We closed on our new home on April 29, 2022 at Latitude Margaritaville Watersound (LMWS). This was after a long wait for construction to begin. We first heard about Latitude Margaritaville in 2018 while vacationing in PCB (Panama City Beach) at the Wyndham Emerald Coast Resort in Panama City Beach. LMWS was going to be fashioned after the one in Dayton, Florida. We read about the planned 55-plus community centered around the laid back life style of Jimmy Buffett and it would be 170,000 residential homes over a 50-year development. We liked the fact that it was a “Beach Vibe” community with all the great amenities right on sight.

After vacation, we went back home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, looked over all the information we could find about the development and decided this is what we wanted to do. We talked it over with our two children and told them of our plan to move to Florida, surprisingly they were okay with the idea and said go for it.

In 2019 our son encouraged us to put our house up for sale and move in with him since he had a large home with two master suites. The house sold in 2 weeks. However, construction got delayed due to the Hurricane Michael that did extensive damage in Mexico Beach, Florida, and no new building permits were being issued for new construction projects.

We had no idea the wait would be for 3 years. Meanwhile we were living out of boxes, anxiously waiting for news concerning construction to begin. Another delay, COVID in 2020. Construction was slow, it seemed to take forever. By now everyone’s interest had peeked, and Minto decided to do a drawing for the option to pick a lot to build on for the first lots. However, there was only going to be 200 lots available in this first build-out. By now, we learned that there was over a thousand people interested. We hoped and prayed we would be picked in the drawing, and we were. Our drawing number was 132, not as low as we would like but we made the cut. When we got the call to pick our lot, we were able to get the lot we wanted, the house we wanted and the color we wanted. The representative helping us said it was very unusual to get all three! God is good!

We traveled to LMWS many times during the construction of the model homes. We took many road trips from Tulsa to PCB to select our “A” and “B” choices, to take pictures of the pouring of the foundation, the framing and roofing and the electrical wiring. Every opportunity we could, we would travel back to Florida to check on progress, we were anxious to move in. More delays, windows and sliding glass doors. Both were in short supply, as well as people to do the work. Again, construction was slow, too slow. All was not perfect in “Paradise” when we closed in 2022 but we were able to move in with a promise that all would be taken care of under warranty.