Well, now I’m hooked on going to the beach and actually using settings on this camera to get some great, oil-free shots for you. By popular demand, a new inspection and photo of Bonita Beach for the northern home and condo owners that are worried about the condition of our beaches effecting their real estate. All is clear … and I must also share that we’ve had some spectacular sunsets.
Southwest Florida is the land of turnkey furnished real estate sales. It’s common to close on a property and have the ability to walk into it carrying a bag of groceries and a toothbrush and spend the night without needing to purchase any other conveniences.
What’s not to love? You don’t have to spend weeks shopping, decorating or meeting delivery people. Someone has already done it all for you. As a matter of fact, they’ve employed exquisite taste and shopped for the most refined goods at stores of the highest caliber.
The convenience factor is great in theory but the reality of purchasing a turnkey furnished home or condo is that sometimes the furniture that’s been left behind has seen better days. Sometimes it’s questionable if there could have been better days even when it was spankin’ new.
Explaining to a seller why their furniture doesn’t add appraisable value to their home or increase their list or purchase price is often interesting. The overwhelming majority of the time, dollar for dollar doesn’t come back on furniture or cars. It just doesn’t. If the furniture was purchased the day before yesterday it’s worth pennies on the dollar even if the person that buys your home likes it. It’s used furniture.
If the home was a former model, the operative word is “former”. The cult siren, Bettie Page was a former model, but there came a time when she quit modeling swim suits and lingerie. Every era comes to an end and it may be time to acknowledge that your sofa is a gold chain and a red corvette away from being too old to be at a techno club.
A few days ago, I helped buyer land a former model as their Florida get away home. It came complete with furniture and décor from the era of big hair, shoulder pads and a Member’s Only jackets. This furniture, as in so many other furnished homes, was left “as a convenience to the seller”.
The furniture was not part of the purchase price. It is not part of the value of the property and is not included in the mortgage, nor can it be. Even if it was remotely attractive furniture it still wouldn’t be considered as part of the value. Neither would the golf cart in the garage or the clothes in the closet.
Pie eyed buyers will stare at a room full of furniture about as current as stirrup pants and ask, “How much is it worth without the furniture?” The answer is that it’s the same as with the furniture. Like it or not, the furniture comes with it and it’s probably going to cost a small time investment to put it on Craigslist or Freecycle just to liquidate it.
It’s the Florida furniture shuffle. Since we don’t have basements to banish our dated furniture to we have to pedal it off on other people’s kids heading off to college.
Those kids should be grateful, too. Not every kid gets to go off to college with Robb and Stucky, former model, living room furniture with thirty years of complimentary DNA left on it.
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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.
Yes, we grow magnolia in Bonita Springs. Their shelf life is short and when they fade they look tea stained and wilted. When they’re blossoming they’re just beautiful and they have the faintest smell of sweetness.
These magnolias are at the gates of Serrano of Bonita Springs on West Terry Street. Serrano is by the Bonita middle school and across the street from Bonita Fairways if you want to see them for yourself. Here are a few more blossoms in route to opening:
There have been more than a few email request from absentee condo owners on Bonita Beach who are worried about the news about the oil leak. Bonita Beach is still clean and pretty and I told ya I’d prove it. So here you go, Bonita Beach today. Nothing to see here, folks … move along.
Several weeks ago I walked though a field of cairns on a trail. What’s more shocking than the wild notion of outside exercise is the idea of a positive message formed rocks. It was just a river bed of rocks and one day someone decided to pile up a small stack of them.
A meme evolved and nearly every person, man, woman or child who walked by built a cairn or two or three. There were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of rock cairns as far as anyone could look in any direction; on the ground, on logs, in trees. My best guess would be that it covered the distance of a several football fields.
While it would have been just as easy for a passer by to start kicking down the cairns they chose to walk through, take pictures or add to the field. This was a miniature community of like minded people who sent the silent little message back and forth that there was no agenda here. This was safe, this was home, this was just because and it wasn’t sponsored by anyone.
It is amazing what is capable of human beings when they’re away from the needless distractions of life and negative influences. We’re all capable of being part of a positive movement but just mired in the day to day and infiltration of chain emails, Google alerts and more-news-at-eleven sound bites that just cause fear and worry instead of awareness.
The reality of our world is that there are plenty of bad things to be found without looking really hard. It’s a national movement to consume bad “news” and most of us don’t even realize it. You are totally saturated in it unless you consciously choose to not be and it is changing you.
Back in the day, neighbors raised barns together and helped build each other up instead of tear each other down. I guess when they were raising those barns the TV’s weren’t blazing twenty-four hours a day, they didn’t text message while they were talking to each other and they didn’t care who had twelve mistresses and if he’d ever golf again.
There is a distinct difference between being aware and being told too much about something that doesn’t even matter, won’t change your life for the better or help our community. I challenge you to pay attention, identify the difference and carefully choose what you contribute or take away from the community be it your neighborhood, your city or your email circle of friends.
Attitude is contagious, good or bad, even in the middle of a field full of rocks.
Regardless of what you may be personally going through with your home, your family, your finances or your health I hope you find it in your heart today to build a cairn instead of kick one down.
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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.
What do you have to divulge before you buy real estate? The short version is “it depends”.
The longer version comes after you decided what you’re thinking about budgeting for your real estate and how you’re going to pay for the real estate.
It really doesn’t matter if you’re a cash or a financing buyer, you have to provide proof for how you’re going to pay for the real estate you want to buy. It doesn’t matter if it costs $100,000 or $1,000,000.
The real estate market is not without woes and a good deal of bank involvement in many of the transactions. By bank involvement I mean there is a chance that there is a bank or financial institution that makes the final decisions on the price and sale of the property if it’s a short sale or a foreclosure. You, as a buyer, are going to have to send either a mortgage pre-approval or “proof of funds” along with any offer that you make on a home or condo.
If you’re financing your real estate purchase you should be talking to a local, reputable lender, not a “dot com” lender, that will gather your information and help you properly prepare for a mortgage and home ownership that is affordable for your budget.
There’s more to buying and owning real estate than the purchase price. It’s rather important to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into financially and to be able to afford the real estate, the expenses that come with it; taxes, insurance, repairs, etc. Lenders help budget all of those fees into the transaction. They want you to be a successful home owner also.
If you’re a cash buyer you simply need a few things – the cash and a letter from your banker, financial planner, a copy of a recent statement that reads that you have $xx,000 cash on hand available for the purchase of the real estate. Nobody needs to know all of your finances, about gold coins under your mattress or blood samples.
If you feel that you do not wanting to share some of the information needed to buy real estate you might not be shopping with the right real estate agent. You might not be ready to buy or you may not have found the trust you were looking for in a real estate agent.
Buying real estate is a huge financial decision and your finances have to be talked about and disclosed on some level. If you build relationships with the right mortgage broker and real estate agent you shouldn’t have anxiety about getting from point A to point B and doing it the right way.
My neighbors probably think I’m crazy crawling around in their flower bed, in a cheetah print bath robe, at seven in the morning trying to capture their hibiscus waking up. It’s not the average pink or classic yellow. It’s a very dark lavender color and it is one of the most unusual in the area so it was worth the prowl.
Almost every yard in the Bonita Springs area has hibiscus. It just does. The plants flower nearly all year long and you can pick a blossom that fits your personality; any color, any size and pedal shape.
I’ve heard that there here is a hibiscus club orhibiscus societyin Bonita Springs, but I don’t know much about it. Maybe someone will drop by this post and let us know the name of this little darling.
Enjoy a few other hibiscus flowers from the Bonita Springs and Estero area in this slide show:
We’ve had one of the weirdest winters ever. I’ve lived in Bonita Springs, Florida about twenty-five years and have never experienced such cold weather. I’ve never covered plants so many times at night. It was work keeping just *some* of our yard alive.
The passaflora on the mailbox has been a work in progress. It received the most assistance this winter. I fell in love with the blossoms the first time I saw in growing in King and Queens Kew by Bonita Beach.
I was able to locate this specific variety at Driftwood Garden Center in Estero, Florida. There is a pretty good chance that they didn’t want me to buy it. It had seen better days. When I brought it home and asked for help planting it I heard, “You want me to plant a dead bush?”
The short of this long, non real estate related, story is that the plant lived, actually flourished and produced a single passion fruit. A few weeks ago I noticed another passion fruit. Yesterday I noticed another. Today, while trying to photograph butterflies I noticed more. As a matter of fact, there are dozens of them all over it.
I’m an accidental passion fruit farmer! If you’d like one of these beautiful flowering bushes just call me. Seriously, I’m giving away freebees. There are seedlings popping up all over the place. Right now, lawn service is on Friday so Thursday is the best pick up day. Come start your passion fruit farm. :)
Sooner or later I figured someone would ask the question “Is the oil on your beaches yet?” Well it started. I’ve gotten it a few times already from potential buyers flying in from outside of the state of Florida.
This is a big story with a huge question mark for ending hanging out there. I can only imagine what the news reports will be about southwest Florida in other parts of the country. Except for “the man” shutting down illegal lemonade stands we kind of go without huge incidences that bring the big networks here.
The last time I watched “big TV’s” take on news about southwest Florida was during the storm Wilma. I happened to be with about ten folks from Lee and Collier Counties two thousand miles away in northern Arizona.
Needless to say, we were glued to the television watching for any scraps of information about southwest Florida. Terrified that our homes were being damaged we waited for names of towns and searched the back grounds behind reporters to see if anything looked familiar.
Finally, a woman from a climate reporting cable show appeared in Naples Plaza across the street from the Coastland Center mall. It was night and they were using lights so most of the back ground wasn’t visible. She was sitting in a canoe and wearing one of those Gorton’s Fisherman, yellow rain coat and hat ensembles that probably would have glowed in the dark. The rain was blowing, the wind was whipping and her hair was wet and flying around under the hat.
Right then, as we were all sitting on the edge of the sofa being lead to believe that Naples was turning into Atlantis two people, who were probably on their way to the gas station for a pack of smokes and a six pack, walked behind the trusted reporter in ankle deep water.
Heaven help us is a drop of oil accidentally gets spilled off of a boat dock. The national news will flock here like locusts, pick up the first anhinga drying its wings that they are able to wrestle off the top of a piling and share the saga of how the oil has soaked the feathers of the revered southwest Florida, flamingo. All of its vibrant color just stripped away …
They’ll even find the one inebriated, possibly toothless, local Flamingo expert to corroborate the findings.
Commercials will run, in between the reports, to promote Florida tourism depicting white, sugar sand beaches and pink flamingos … all sponsored by big oil as part of their penance, requested by our state CFO.
For what it’s worth and just so it makes it into print: There isn’t oil on our white, sugar sand beaches. I just checked it out myself, without costumes or props and nobody paid me to say it.
The big story here is that I couldn’t seem to locate any flamingos at the beach. Maybe one of the finger-pointers responsible for this disaster can do something useful and help point one out for us.
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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.
The area shown right now is Louisiana, Mississippi and the Panhandle area. If you’d like to track any changes or to follow the threat, click the image above to launch the updated page or click this link for the NOAA site:
http://deepwaterhorizon.noaa.gov/bookshelf/1947_TMF72-2010-05-08-2100.pdf