Outdoor kitchens in Santa Rosa Beach.

Most of the master-planned communities along 30A — WaterColor, Seaside, Grayton Beach, WaterSound — operate under New Urbanism design codes written by DPZ CoDesign, the same firm that planned Seaside, and a design review board has to sign off on materials, roofline, and often the visibility of grills and hoods before a county permit is pulled; a stainless hood facing the street can get sent back for concealment behind a courtyard wall or louvered gate. Walton County also carries a constraint Destin doesn't have: fifteen rare coastal dune lakes, Western Lake and Draper Lake among them, each with a 100-foot no-build setback and a 300-foot Coastal Dune Lake Protection Zone that caps vegetation clearing at 25 percent, so a lot backing onto one of these lakes can lose most of its usable yard before the kitchen footprint is even drawn. Salt air reaches nearly every lot in the CDP, since it runs along both the Gulf and Choctawhatchee Bay, so 316 stainless and marine-grade fasteners are the default spec here, not an upgrade.

Buyers skew second-home and short-term-rental investor more than full-time resident — many are building or renovating a rental expected to earn well into six figures in peak-season nights, so the outdoor kitchen gets sized and spec'd against a property manager's rental-ready checklist as much as the owner's own taste, and the builder or interior designer of record often drives the appliance list more than the homeowner does.