Life In Bonita Springs

They are in Bonita Bay, if you know what they are feel free to share in the comments.

Friday Night Lights – Estero HS Football Game Time

8/27 Estero High School at Cape Coral-Baker High School

9/03 South Fort Myers at Estero High School *

9/10 Estero High School at St. John Neumann High School *

9/16 Lemon Bay at Estero High School *

9/24 Estero High School at Palmetto Ridge *

10/01 North Fort Myers at Estero High School *

10/08 Desoto High School at Estero High School *

10/15 Estero High School at Fort Myers High School *

10/22 Estero High School at Hardee High School *

11/05 Immokalee at Estero High School *

11/12 Estero High School at Cypress Lake High School *

* Denotes Conference Games

All game times are at 7:30 p.m.

Bonita Springs Golf & Country Club Home

• Three Bedroom
• Two Bath
• Room for Pool
• No HOA Fees
• Not a Short Sale or a Foreclosure!
• $155,000

How To Screw Up a Perfectly Good Death

There’s a fabulous little isle in the Office Max store. Maybe you’ve seen it when you were looking for something you needed just enough to cross that fifty dollar threshold in order to use the ten dollar off coupon.

For you do-it-yourselfers this is the aisle to be in. Do-it-yourself legal doesn’t end in the business forms section of your local store. There are places all over the web to create all sorts of legal forms, too.

From divorce to bankruptcy to real estate transactions, discount legal is just a trip to the office store and forty bucks away. In the store near my house there were “ten different ways to screw up a real estate transaction” available. There were all kinds of ways to mess up an estate, power of attorney, a will and a couple of vague, “general agreements”.

In a perfect world, I would imagine that a person could buy their lawyer-kit, fill in the blanks and be on their way. There are probably plenty of people who have done it successfully or at least they think they’ve been successful so far. Usually, everything is rainbows and puppies until probate court has to get involved, anyway.

When the surviving heirs begin liquidating the estate they usually find a few surprises with a deed or trust. Sometimes the issues can be corrected relatively easily and other times there are challenges. “Challenges” is an understatement in some circumstances because what went wrong usually couldn’t have been thought of until it actually happened.

Never before have consumers had the power to easily create a monumental mess for their family other than today. For consumers mesmerized with being their own legal council and saving tons money, it’s a road trip or point and click away. Unfortunately, there are a lot of times that the forty dollar kit ends up costing the surviving family members, spouse or estate ten times more to clean up than it would have cost to just hire a professional in the first place.

Most of the time it isn’t the financial expense involved that is the issue to the surviving family, it’s the grind of estate settlement that seems as if it’s never ending. It can go on for months, even years. Dealing with loss of a loved one is difficult enough but throw in legal and financial mayhem and it becomes cruel and unusual punishment.

You probably won’t find that warning in the forty dollar packet. They also didn’t mention your mom will end up bawling her eyes out at a conference table trying clean up the mess or your children trying to figure out who owns the financial institution you named as a trustee. Apparently, banks buying banks shell game wasn’t mentioned on a warning in the forty dollar packet, either.

It seems that the only form missing from the do-it-yourself isle is how to clean up the mess the do-it-yourself forms can make when the average, every day consumer tries to be an attorney for forty bucks.

If it was that easy and that fool proof to practice law, why the heck would any lawyer be saddling themselves with six figures in student loans when they could just load up a grocery cart with forms at Office Max?

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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.

2nd Annual Bonitian Snail Week

It’s Like Shark Week only slower.  Summer in Bonita Springs yields daily rains and brings out the snails.  So here’s a dose of seven days of straight snails going about their daily life.  The good news is that unlike sharks they’re less violent and there is far less carnage.  Try not to doze off like my little buddy below.  Mouse over the photos for commentary.

Village Walk of Bonita Springs Featured Listing Single Family Oakmont Floor Plan in Village Walk of Bonita SpringsIf you 

Bamboo at Koreshan State Historic Site Estero Fl

Does this not look like the opening scene in the TV series, LOST?

The Hunt For Bonitian Neon Lights

It was really an effort to find neon in Bonita Springs.  We don’t have a whole bunch of it, besides the classic, common “open” sign.  If you’re a resident of Bonita Springs you may recognize a few of them or be able to put together where they’re located.  Here’s a few things I realized while gathering these pictures.

First, I do have to say that when you take pictures at night … especially of neon signs at night, the proprietors of the businesses get nervous and think you’re with Bonita Springs code enforcement.  I got charged by two business owners in the last month.  After explaining in detail that I am a sweet little cupcake and mean no harm they eased up but still gave me “the eye” while I was walking away.

Second, we don’t have a lot of neon lights so I had to drive more than walk because it was more like a city wide hunt.  Basically, the majority of the signs were on a trip down Old 41 Road starting at the north end in the Bernwood Plaza and heading south.  I stopped at Riverside Park.

Signage is a big reason why Bonita Springs maintains it’s small town feel.  We don’t have much neon, no LED signs and our monument signs are restricted in size.  I tried to link up to the page on signage but he City of Bonita Springs website is pretty darn confusing, the ordinance is not searchable but you can report anything that ticks you off pretty easy.  Sure would be nice to see the preventative measure first and just the “report violation” form.

Enjoy the rest of the neon’s and see if you can remember where you saw them in Bonita Springs.

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Short Sale List Price vs. Appraisal Value

The biggest issues both sellers and buyers have when dealing with and understanding the intricacies of short sales is how the appraisal process can effect the transaction.

Recently a home seller requested a price opinion on a home that would be a short sale. The home owner felt the price quoted by one of the interviewed real estate agents was particularly low. Even though the home was being sold short, at the quoted price they really felt that they would be “giving it away”.

The home seller was correct in being concerned about listing the home at too low of a price. While a lower list price will materialize a faster contract, that contract needs to also endure the appraisal process in order to close sale.

One of the many gears in the short sale machine is that darned appraisal. The lender being asked to forgive the homeowners debt is usually taking a heck of a hit and wants to be sure that the home is being sold for its current market value. The majority of the time the lender or loan servicer had nothing to do with determining the list price and, of course, the list price of the property doesn’t indicate its value.

The appraisal is a means to vet mispriced or “drama priced” properties simply to get an offer. It also flushes out schemes to game the system for the purpose generating sweetheart deals for friends or family members or for the homeowners themselves in a buy back scheme. Surely you aren’t surprised that people are doing that, are you?

The fact of the matter is that you could paper the walls of Mall of America with failed short sale purchase offers that died when the bank or investor countered the offer over list price. Buyers get a little miffed and bail out when they feel they “offered full price” only to be counter offered after months of waiting. The buyer trots off into the sunset and the home owner starts over with a new and improved list price to support the appraisal.

So what’s a seller to do when they’re pricing their short sale real estate? First, they have to start out as close to the estimated value of the property as possible. Second, they have to be mindful of standing inventory and what the absorption rate is for the community. What is or is not on the market at the time, the pending sales about to close and the rate properties are selling at is going to have an effect on the sale, appraisal and market value.

The homeowner who was questioning the proposed list price being too low was located in a community with about six to seven months of inventory, which is essentially a balanced market. The proposed list price was about twenty percent under recent closed sales which were recorded within the last thirty days.

Whether that home owner lists twenty percent below market value or for one dollar the end result would, in all probability, be the same. The list price is wrong and the bank will counter the offer when the appraisal comes in.

The end result is that the less than committed buyer ends up walking and that contract ends up decking the halls of Mall of America or at the bottom of the bird cage, right beside this little work of art.

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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.