I won't tell the OP to avoid SE Florida but I will tell him my experiences and why I won't move back. It is not a presumption how he will feel but since the OP has lived in NC for years moving to SE Florida can be culture shock. I really miss the Cuban food and other great restaurants in SE Florida. There really is a lack of good restaurants up here, especially in Cary compared to SE Florida. I had lots of really nice, family owned "ethic" restaurants where I used to live in SE Florida which I do miss. Cary is a vast wasteland in comparison.
I lived in multiple places in Palm Beach and Broward counties. Worked In Dade, Palm Beach, Broward counties as well as over to Fort Myers and Naples. I suspect you live in a very nice part of SE Florida and not worked with the public like I did. I lived in nice areas to slum areas. Honestly, not much difference in crime or rudeness in either areas.
I have lived from close to I95 to out "west" well past the turnpike.
Rudeness is not speech patterns. One of the things I noticed in SE Florida was going to the gas station. This was back in the day where you had to go inside to pay and the clerks acted like they were doing you a favor to take your money to pay for the gas. The people in the gas stations in SW Florida was nice and polite. Night and day difference. Rudeness was a common topic of conversation when I lived down there. Never seen anything like it before or since.
A family member traveled to NYC on business back then and was surprised that people up there were polite unlike the New Yorker's in SE Florida. He was talking to a guy up there about this, and the New Yorker said they ship the rude a....hats to Florida.
Decades later, we were flying out of one of the New York airports and had great service and politeness.
Figured that guy was right and the rude people where shipped to FLA. As a surprising aside, the rudest people we have seen at airports have been at LAX and SeaTac. Go figure.
There are areas here in NC that are not so nice to go into but I drive through them without much concern. There are areas in South Florida that going into is a major risk and I would not drive through at all. When I lived in SE Florida there were fairly constant reports of tourists or Snow Birds driving into these areas by mistake or ignorance and getting robbed or worse. Heck, I remember one of the news readers getting robbed when she was doing the zig zag to get on I95 from downtown Miami.
At one apartment, one afternoon, I heard a knock on the door. Got up and looked through the peep hole. Nobody there so I sat back down. Another knock on the door and so I looked out the door to see nobody. Sit down and it repeats but this time I stand and keep looking out the peep hole. After a bit I see a deputy leaning out from cover and concealment at which point I open the door to chat with him. He has on a domestic violence call and got the correct apartment number but wrong building. Domestic violence happens anywhere so this is not about DV... But it was the first time I knowingly had it going on near me. Has not happened since either.
Now, why was I not opening the door in the first place? Well there was a Jamaican drug dealer living next door. I will skip all the crap going on with that guy but I felt carrying a shotgun from room to room in my apartment was a prudent thing to do. If one lived on the other side of the road, it was a really nice area. Not so much where I was living. The people living over at the gate golf course community were not having these experiences even though they were maybe 1,000 feet away.
Thankfully, my lease was soon up and I moved to a nice city, kinda like Cary. Of course lots of bad stuff happens in Cary but they suppress that information but that is another story. In the new city I moved too, in a nice area, we had problems with neighbors using drugs, to some nut calling me by mistake thinking I was at his Ex's house and threatening to come beat my a..., and the best one was early one morning when some lady started yelling at some man to put down the machine gun. Fun watching the PD roll in on that call.
I have lived in quite a few places but SE Florida was the most "interesting."
Maybe SE Florida has gotten better. I don't read about planes landing in the 'glades full of drugs or about square groupers floating up on the beaches. Heck, when I was working on a horse ranch, I saw two twin engine planes flying just above tree top with the engines fire walled and heading west. We assumed one was the drug runner and the other was the Federale's but they both could have been carrying. Maybe the drugs are gone and the law enforcement corruption has stopped too. Got stories about that as well.
Flip side is that a few years ago we drove through on I95 through one of the towns I used to live and I was shocked at the gang tagging on highway signs and walls. That was NOT there when I or my family lived in town.
The OP needs to spend some time in the area he wants to live/work. I would also start reading the local papers, and now a days, check to see if the sheriff and police departments publish crime maps.
Later,
Dan