Life In Bonita Springs

Off The Beaten Path in Bonita Springs

1. Definitely stop and eat at Buffalo Chips ~ Bonita Springs’ favorite upscale dive offers the hottest wings and the coldest beer in town … and a little local culture.
2. Taste of Bonita – 3^rd weekend of November every year.  Taste of Bonita is the biggest Florida food festival in the tiniest little park.
3. Dog beach … where else but in Bonita Springs Florida is there a beach just for dogs? It’s one of a few pet friendly parks in the area. Bonitians love their dogs!
4. The Great Calusa Blueway  runs through Estero Bay and up the scenic Imperial River.
5. Mound Key, anyone? The spiny orb weavers and goats out there should make anyone want to go!
6. Swamp Buggy Ride? There are folks with kin ‘round here with swamp buggies, ask around and get up close to nature.
7. Shangri La Hotel is a historical landmark drive by the front or paddle around the back of it on Oak Creek.
8. Everglades Wonder Gardens – No brainer It’s a zoological park straight out of old Florida.
9. Christian Busk’s restored historic houses on Pennsylvania.  Take a look at history and appreciate the hard work and labor of love that went into saving these Southwest Florida homes from the wrecking ball.
10. The Blue Grass musicians at Flamingo Island (in season) Blow-your-doors-off, walk up, playing/singing musicians who just want to jam. A few famous musicians have quietly stepped on stage a few times.
11. Did you know we have an annual Harp and Harpist Convention here?
12. We also have Art Festivals in the winter season … a couple of them. Plan your travel to catch one!

Have an idea for other fun things to do in Bonita Springs? Email it or leave it in the comments below.

Sucker Punches & Low Ball Offers on Your Real Estate

So there you are minding your business and your agent calls with the great news that you’ve received an offer for your real estate. Hopefully, the offer price isn’t going to sting and leave a mark. If it’s a “low ball offer” bone up on your patience and count to ten before reacting.

A home owner recently asked me, “Where do these buyers get the nerve to come down here and sucker punch home owners with low ball offers? My answer probably wasn’t exactly comforting but an account of what we’ve been dealing with over the last few years.

The economy and real estate continue to be big media’s darling, go-to headline or sound bite. Add to that, the fact that we’re in Florida and one of the crisis states where huge amounts of building and followed by record mortgage defaults occurred. Consumers have no other choice but to think we’re flopping fish on the shore.

While that could have summed up the market a few years ago, it’s not remotely that dire in Southwest Florida these days.

There’s no doubt that there are savvy buyers with the quote of Baron Rothschild echoing in their head, "Buy when blood is running in the streets." There is also the mentality of getting the best possible deal in a market when it’s great to be a buyer and why shouldn’t there be? There’s no crime in buying low or selling high if you have the means or opportunity to do so.

Most sellers, as painful as it is for them to look at the other side of the coin when they’re addressing a low offer, would agree that if they were a buyer they’d be negotiating a hard bargain and making their money going in, too.

The difference between a potential buyer trying to negotiate a good deal and the dreaded low ball offer is motivation and merit. Are the buyers really motivated to buy or are they just throwing out offers to see what the response is? Is there merit to the offer, a complete contract, proof of funds, market analysis that supports their offer price?

We get our fair share of buyers who visit the area and make last ditch, low ball, my plane is leaving in three hours, offers. The offer actually feels odd. Sometimes those offers have to be taken with the seriousness in which it’s delivered. A halfhearted offer gets a halfhearted presentation and a seller who wants to most-heartedly tell a buyer to go pound salt.

A weak offer, including any verbal offer, can be vetted by the listing agent and seller by simply insisting that the proper documentation, addendums, proof of funds or financing to accompany the offer before it’s even presented to the sellers. If it’s too much effort for the buyers or their agent to produce, they’ll bail.

Offers with merit usually have a sense of vitality and are delivered with some sort of presentation, proof of means of payment, thorough paperwork and a glimmer of hope that the buyer is willing to engage in some form of negotiation.

If you’re a seller faced with a low offer, toe the line and ask for all of the proper documentation and make sure the buyer is committed and qualified up front. Why waste time or get bent out of shape over a lackluster offer with an unqualified or uncommitted buyer?

Remember also that not all offers result in an executed contract. Sometimes it’s appropriate to simply thank a buyer and their agent for their interest and invite them to come back with a more robust offer so that you can engage in negotiation.

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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.

So, What’s Your Tenant Up To These Days?

If Charlie Rich was a real estate agent he would have totally written something different about what goes on behind closed doors.

Most home owners run a decent household with some form of predictable lifestyle behind the closed doors but every once in a while there is a surprise. It’s getting harder and harder to surprise some real estate agents just because we’ve seen a lot the last few years. When the proverbial crap hit the fan in the real estate market, human beings removed their filters and just lived the way they wanted to live or turned their emotions loose on their home.

There are four “I don’t need this to happen to me” scenarios in real estate: Guns, security systems, aggressive breed dogs and naked people. I’m at the point where I’m just one naked person away from real estate bingo. I almost bingo’d the other day but realized what I was walking in on, turned on heal and saved my eyes from a thorough scrubbing with Clorox.

Sometimes it’s just an average day, like any other day and you just don’t realize you’ve crossed the threshold to hell. Some home owner has blindly decided to lease their house and they have no clue what is going on inside. In the case of this cute little home in a deed restricted, gated community, it happened to be Animal House going on inside. But it was a screwed up version of Animal House with no running water or air conditioning … as in the unit wasn’t even in the closet anymore.

There wasn’t a car in the driveway. The front door was unlocked; we rang the bell and walked in. There was not a stick of furniture in sight. We turned the corner into the kitchen, complete with brand new cherry cabinets, granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances, and were greeted by hundreds of beer cans lining the counters. It was hoarders, the beer can edition.

Second to a house I once showed on Fort Myers Beach that had three items of personal property in it, a mattress, a freshly baked quiche on the counter and a hookah on the back porch, this home was a memory in the making. It wasn’t until we were looked in a bathroom upstairs, complete with emergency water cans so they could shower (assuming they showered) or flush the toilet that we realized that there wasn’t running water.

Naturally, every door was closed so that whole pit bull, guns, “it puts the lotion on its skin” theory was running around in my thoughts. The last door I opened actually had a window air conditioning unit running in it and that’s where the near-bingo incident occurred. I informed the buyers that they were welcome to continue on but I had already seen an uncomfortable amount of sleeping and/or passed out, unclothed flesh and it just wasn’t my day to make agent of the year.

Where’s Monty Hall when you need him? Behind those doors should be prizes like cash or cars, not a visual imprint which will be stuck as the last memory on my loop when I’m a little old lady or one of the last things I see when my life flashes before my eyes at the end.

Sometimes it’s a tour of treats out there. Second to the eight foot tall grandfather clock built totally out of Heineken cans I saw a few years ago, this collection was a masterpiece aluminum collection and goes directly onto my photo hard drive filed under “diaries of a mad man”, subcategorized “life within 5 miles of a college campus” and tagged “code enforcement” and “clueless landlord”.

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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.

Friday Night Lights | Estero HS Game Time

9/02/11 7:30 PM vs. Ida Baker (Cape Coral, FL) (Estero High School)

9/09/11 7:30 PM vs. Island Coast (Cape Coral, FL) (Estero H.S.)

9/16/11 7:30 PM @ North Fort Myers (North Fort Myers, FL) (North Ft. Myers H.S.)

9/23/11 TBA vs. East Lee County (Lehigh Acres, FL) *

9/23/11 7:30 PM vs. East Lee County (Lehigh Acres, FL) * (Estero H.S.)

9/30/11 TBA vs. Palmetto Ridge (Naples, FL)

9/30/11 7:30 PM vs. Palmetto Ridge (Naples, FL) (Estero H.S.)

10/06/11 TBA @ Cape Coral (Cape Coral, FL) *

10/06/11 7:30 PM @ Cape Coral (Cape Coral, FL) * (Cape Coral H.S.)

10/21/11 TBA @ Cypress Lake (Fort Myers, FL) *

10/28/11 7:30 PM vs. Mariner (Cape Coral, FL) * (Estero H.S.)

11/04/11 7:30 PM @ Lehigh (Lehigh Acres, FL) * (Lehigh Sr. H.S.)

11/11/11 7:30 PM @ Bishop Verot (Fort Myers, FL) (Bishop Verot H.S.)

TBA = To Be Announced    * Conference Game

Imperial Shores Flamingos on Esplanade Drive

Buffalo Chips Restaurant ~ An Upscale Dive

No trip to Bonita Springs, Florida is complete without dining at Buffalo Chips Restaurant on Old 41 Road in Old Bonita. Back in the day … when I first moved here Buffalo Chips was a mandatory Friday or Saturday night pit stop.  Home of the Buffalo Chicken Wing!

If you’re looking for a fun place to dine and soak up some of the local color, Buffalo Chips is the place. It’s the local mom and pop that boasts “The hottest wings and the coldest beer”. 

Buffalo Chips is certainly a casual experience.  Buffalo Chips is the sort of laid back restaurant with picnic tables and rolls of paper towels on the table tops.

There is a smoking section outside on a screened lanai and ample air conditioned seating indoors. 

Besides the local yokels, there is some form of entertainment almost every day at Buffalo Chips, whether it’s Karaoke or strolling musicians going from table to table.  The night we last visited “Chips” a guitar and fiddle player were playing classic country favorites and making their way around the restaurant.  They were actually really good, too!

Buffalo Chips offers a variety of food that isn’t chicken or buffalo chicken wings, there are burgers, chili, fish, shrimp, salads and a kids menu, too.

Buffalo Chips also offers a web cam for your home viewing pleasure.  To see the Buffalo Chip cam and their full menu visit their official website at www.buffalochipsrestaurant.tv

Buffalo Chips is located at: 26620 Old 41 Road N., Bonita Springs, Fl 34135 Phone (239)947-1000

Buffalo Chips, Home of The Wing King!

St. Joseph The Last Ditch Home Selling Method

When I was growing up in Northern Ohio I recall finding Indian artifacts in the fields. I grew up on a farm near the river and not far from Lake Erie so it would appear that it was a primo spot for hunting and growing crops. There were arrowheads all over the place. After every rain it was fairly easy to find them on the surface of the soil.

Generations had passed and there were still remnants of great hunters and warriors working their way to surface. While the people were gone their tools remained. Little could the Native American have imagined that there’d be cattle roping and tractors carrying on right where they lived and hunted only a couple of hundred years later.

There are artifacts in the making right now even as you read this. Besides the landfills we leave with the evidence of our disposable, consumerism civilization we’re also working on a great puzzle for whatever beings end up inhabiting Southwest Florida a couple hundred or thousand years from now.

As if the Barbie doll isn’t going to be confusing enough for a future civilization to figure out, they’re also going to be digging up plastic figurines in residential flower beds all over Florida. Follow along and imagine some sort of futuristic “Antiques Road Show” segment where a random person brings in a St. Joseph statue to find out “the story” what it’s worth.

The expert will go into great detail weaving the tale of the great North American real estate investor wanting to charm the heavens into bringing them a buyer by burying a patron saint in their front yard for luck and praying for the legend to work. Why they’d even share the interesting tidbit about how some of the statues date back to the late 1970’s but there seemed to be a later, more concentrated number of these unusual idols in Las Vegas, Nevada, Phoenix, Arizona and a good bit of Florida, for some strange reason.

The real fortunes were made selling the statuettes. Over the last half dozen years millions of home owners made a last ditch effort to locate a buyer for their real estate by burying St. Joseph. Hopefully they buried him in the most effective manner. The so-called most effective manner is highly debatable because the directions vary depending upon who manufactured St. Joseph - Patron Saint of Home and Family.

There are dozens of St. Joseph home seller directions out there: standing up, head side down, facing the door, facing the street or under the for sale sign … unless the home owner association doesn’t allow signs then it’s back to the flower bed. There probably isn’t a provision for homeowner associations in the scripture, so that must have been a gray area with which manufacturers were able to take certain liberties before they asked for as much as $39 plus shipping and handling.

In the end, a home will eventually sell whether there’s an upside down artifact in the making interred out front or not. Everyone knows the real secret to selling a house is to plan a once in a lifetime vacation. You’d be sure to find a buyer who desires a closing precisely when you’ve planned to be on safari in Tanzania.

It never hurts to have faith and if you choose to put the legend of a saint to help out, it’s only a Google search and a garden spade away. Faith can move mountains and may even move real estate but so can a price reduction.

Maybe they should print that just above the Novena to St. Joseph in the “St. Joseph Home Selling Kit”.

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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.

Bonita Bay Offers Canoeing on Spring Creek

		Spring Creek Park Bonita Bay VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL $2>$2>

Within the gates of Bonita Bay is Spring Creek Park.  Bonita Bay is unique because it has two parks on the river and one park on the bay.  In addition to the many amenities of Bonita Bay, owners can also enjoy canoeing from the launch on Spring Creek from Spring Creek Park.

Besides canoeing and kayaking, Spring Creek Park also offers a bocce court, children’s playground, basket ball hoop, walking paths and the specialty of Bonita Bay, nature.  Grand Oak and pine trees have been carefully preserved to ensure shade and plenty of natural habitat for wildlife.

To learn more about the amenities of Bonita Bay, read also: Bonita Bay Golf and Country Club

Just a Pretty Picture From Bonita Bay

Some days are errand days and I had a few to run in Bonita Bay. There was a small break in the clouds so I had the chance to take a picture of trees with almost all blue sky.  It looks like I’m going to have to get an earlier start if I want to take pictures of my Sunday flowers without getting rained on.  Enjoy your Sunday!

Buy a Foreclosure and Earn a Foursquare Badge!

More often than not there is a buyer at the other end of the phone or an email requesting help to purchasing a foreclosure. Today, I actually received an email asking what’s the best value is, foreclosure or short sale?

It’s been years since a day has gone by without the word “foreclosure” in the morning paper, television news or on the home page of whatever internet browsers you’re using so it only makes sense that buyers ask about them. Add to that the rumors of great fortunes to be made, awesome opportunities and magical faeries found in kitchen drawers of foreclosures.

Everyone seems to know “someone” whose neighbor’s, college roommate knows met who allegedly purchased real estate, for “a song” (no price mentioned), in pristine condition with the appliances and light fixtures actually still in residence. Rumor also has it that there was a chive and cheese soufflé in the stainless steel oven and Pouilly Fuisse chilling on the counter, too.

While I have actually seen that rare animal of a veritable walk-away foreclosure, it’s not exactly the norm when it comes to many foreclosure purchases. Some home owners become a little bitter on their way out the door and have been known to Craigslist the innards of home before they bail.

For standard consumers who start out as foreclosure buyers, sweat equity is a noble investment until it involves a hazmat suit or commercial grade air scrubbers. Everyone is into a fixer upper until they realize it’s more than just new Berber carpet and a trip to the Lowes paint department.

Biohazards and other peoples DNA scattered about have a way of making short sales look mighty attractive. There’s something to be said for a home with the air conditioner still on and quite possibly someone living in it caring for the home.

Most of the “I’m looking for a foreclosure” buyers are really looking for a good, sound deal and they should be. The difference is getting value in their purchase versus just a low price.

Foreclosures aren’t necessarily the best possible deal for all buyers. Put into perspective that the banks/investors do get appraisals on their assets and don’t necessarily sell them under current market value. Those properties are also listed at a juicy price to stimulate an offer. This often results in multiple offers, so there is a good chance a buyer will be asked to revise their offer to the highest price and best terms which can actually be over list price. Silent auctions … they’re not just at charity events for a bag full of Pings.

Foreclosures may have waiting or “first look” periods for “owner occupant” buyers so while investor buyers or second home owners can place an offer on the property, the offer may not even be considered until the waiting period expires. Since inventory is being absorbed, fewer properties have been making beyond the waiting period, especially in the price bracket of $400,000 and under, which accounts for about seventy-five percent of our closed sales last month.

Don’t forget that equity sales are still an everyday occurrence out there. Last month, as a matter of fact, sixty-six percent of the closed sales were equity sales which did not involve a bank or third party approval.

Unless a buyer is a rehabilitating real estate to flip, most consumers should still be investing their time in researching the neighborhood that fits their lifestyle and then make a decision to purchase real estate there. They can then negotiate the best possible deal for the current market conditions whether it’s a short sale, equity sale or a foreclosure.

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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.