achievement in sports championships on a national level, having won eleven championships.

Cost of moving

If a family of three were to move to Panama City, Florida, it would cost them the following amount to move there from the following countries:

A day in the life

When you come to Panama City, you will instantly notice the growing crowd of tourists that come to enjoy the city’s amazing climate and atmosphere. There isn’t a day left in the year that you will not see a tourist laid out on the beach or taking in the wonderful sights.

The place is an all year hotspot that offers a variety of different activities for people to partake in such as arts, entertainments, fishing, and sports. In addition to these, Panama City provides people with affordable housing and a friendly environment to raise a family.

People planning to move there, with their families or alone, can indulge in a lot of fun activities such as watching a performance at a Broadway show, dining in fine restaurants, making a hole in one in golf, going fishing, etc. Come morning, you can travel via bus or rail transportation depending on your place of work.

Panama City’s rail transportation, The Bay Line Railroad is available for people to board in Panama City and Dothan, Alabama. The railroad travels from and to from these two destinations. The city also uses the railroad to carry a variety of products such as brick, cement, coal, feed products, food, metallic ores, steel, scrap, and forest products. In fact, when the railroad was launched, its primary use was to take and deliver products, and it wasn’t until 1957 that it opened its doors for passengers to travel in.

Other than the train, the city also offers a local transit that’s open from Monday till Saturday from six in the morning to 7 in the night. If you want to travel from city to city in the state, you can use Panama City’s intercity transit.

After a day’s work, you can visit the many art galleries, take pictures of vintage buildings, and shop at boutiques. If you’re sporty, Panama City offers parks, streetscapes, waterfront boardwalks, and playgrounds.

When the summer rolls around and you need to visit relatives in another state or leave the country, you can fly via Southwest Airlines or Delta Air Lines from the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport. You even may want to stay back during your vacations to party like a spring breaker. Before you know it, you will be one with your surroundings, loving Panama City in its entirety.