Everything is relative. We moved from Austin to Orlando last year for family reasons and our new house of roughly equivalent size/amenities was significantly less than our Austin house. And now we wouldn’t be able to afford our old Austin house.

Not saying it’s not bad here — it’s just less worse than some places.

Compared to NYC, LA, and the Bay Area (the other places they'd generally like to live). Miami and the other "high life" parts of Florida are not cheap on an absolute scale, but they are cheap relative to their weight class.

There is plenty of cheap housing in florida if you don't need waterfront, and depending on where you are coming from, possibly huge savings on state income tax, that may very well make your mortgage payments with the savings, or at a minimum offset it quite a bit.