Life In Bonita Springs

Gulf Front Condo View on Bonita Beach

Price, Condition, Location & Value in Real Estate

The snow birds are on their way. This year, like many of the other years, the first signs of their return are the transport trucks delivering their automobiles. To that end, let it be known that a winner of the Facebook “car hauler bingo 2011” contest is officially declared. Vivian M. of Bonita Springs spotted the first car hauler offloading a four door sedan with Ohio plates a few weeks ago.

Fall brings with it the early snow birds, slightly cooler weather plus new hope for the seasonally stressed businesses … and home owners yearning to sell their real estate over the next winter season.

If you’re about to list your home or your home sat unsold over the summer it’s time to measure and compare with current market statistics and conditions so you can prepare for the winter season. After all, you’ll never know the progress of the real estate market without measuring periodically to check the results … or figuring out why there was a lack of results.

Why fix what isn’t broken? Take, for instance, the big three valuation and measurement tools in real estate; price, condition and location.

Price - The value of real estate is determined by collecting recent closed sale comparable data. Those closed sales should be as recent as possible and not more than six months old when listing the property to make sure that your real estate is priced within market range.

If your real estate was listed before summer, the comparable sales that were used to determine your old list price are as stale as yesterday’s doughnuts and you’re overdue for a fresh comparative market analysis.

You should also ask your real estate agent or the agent you’re interviewing to list your real estate for an absorption rate. You’ll want to find out how much inventory your home is competing with neighborhood wide or even in your home’s price range. Ideally, you should know how many months or years of inventory you’re competing with before you list and periodically throughout the listing period.

Condition - Home buyers are shopping long and hard for real estate before putting ink to paper. They have the benefit of comparing all of the competing real estate in a day or two. They hack through the field of available properties with a machete and get to the best of the best quickly. There is little opportunity for a second chance to get them back through the door once they’ve been turned off by something negative. It’s a downright shame if it was a correctable negative condition like cleanliness or neatness that turned them away.

Of course it’s a no-brainer that homes in better condition sell faster and closer to list price than the homes needing TLC. Sometimes, home owners are a little too close to the forest to see the trees or their idea of clean is, well, different from what others may consider clean. Reevaluate the condition by taking a fresh look or get an outside, second opinion of the home’s cleanliness and readiness to show to perspective buyers.

Location - Whether it’s the actual neighborhood itself or where the home is located geographically within the neighborhood, the location can influence buyers positively or negatively. Compare apples to apples and be prepared to adjust the price to correct the differences. For example, two nearly identical homes, one on a lake and one backing up to a sound wall next I-75, sport very different values.

A busy road or any other unattractive nuisance that can’t be remedied or removed is a form obsolescence which often can’t be corrected with anything but a price adjustment.

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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.

Making Sense of Condo Maintenance Fees

This is going to be exciting! There is nothing more exciting than talking about numbers, budgets and statistics to get everyone hanging on the edge of their seats … or the abyss to boredom. <sarcasm/>

One of the more consistent questions asked by real estate consumers is, what exactly is included in the fees and what exactly is the maintenance fee? If you’ve spent any time searching for real estate online you’ve probably realized just how confusing it is to come up with the correct condominium fees.

There is a rather large segment of the population who either decide to or toy with the idea of jumping into the condo market but know very little about condominium ownership or ownership of a condo in Florida. One of the most frequent request folks have when shopping for a condo is to look for a complex or building with low fees.

Maintenance fees are a fact of life when you own a condo. Naturally, everyone wants to pay the least amount for anything, condo quarterly fees included. The bright eyed consumer might be wondering, exactly what is the least amount of fee they can actually expect to pay? Well, for the most part in Southwest Florida the high $200’s per month is starting point with condo fees and the prices move upward from there, depending upon the complex and it’s amenities.

So who comes up with the fees or determines what they will be? The number isn’t plucked from thin air. Every condominium is, in fact, a business and has a budget for operation. Whether a condominium association is managed by the residents or a professional management company, estimates for services and upkeep of the common elements are collected and a new budget is typically proposed at the end of the year for the following year.

One of the largest bills a condominium association is going to have is for insurance; the building structure, common elements, flood insurance. As we all know, insurance can be expensive in Florida and condominium insurance is one of the larger constants in any association budget.

Add to the insurance the other expenses typically covered by the association, cable television, trash collection, water/sewer, legal expenses, lawn care, accounting/management expenses plus any of the amenity maintenance, tennis courts, pool, elevator, club rooms, the list goes on.

All of these times are itemized on the budget. There is, or should be, a spread sheet with every expense the association pays. This is also where the reserves for replacement are calculated and accounts receivable.

So, if you’ve embraced the idea of quarterly expenses and decided that condominium ownership is right for you, know that you should have the opportunity to review the condominium bylaws, rules/regulations, frequently asked questions, as well as the financial and the budget as part of the condominium buying process.

Now, there is always the chance that you’re dealing with a situation where that information is outdated or unavailable. You can take matters into your own hands and contact the management company for the association to ask pointed question or request current information as well as an application for ownership.

You can find out who the management company is by looking for their contact in a common, public location on site at the condominium complex; for example the club house or the community pool. You can also look up the association on www.SunBiz.org. The management company and the directors/officers of the association are published there, just like the principals of any other Florida corporation.

There you have it, the keys to the quarterly condo fee kingdom.

If you’d like to see an example of a condominium association budget, click here: Example of a Condominium Association Budget

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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.

Found Hiding on Regal Drive in Imperial Shores

Which Real Estate Price Range is Moving?

For more real estate market reports, read also:

SW Florida Real Estate | Condition of The Sale August 2011

SW Florida Real Estate | Historical August Sales 2002-2011

A Decade of Historical Real Estate Sales

For more real estate market reports, read also:

SW Florida Real Estate | What Price Range Sold August 2011

SW Florida Real Estate | Condition of The Sale August 2011

How Many Short Sales and Foreclosures Are There?

For other recent real estate market reports, read also:

SW Florida Real Estate | Historical August Sales 2002-2011

SW Florida Real Estate | What Price Range Sold August 2011

Economic Development, Industry & Business in SWFL

The most amazing discovery during the economic development segment of Leadership Bonita was the number of organizations in southwest Florida who offer advice, guidance and incentives for bringing business and industry to Southwest Florida, Lee County and the city of Bonita springs, Florida.

A day full of economic development experts speaking all day is overwhelming.  Since I didn’t have my tablet I jotted down URL’s in my smart phone and took every flyer or pamphlet anyone offered.

Boiling down economic development and the position of businesses or business owners is impossible after a deluge of information like that.  What I came away with is how important it is for a business owner or a person developing a business thinking of moving to the area to get in contact with the Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce. 

Many of the available incentives have specific guidelines and deadlines.  For example, there could be grants, abatement programs or other financial incentives for business to move to Lee County or Bonita Springs but you may need to approach the right organization prior to the move, prior to purchasing or leasing real estate for the business to be qualified.

Sometimes you just need to know which area will have the most benefit for the bottom line of establishing your business, such as a storefront, medical office or office space.  The city of Bonita Springs currently offers an abatement program which can save tens of thousands of dollars in impact fees to a new business doing tenant improvements or improving the infrastructure of existing commercial real estate space.

Quite literally, the keys to information, clever ideas and incentives can all be found through the Chamber of Commerce representatives who know which programs can benefit business owners and who to put you in contact with. That being said, I’ll list the URL’s of importance so you can do some homework but I would urge you to contact the Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce.

• www.BonitaSpringsChamber.com – Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce
• Bonita Springs Estero Economic Development Council -is fairly new and the website is in development
• www.FortMyersRegionalPartnership.com – Fort Myers Regional Partnerships, Horizon Council, Horizon Foundation, Industrial Development Authority.
• www.SWFLWorks.org – Southwest Florida Workforce Development Board – Employee screening, placement and training with tax incentives to businesses.
• www.swfrtp.org – Southwest Florida Regional Technology Partnership - The SWFRTP is a Professional Technology Partnership whose goal it is to develop and sustain a vibrant community of technologically diverse professionals, establish an innovation and technology cluster in the  Southwest Florida area and be the leading resource to foster success for technology-oriented organizations and professionals in the Southwest Florida.
• www.growfl.com - Initially funded by the Florida Legislature, the Florida Economic Gardening Institute and its GrowFL program helped second-stage companies statewide create 1,400 direct jobs over two years.
• www.facebook.com/groups/edtoday – Economic Development Today Facebook
• www.businessdirectory.leegov.com – Lee County Business Directory
• www.gcvf.com - The Gulf Coast Venture Forum (”the GCVF”) is a Florida 501(c) 6 non-profit corporation, formed in 2001. The primary purpose of the GCVF is to promote the success of Southwest Florida’s new and emerging businesses by educating and bringing together the best entrepreneurs and Angel Investors.

This post is part of a series written over the 2011-2012 year documenting the Leadership Bonita Program.  Other chapters are below in chronological order: 

Leadership Bonita | Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce

Leadership Bonita | The Retreat

Leadership Bonita | Economic Development

Leadership Bonita 2011-2012

Every Leadership Bonita program starts with a weekend retreat.  This year’s retreat, like the last few, was held at Hyatt Coconut Point on Estero Bay.  It’s a gorgeous resort hotel, by the way. I wasn’t thrilled to be away for a few days and had told myself that I could just drive the five miles home and sleep with my dog in my own house at night.  That never happened because it turned out to be so much fun.

The retreat consists of dozens of exercises performed by the group, as a group or in smaller pairs, to develop leadership skills, critical thinking, alternative thinking, listing skills and to build camaraderie and friendships.  It certainly is interesting watching large groups of people problem solve and interact. I love to people watch so that aspect was fun.

My only regret, which was unavoidable at the time, would have been not to have a back injury when I was there. Young trainer vs. middle aged woman = woman’s spine loses.

At any rate, the exercises and activities that help the group meld were fun and interesting.  The object of the retreat was for us all to get to know each other better before the Leadership Bonita program started and it worked.  We had a great time and it helped structure the group for our first Leadership program, Economic Development.

By the way, Suzanne Matteson, Matteson Consulting Group lead the retreat, in the event you’re looking for team development professional to help grow your business.

Leadership Bonita 2011-2012

This post is part of a series written over the 2011-2012 year documenting the Leadership Bonita Program. Other chapters are below:The Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce offers the Leadership Bonita program to members of the community of Bonita Springs, Florida. The Leadership Bonita program is designed to hone leadership skills, create the opportunity for personal growth, and to help participants learn more about the Bonita Springs, Florida area on many levels such as:

• Economic Development
• Government
• Education
• Healthcare
• Tourism
• Infrastructure
• Public Safety
• Social Issues
• Media and The Arts
• Environment

Here’s a little press release from the Chamber of Commerce announcing this year’s Leadership Bonita Class.  Yes, yours truly is a Leadership Bonita participant.  I’m going to do my best to share a few pictures and commentary on what I learn about Bonita Springs from the inside, out. 

If you’d like to contact the Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce to learn more visit their website: www.BonitaSpringsChamber.com

This post is part of a series written over the 2011-2012 year documenting the Leadership Bonita Program.  Other chapters are below in chronological order: 

Leadership Bonita | Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce

Leadership Bonita | The Retreat

Leadership Bonita | Economic Development