I Live in Ocean City

In less than a week, my husband and I will be closing on our dream home on the Eastern Shore.  I’m an NEPA (northeastern Pennsylvania) native who found her true love in living by the ocean after I graduated from college and moved to Myrtle Beach in 2008.  Fast forward 7 years and my then-boyfriend is now my husband and we have an awesome 7-month old little ball of fire named Connor.

Why the move?

When we started talking marriage and babies, I started talking about moving closer to home.  Myrtle Beach is about 11 hours (if you drive straight through) from where I grew up, and I was getting sick of the drive and missed my family.  One thing I was not willing to “give up”, however, was life at the beach.  I love running on, long walks on and just days at the beach.  Yes, there’s certainly downsides to living in a tourist town, but we’ve gotten used to that aspect of it.

Our search began almost 2 years ago and now the “big move” is finally becoming a reality.  We’re extremely lucky that our stars aligned with this decision: we both work from home, we sold our house RIGHT (4 days) before our son was born and we had a place to crash (my mom’s) while we found our perfect home in Ocean City.  It’s been a whirlwind 7 months, but we’re excited to have our “forever home” and I’m super excited about living in the “Eastern Shore” area and raising Connor at the beach.

Why Ocean City?
Coastal Living in Maryland versus Delaware 

When we started our search, I’ll be honest – I was set on Delaware.  The beach towns are much more “quaint” up there and there are a LOT of nice, new neighborhoods with awesome amenities.  Of course, it has one major benefit: it’s a tax-free state and the property taxes are dirt cheap.  However, once we started going and spending time up there in the off-season to check out the different neighborhoods, we quickly realized just how quiet the Lewes/Rehoboth area is.  We also weren’t crazy about how close together the houses were and how most of the neighborhoods were built on old farming areas.  The prices of the new houses in amenity-rich neighborhoods were also a lot higher than similar houses in Maryland.

The neighborhoods that we looked at outside of Ocean City provided larger lots and bay views.  We also found that between the town of Berlin, Ocean City and Ocean Pines, there were many year-round activities for our family to enjoy.  Ocean City just seemed more kid-friendly to us and they have an excellent school system (hence, the higher taxes!).

And so here we are packing boxes and getting ready to close!  I’m starting this blog as a way to offer insight to others who might be thinking about life in a tourist town.  Here goes nothin!