Life In Bonita Springs

Growing All Over in Bonita Bay in Bonita Springs

It’s a Starburst or a Clerodendrum quadriloculare, if you’re wondering.

Island Park The Imperial River Downtown Bonita Springs

A fun series of pictures of a super dog catching air to get his tennis ball.  He did this many dozens of times and never tired in the least.  By the way, Island Park is a hidden treasure in Bonita Springs.  You should go search for it and drop by Depot Park Playground next door, too.

Bonita Springs Real Estate Values … Up, Up and Away

When buyers of real estate began cautiously moving back into the southwest Florida real estate market when there was plentiful inventory at rock bottom prices there were skeptics questioning whether it was the right time to buy. Certainly, the communities which were experiencing excess inventory, sometimes decades of inventory, were not without their challenges. There were the brave who decided that it was the time; the time to buy, the time to plan their retirement, the time to upsize, downsize or get off of the sidelines and back into the market.

The thing about a down real estate market is that there are always folks who are trying to gauge the bottom, the precise moment when prices will go no lower and inventory is absorbed to reasonable or near balanced levels. It’s nearly impossible if not difficult to do. It’s like watching the pendulum in a grandfather clock swinging and clapping when it is precisely at the exact bottom. If a person clapped slightly before or after the exact, centered bottom of the pendulum swing, would they still not be close enough to get the majority of the full swing of the pendulum? If there was a room full of people, maybe there was one who, because they clapped in the right place at the right time, appeared to time it perfectly.

There’s safety in numbers. With the unit sales we’ve been experiencing we’ve sold off a lot of inventory. It’s brought in a new wave of buyers who have now found their confidence in the real estate market and are out looking for their bargain real estate. There is no denying that there are still great deals out there. The key is that the buyers of today need to be looking for their own deal and not a deal they heard about, whether it’s fact or fiction.

This week I received a phone call from a buyer looking for an opportunity to purchase and possibly rent until they’re ready to move in. I ran a few scenarios for the complex he was interested in and shared with him the last few closed sale prices and the fact that while there’s always something that pops on from time to time there were no units on the market in the entire complex right now.

This fella seemed taken aback by the pricing, which was still a value compared to many other “like kind” communities in the area. He then said, “I am looking for a deal just like you found for Mike.”

What this buyer didn’t know was the truth about Mike’s deal. Mike was out looking for real estate to pick up at a value when it wasn’t cool to buy southwest Florida real estate. He was fortunate to be purchasing that time. He essentially clapped at precisely the bottom of the pendulum swing. Mike didn’t tell you that he almost backed out of the deal until he was shown in great detail, why his purchase had such great potential, what the inventory and absorption rates were for this particular price point and housing complex and most importantly how much our market had improved.

It’s really difficult for some consumers to believe that conditions have improved and that prices have actually gone up in some areas and price points. I just doubled checked Mikes purchase price against recent closed sales in his complex. First, there are still no units available and second, due to lack of inventory the last few sales have each inched up in price. The last closed sale price was 13.75% higher than the price that Mike’s purchased at.

There are some really great values out there but capturing an identical deal to something that happened last year may not be realistic at this point. At this time, we just don’t have the excess inventory that was responsible for creating the low prices. You had to know it wasn’t going to last, right?

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Real Life in Bonita Springs is a project by Chris Griffith dedicated to writing useful blog posts for consumers about the Bonita Springs, Florida area.  Find out what it is really like to live in Bonita Springs, Florida by reading about our fair city. You’ll get the latest in local real estate information, Bonita Springs real estate market reports and a little bit of humor.  If you have topic ideas, feel free to request a story about the idea, after all, this site is just for you.

You can subscribe to a weekly email newsletter by visiting www.LifeInBonitaSprings.com and entering your email in the subscription area on the center pane of the web page or by adding us to your reader by subscribing to this blog. Oh, and if you’re reading this content anywhere else but www.LifeInBonitaSprings.com or Naples Daily News it is probably stolen.

Therapeutic Riding Program in Southwest Florida

If you’re looking for a way to be involved with the community you may find a great opportunity by giving a gift of your time or a financial gift to the Naples Equestrian Challenge.  the mission of Naples Equestrian Challenge is to improve the lives of children and adults with special needs through therapeutic riding and other equine related programs.

This program benefits dozens of children and adults every week.  Volunteers are always needed and welcomed by Naples Equestrian Challenge.   In addition to donating time to help the riders you can sponsor-a-rider and personally make a difference to a deserving rider. Sponsorship range from $250 and up.  There is a donation button on the official website. 

If you’d like to learn more about the Naples Equestrian Challenge program, visit their website www.NaplesEquestrianChallenge.org.  You can also call to tour the facility.  Naples Equestrian Challenge is located in the Pine Ridge area of Naples, Florida just off of Goodlette Road.

Naples Equestrian Challenge

206 Ridge Drive

Naples, FL  34108

239-596-2988

www.NaplesEquestrianChallenge.org

Depot Park | Riverside Park | Island Park in Bonita Springs

Depot Park is a park behind Riverside Park on the west of the train tracks.  Dogs pets are permitted at Depot Park if they are on lead. Dogs are not permitted in the fenced playground area. There are huge oak trees draped in Spanish moss so there is plenty of shade.  A foot bridge crosses the Imperial River from Depot Park to Island Park another park in Downtown Bonita Springs.  Island Park can also be accessed by foot bridge via South Riverside Drive.  Many of the "locals" have dogs off lead at this park. The park is not fenced but is bordered on one side by a fence and the other by non-functioning railroad tracks.

Recently, Bonita Springs has opened a fenced off lead dog park on East Terry Street at Matheson Drive. The dog park offers three "size related" dog corrals with shade, water and a walking path.  To learn more about dog parks or dog friendly parks visit: www.LifeInBonitaSprings.com/Parks and look for the park locations denoted with a paw. 

Depot Park at Riverside Park

If you’d like to visit Depot Park or Riverside Park in Downtown Bonita Springs Florida, click the map below for directions.  Parking is free, entry to the park is free. Pets are permitted.

Depot Park at Riverside Park Bonita Springs Florida

The Imperial River Bridge From Depot to Island Park

Editorial Special to Southwest Florida Living Magazine

It was about twenty-six years ago that I moved to Southwest Florida. It was probably the first week in the area that I found myself water skiing up and down the Imperial River. Yes, at that time no-wake zones were unheard of. If you were here in the summer there weren’t many people, either. Never could I have imagined how much the area would grow.

The city of Bonita Springs was the little sister of Naples, a quiet small town and a seasonal, retirement destination. In the spans of time since I’ve lived here, Bonita Springs has evolved from the small town where restaurants owners closed up in the summer, boarded the windows and went away until fall to the thriving city that it has become. I still recall the day I saw a monument sign being put built at the corner of West Terry Street and Tamiami Trail which read “Bonita Bay”. I remember thinking to myself, who the heck is going to buy all of this real estate? As the saying goes, if you build it they will come and like Bonita Bay and many other communities that followed, it was built and they came.

Simply put, there has to be more than beautiful homes and housing developments compelling people to stay here after that first, initial visit. What’s not to love about living in the sunshine state? Besides the fact that we have a climate as mild as angel food cake, we have an abundance of outdoor activities many of which revolve around our water, whether it’s the rivers, the gulf or the Florida Everglades. Countless volunteers, benefactors and forward thinking government officials have helped preserve parts of Southwest Florida in its natural state by creating parks and nature preserves for generations to enjoy.

You can’t throw a stone without hitting a golf course. World class, championship courses have sprouted up in nearly every city in Southwest Florida. If we weren’t the golf capital of the state of Florida we certainly earned our stripes when Florida Gulf Coast University became one of only twenty schools accredited by the PGA nationally, and one of only two PGA accredited schools in the entire state of Florida.

It’s not all sports and games living in Southwest Florida. Driven by our growing population and housing starts, the infrastructure has quietly become well rounded with the addition of a variety of colleges, both large and small, offering basic higher education courses, masters programs and even renaissance programs. Many of the schools and even medical institutions were built to keep pace with the both the current and projected future growth in population. Southwest Florida International Airport was built to service all of the passengers, both domestic and international, who would make Southwest Florida their premier destination or choice for a winter residence.

The unprecedented growth in housing reached a fevered pitch in the mid-2000’s. The real estate market had become saturated, the prices had reached unbelievable highs and an incredible run in real estate came nearly to a screeching halt. Flagrant excess and an almost insatiable appetite for real estate had gotten the best of many. Fortunes were won and lost during an unparalleled building boom and the following so-called bust.

As the proverb goes, this too shall pass. For years, Florida real estate became mainstream media’s poster child for the housing collapse. The saying, any press is good press couldn’t be further from the truth. Even when local real estate professionals knew a corner had been turned, another dreadful article would be released by a major publication. It took years for buyer confidence to return.

The meteoric rise and subsequent bubble burst of real estate caused buyers apprehension a few years ago but they’ve come back, lead first by the bargain hunting investors and then followed the savvy buyers who are staking their retirement claim years in advance and snatching up a tremendous value on their piece of paradise.

These real estate buyers and investors returned to the market with little fanfare or acknowledgement by mainstream media. Little does most of the general public realize that the excess real estate inventory has been quietly selling off and, as a result, there are many communities now experiencing manageable levels of real estate inventory. Some are even enjoying balanced inventories. While we do have a foreclosure real estate market, we are not drowning in bank owned real estate.

The saying “real estate is local” has never had more truth to its ring. The story of the real estate market by county, city, neighborhood or street can only be truthfully told by collecting the current data and told to you by a local real estate professional, not a cubical journalist in Philadelphia. If the source or the messenger of the information, whether it’s good or bad, isn’t firmly anchored in Southwest Florida you simply do not have accurate information.

The southwest Florida market is ever changing and progressing through the life cycle of recovery and subsequent growth. The largest part of the healing process was selling off the surplus inventory which drove the prices down. Many of the hardest hit communities have materialized from the bubble rubble by selling off their excess inventory, stabilizing and even enjoying modest gains in value.

The adjusted real estate prices have driven the actual unit sales up, rivaling unit sales of the boom years. The wicked seesaw effect with our real estate market has been tempered. The reemergence Lee and Collier County real estate of as been slow and steady and most importantly, healthy.

If you’ve returned to the Bonita Springs and Naples areas with a plan to purchase real estate we invite you to ask pointed questions and get the local facts and statistics. We want you to understand our market. We want you to find a great value. We want to invite you to become part of our community as we move into the exciting next phase of growth in Southwest Florida.

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Special to Southwest Florida Living Magazine

March 2012 Edition

Bonita Springs Real Estate Inventory and Absorption

Most of the time I fire up my email at dark o’clock and get to work over coffee. Besides the usually emails related to ongoing transactions, every few days I get an email from a client, either past or present, who has found an article in one publication or another that’s rattled their chain.

You’ve likely seen eye grabbing quotes like, “real estate won’t recover until the year 20??” or “vacancy rates at over thirty percent delay recovery”. Big publication or small, I usually read whatever ends up in my inbox and try to figure out what the motivation of the article’s author was, what the source of the data they’ve used is and what the standard or baseline they’re using to measure or gauge our real estate market.

Besides the fact that the source of most of the data they’ve used is, at best, vague what is always non-existent is the actual means of measure. I don’t think they even know what they’re comparing our real estate to.

Look at it this way, what is your idea of recovered and what is your neighbor’s idea a recovered real estate market? It’s almost like finding one uniform way to measure the best burger or judge a beauty pageant. Everyone has their own idea of what deliciousness or beauty is and they’re not all the same. When the “they” are measuring recovery, to what standard are they measuring? What is their secret formula? Are they measuring price comparison to a particular year’s average price, volume of units sold to an a particular year or are they measuring our inventory levels?

The lack of how they’re measuring, what “they” consider recovered, is common theme in most speculative reports whether they’re talking about Florida in general, southwest Florida in general or when they put Naples real estate in the cross hairs.

Just for giggles I pulled up a historical graph of January sales for a particular geographic area in southwest Florida. It’s a veritable roller coaster of real estate sales over a decade, each a thirty day snapshot of sales which occurred only in the month of January. In January 2002 there were 348 sales, in January 2003 there were 710 sales, in January 2005 there 966 sales and in January 2012 there were 835 sales. If they’re comparing units, to which year’s unit sales are we recovering to? Which is the magic year? Is it 2002, the year before the real estate market locomotive chugged out of the station or the unnatural high mark of the real estate boom?

Is it a price that we’re recovering to? On my street alone there is a possibility of twelve different years a person could have purchased a home. Which of those twelve years is the official benchmark year that determines the fairest price of all? Will there be a bell that goes off to signal us when we cross the threshold to officially recovered? The Kumbaya moment where home owners and the housing market enjoy peace and harmony and buy each other a Coke?

The fact of the matter is that there is a distinct difference between recovering and recovered. Our local real estate market has been recovering as a whole. Momentum has quietly been building and inventory has been selling off. The first point of measure, something that is actually tangible, should be where our inventory was and where it has retracted to.

If the local inventory statistics aren’t being measured and incorporated into a published hypothesis of the local real estate market conditions, it’s nothing more than throwing darts in the dark.  Comparing the southwest Florida real estate market against the moving target of what “recovered” is in the eyes of the author instead of viable, current statistics isn’t accurate or the truth.

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The actual facts are here: Bonita Springs Real Estate Market Reports 

Real Life in Bonita Springs is a project by Chris Griffith dedicated to writing useful blog posts for consumers about the Bonita Springs, Florida area.  Find out what it is really like to live in Bonita Springs, Florida by reading about our fair city. You’ll get the latest in local real estate information, Bonita Springs real estate market reports and a little bit of humor.  If you have topic ideas, feel free to request a story about the idea, after all, this site is just for you.

You can subscribe to a weekly email newsletter by visiting www.LifeInBonitaSprings.com and entering your email in the subscription area on the center pane of the web page or by adding us to your reader by subscribing to this blog. Oh, and if you’re reading this content anywhere else but www.LifeInBonitaSprings.com or Naples Daily News it is probably stolen.

Condo Budgets and Reserves For Replacement

As I trotted through this neighborhood in Bonita Bay, I snapped a picture of what “reserves for replacement” buys condo owners.  That quarterly condo fee not only includes basic maintenance such as lawn service, pool service, upkeep of security lighting and such, it also includes small amounts that go into reserves or reserves for replacements. 

What is reserves for replacement cover?  There are a few large ticket items that the reserves savings is meant to cover such as roof replacement, parking lot/street replacement and swimming pool replacement or resurfacing.  Instead of condominium home owners being hit with a surprise, large special assessment when the roofs are in need of replacing, there is a savings built up over the life of the roof specifically to cover the expense of roof replacement.

Reserves for replacement are a very important item when a buyer is looking to finance a condominium purchase, as well.  With the finance climate in the condition it is currently in, lenders are asking for more money down (loan to value) to balance the risk they feel financing a condo exposes them to.  When a consumer decides to purchase a condo and finance it, the lender will send a condo questionnaire to the homeowner association.  One of the many questions asked is what is the balance of the reserves.  The lenders, in an effort to reduce their risk should the condominium complex be in the stage of life where significant repairs to the common areas are warranted.

If you’re interested in seeing the sorts of questions asked regarding condo questionnaires and reserves for replacement, take a look at this .pdf:  An actual Condominium Questionnaire.

Race for the Cure 2012 in Estero Florida

• Komen Southwest Florida Race for the Cure
• March 10, 2012 at 8 a.m.
• Coconut Point Mall, Estero, FL
• U.S. Hwy. 41 and Coconut Road
• For more information and to sign up visit the Official Southwest Florida Komen Website

Enjoy this Video from Past Race for The Cure Events at Coconut Point: