Life In Bonita Springs

SW Florida Real Estate Statistics

Wondering what price range of real estate is selling?  Well, true to for the real estate hot price is still $400,000 and under.  $200,000 priced real estate is moving at lightening speed.   If you’re a real estate buyer you had better prepare yourself by coming with your preapproval in hand or proof of funds and get ready for the multiple offer game.  Highest and best offer has come into play on many real estate transactions that are priced well and in fine condition.

To read other Southwest Florida Real estate market reports, read also:

SW Florida Real Estate | Historical Sales February 2002-2011

SW Florida Real Estate: Condition of The Sale February 2011

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All information is deem accurate, not guaranteed and subject to change.  Check the date on this report for freshness.  If you have questions regarding your particular neighborhood, your street or your home specifically you’re welcome to contact us for a current market report. Real estate consumers that read this website are urged to seek independent, professional legal, real estate and financial advice before engaging in any transaction. All information is deemed, accurate, subject to change and not guaranteed.

SW Florida Real Estate Sold in February 2002-2011

February real estate sales are definitely up.  Here’s my prediction for March and April closed real estate sales … we’ll set “unit sales” records. Prices went down, under valued.  Homes couldn’t be  built for the price they were for sale and the nation took interests. 

All of those real estate buyers looking forward to retirement in the near future have showed up this winter and they’re buying Florida real estate in volume.  Under 400K is still our darling child price range.  To see the other real estate market reports for Southwest Florida real estate read also:

SW Florida Real Estate | What Price Range Sold February 2011?

SW Florida Real Estate: Condition of The Sale February 2011

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All information is deem accurate, not guaranteed and subject to change.  Check the date on this report for freshness.  If you have questions regarding your particular neighborhood, your street or your home specifically you’re welcome to contact us for a current market report. Real estate consumers that read this website are urged to seek independent, professional legal, real estate and financial advice before engaging in any transaction. All information is deemed, accurate, subject to change and not guaranteed.

Why Listing Office Accompany Sucks For Buyers

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an interesting question from the home buyer gallery today. Question: What’s the deal with listing office accompany? What is the point of the listing agent holding the listing hostage or me, the buyer, to their time schedule?

Explanation: Home owners have the right to sell their homes any way they choose. Some insist that their agent accompany all showings. Sometimes the listing agent operates their business that way.

There are all sorts of security issues that the home owners may have, so security issues aside, what would be the potential gain for listing office accompany? In theory, the action of accompanying a showing to thoroughly present a home to a buyer has its merits but most of the time it is more of an inconvenience to buyers simply because it’s not executed correctly.

It wouldn’t take more than a few “attended” home tours to realize the majority of the time there really is little benefit to the current owner or the buyer, for that matter. From a buyer and buyers agent standpoint I can share that we’ve stood in the imported brick paver driveway of many a home waiting for the “keeper of the key” to grace us with their presence, open the front door and not knowledge dump on us.

What should really be a “value added service” of accompanying a showing usually isn’t more than an unwelcomed interruption in the home buyer’s process.

One would think that the agent opening the door should be contributing to the knowledge base of the buyer and educate them about the property. Perhaps hand the buyer a detailed, information packed book on the property regarding updates, not just the visible but the not so obvious features, plus the property disclosures, floor plans and the evidence that supports what a “steal of a deal” they proclaim the property to be.

The information should probably have value added details different and more finely pointed than what’s on the web because the buyers already found that, verified it and really don’t need it again.

As a matter of fact, this would probably be an excellent opportunity for the seller’s side to refute the malicious claims of an angry blogger or thoroughly explain community lawsuits against the developer, the floundering golf course or whatever other insights need to be shared.

Instead, the listing agent or the assistant they send to unlock the door pull the Price is Right showcase ‘here’s the pantry’ maneuver.

The last buyer I took to a tower residence with listing office accompany had the agent show them the pantry, as if the buyers would have been too stupid to find the pantry because they’d accidentally start looking for it in the master bathroom. (The buyer’s actual words after we left.)

Maybe your home buying experiences have been different but not one single buyer I’ve worked with has see a home with a pantry so magical, so exquisitely crafted that it would be the deciding factor on dropping a fat wad of cash on it.

Unfortunately, as a buyer you are just going to have to suffer through listing office accompany showings, most of which will be executed rather poorly.

You’re going to be pressured to make small talk with someone you don’t know or want to know and be forced to take extensive tours of pantries while you make one of the larger financial decisions of your life.

Consider it a right of passage, a hazing if you will, to high end home ownership in Southwest Florida.

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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.

  How Real Estate Buyers Win the Contract

Little would anyone imagine that this winter there would be a market so brisk that we’d be facing multiple offer scenarios. Multiple offers as in someone besides you, the savvy buyer, has decided to place a purchase offer on the same piece of genuine Florida real estate.

What you need to know most about the current market in Southwest Florida is that besides experiencing low prices, we’ve worked our way thru a massive chunk of surplus inventory and a record number of units are being sold.

If you’ve waited to buy until this winter, you weren’t the only consumer to pony up and take the plunge. The buyers have arrived in mass; especially in the entry level priced real estate and they’re scrambling to get their foot in the door.

The end result of this market swing has produced multiple offer scenarios and it has become painfully clear that, well, some of the agents are either out of practice or they aren’t trying hard enough.

If you’re a consumer hopefully you’ve chosen a real estate agent that is going to find out, before the offer is placed, if there are other offers on the property or if any are expected. Maybe your agent will even find out some interesting information about the property and its current owners to prepare an offer which provides terms making the offer more attractive, because it’s not always about the price.

In the last few weeks I’ve experienced a few multiple offer scenarios and the agents simply sent over their offer. Sometimes they even gave me a call to let me know it was on the way. That’s it - crickets.

There were no qualifying questions about when the sellers might be more comfortable closing, for example. They just stabbed in the dark that the day they picked wasn’t on a week that their only child was getting married in Jamaica. One offer presumed a cash deal closing in two weeks would be the Justin Bieber of real estate offers when the sellers hadn’t even found their next place to move into.

Another offer actually included a blank response time. The time for the seller to respond to the offer, to either accept it, deny it or counter the offer, was essentially limitless and was treated as such during the seller’s negotiations with the other offers.

One buyer’s agent attempted to explain to me that the sellers had to honor them as “first position” because they got the offer in first. No, they don’t. Offers being spit out of a fax machine aren’t racing to a photo finish at Churchill Downs. It’s an offer and all offers go to the seller for consideration in a timely fashion, given that there is a deadline in which to respond, of course.

What it comes down to in a simmering market is win, place or show. Who wins the contract in a multiple offer scenario and what efforts were made in preparation to win it?

Your agent investing or being directed by you to invest five or ten minutes of homework before the offer is written or might sway the seller’s decision in your favor. It also wouldn’t hurt for them to give a small presentation of the contract.

It certainly beats the heck out of quietly emailing over a half-planned offer and crossing your fingers that the offer will be accepted.

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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.

Real Estate Buyers Want to See Great Photos

According to the NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, a whopping ninety-seven of homebuyers who searched for a home on the Internet found photos to be among the most useful features of real estate agent websites. 

The current statistic is that 95% of real estate agents use a digital camera.  (It doesn’t grade how well they use it.) Now that digital cameras are so affordable, there really is no excuse to not have photos on every real estate listing on the web. 

Here’s the truth, photos sell real estate.  So do visual tours and video.   Real estate buyers searching for homes want to see … the home, the amenities, the area, the neighborhood.

If you are about to sell your Florida real estate you probably have not thought about how important photos are.  How will your real estate agent market your home with photos?   Real estate is marketed different that it used to be. There must be photos, good photos, intriguing photos because they are the pivotal tool in the new media, digital real estate marketing.

Seller’s might be wise to ask potential listing agents for examples of their photos just to see how they will showcase their real estate.  At the very least snoop stop by their website or blog to see how they market real estate and how the pictures look.

Seriously?  Yes.  Statistics have proven that real estate buyers love pictures.  As a matter of fact, zero photos attract, on average, a mere 0.02 percent of the detailed listing views that listings with 21 to 36 photos enjoy.  One can only project that better photos promote more interest and more clicks.  Just imagine how many home shoppers are up north surfing the web before they even cross your home’s threshold.

Take a look at a few sets of photos of a home in Bonita Springs, Florida.  It will give an idea of how real estate photos can just be a picture or grab the whole room and give a sense of the living space.

Above: Standard Camera, Nice Photo, No True Sense of Space

Above: Wide Angle Lens, More Room Captured, Ceiling and Floor, Walking Space Around Bed

Above:  Standard Camera, Nice Photo

Above:  Wide Angle Lens, Full Living Room Added, Tile Floor, High Ceiling, Kitchen

Side by side comparison of a standard camera image (left) and a wide angle lens (right) in a smaller room. The power bath, guest bath and utility rooms usually benefit  the most from wide angle photography. Notice the right image with wide angle lens includes both the ceiling, the tile floor and the entire vanity. It’s even more dramatic if you cover one photo at a time to compare.

Just a little fun.  A while back there was a trip the “camp”.  Take note that there is a can of Off in nearly every picture. It’s sort of the “Where’s Waldo” of the Florida Everglades.

Life at Barefoot Beach on a Random February Day

Wouldn’t it be great to see the other credit bureau’s follow Experian’s lead? Bonita Springs real estate buyers would be able to rebuild dinged credit by paying their rent on time.  Those who may have gone through theshort saleprocess,foreclosure or bankruptcy could begin rebuilding their credit and prove they’ve developed credit worthy habits. Thoughts?

Lawrence Yun, Denny Grimes, Stan Stouder Interview

There was an interesting radio interview on WGCU public radio that I thought I’d share with
subscribers.  It’s a real estate market update regarding southwest Florida residential real estate and it brushes slightly on the commercial real estate market.

The interview is a precursor to the Market Watch event planned next week in Fort Myers.  To listen to the audio radio interview with Lawrence Yun, Denny Grimes and Stan Stouder click the house symbol to the left. 

An audio player will open in a new window so check your pop up blocker.  You can also click the link here: Real Estate Interview

Condominium & HOA Rules and Regulations

Most condominium owners have a set of docs that perform little practical function other than taking up space on a shelf or in a cabinet. That is, if they bothered to keep them at all. Those documents are the rules for the association. The rules; you will obey them or start getting warning letters from the management company.

The last letter that came to everyone in my association read, don’t leave your dog poo bagged on the side of the street. Apparently, someone on my yellow brick road goes to the trouble of bagging up their dog poo, just not disposing of it.

So, someone complains to the property manager, the property manager sends a letter to everyone in the HOA and hopefully whoever the culprit is quits leaving behind the land mines.

You know, there is a whole page in those documents devoted to “domestic pets” and the treats they leave behind. It’s probably one of the more important, most read sections of most condominium rules and regulations.

Americans sure do love their dogs and when it comes to condo ownership combined with dog ownership it gets tricky.

That old set of space taking condo documents someone hands you just may not be the most current set of rules; whether you’re reading up on pet rules or rental restrictions.

Many associations have adjusted their rules over the years, especially the last few years as they’ve played catch up repairing loopholes and oversights which have been exploited by owners or tenants. The updates are mailed to owners but they’re not always added to the originals.

If you’re purchasing a condo in Florida part of the due diligence period included three days to review the budget, frequently asked questions, rules and regulations and the condominium articles and by-laws.

Hopefully, you’ve been given a fresh set and not the copy that’s been under the space bag full of sweaters for the last seven years. If you haven’t, you should request new documents to make sure you have the current updates.

If you have pointed questions about what you can or can not do when you become an owner, you need to call the management company. If you don’t know who that is you can find the info at www.sunbiz.org by searching the association by name. It will list a hand full of directors, too. All sorts of people that should know the rules about, well, what ever rule you’re concerned with.

Last week I had to ask the pet rules for an association and had to sunbiz.org the management company and Google their phone number. It turns out that the rules for the association read, "Two domestic pets, under eighty pounds". Naturally, I asked if that eighty pounds cumulative weight or eighty pounds per pet. It wasn’t clear and the buyer didn’t have an eighty pound cat to worry about so we just let it slide.

There are all sorts of fact filled, rule packed, goodness is in those condo documents you need to know before you jump in feet first.

If you run into a circumstance where, for example, you may have two eighty pound dogs and the rules are as clear as mud, get something in writing from the association so you don’t get a letter down the road and an invitation to remove your portly pets from the premise.

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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.