In Key West? Or the Keys in general? It's pricey to live in paradise.

$1,350 a month for an apartment qualifies as "affordable housing" in KW. While you can get more space for your money elsewhere in the Keys, that's a fairly standard rent. Figure on paying anywhere from $900 for a studio apartment to $1,800 for a home on a canal in one of the Lower Keys.

A single-wide off-water mobile home will run you $250,000 (rare, and it probably would be a fixer-upper) to $350,000. If it's on the water, add another $50,000 to $100,000. Homes in the neighborhood where I'm renting sell for $750,000 and up. For that, you get 900 to 1,100 square feet (under air) on stilts, on a lot slightly wider than the house, with a navigable canal.

The farther down the Keys you live, the more things cost. Groceries, fast-food value meals, 32-ounce drinks at the Circle K -- everything costs just a little more than it does on the mainland. Gas prices start cheap in Key Largo and gradually rise by as much as 25 cents a gallon. I gas up where I work because it costs 10 cents less a gallon there than it does where I live.