Living on the St. Johns River: the water, the wall, and the week in 2017.

The river changes character every few miles. Mandarin, at the south end, is the widest water in the city, with estate lots along Mandarin Road and Scott Mill Road and the creek mouths at Julington and Goodbys; most of the district behind those streets is inland and reads Zone X. San Jose and Beauclerc, the next bend north, hold the 1920s San Jose Estates lots and the deep 1950s Beauclerc lots around Epping Forest. San Marco and St. Nicholas are the Southbank: River Road’s 1920s estates, the Peninsula and RiversEdge towers, and the streets Irma flooded. The west bank is Riverside, Avondale and Ortega, the historic districts with the Ortega River and its yacht clubs beside the main channel.

The four riverfront pages linked below show each stretch live. Together they are about a hundred homes for sale on any given day, which is a thin market; the right house on the right stretch is worth waiting for, and the wrong stretch is not fixed by the house. Riverfront homes in Mandarin, live →

The MLS uses three labels and they are not interchangeable. River Front means the lot touches the river. River Access means the home has a right to reach it, usually a community dock or a deeded easement, and the lot itself may be a street back. Navigable Water means a boat can get from the dock to open water at normal tide, which on a creek or the Ortega River is a question of depth and bridges, not just of frontage. A listing can carry one, two or all three, and the price difference between them is the difference between a view and a lifestyle.

What decides the lifestyle is the wall. Most river lots in Jacksonville are bulkheaded, and the bulkhead is the most expensive thing on the lot after the house: its age, its material, its condition at the waterline and whether it has been permitted and surveyed are the first things I read on any river listing. The dock sits on top of that: its permit, its length against the setback rules, the lift, the depth at the end at low tide. None of that appears in the photos. Riverfront homes in San Marco, live →

River lots carry high-risk FEMA zones, usually AE, and that is normal; the lot’s price already reflects it, a lender will require flood insurance, and a good quote is part of the monthly math rather than a reason to walk. What the zone does not tell you is the elevation of the house itself, which is why the elevation certificate comes before anything else on a river home, and why a house built in 1925 three feet above a 1965 neighbor is a different purchase.

The week to ask about is September 2017. Hurricane Irma, passing west of the city, pushed the St. Johns to a record crest downtown, and water stood on River Road in San Marco, in Riverside and Avondale streets, and along the creek mouths in Mandarin that had not flooded in living memory. The streets that took water then are the ones the insurers price now. I ask the neighbors what that week looked like on their block, and the answer belongs in your offer. Jacksonville flood zones, area by area, live →

The river fits a buyer who will use the water: a boat, a kayak, a dock at sunset, the width of the Mandarin stretch or the harbor life of the Ortega River. It fits a buyer who wants the city’s oldest neighborhoods under the oldest trees, because the river districts are where Jacksonville was built first. And it fits a buyer who can carry the second set of costs: the flood policy, the bulkhead reserve and the dock maintenance, which together are real money every year.

It fits less well if the view is the whole point. A river view from a street back, or from a condo on the Southbank, costs a fraction of frontage and carries none of the wall. And it fits less well for a buyer who wants new construction: the river lots were taken a century ago, and what is for sale is old houses on old lots, renovated or not. Riverfront homes in Ortega, Avondale and Riverside, live →