The 11th annual Celebrate Bonita Festival is Saturday April 10, 2010 from 2-9:00 p.m. There will be food, entertainment and a chili and rib cook off. See you at Riverside Park!
Here is a printable flyer for Celebrate Bonita: Click Here
There isn’t a charitable organization that’s not struggling in this economic down turn. It’s difficult for folks to give money sometimes, but it is possible to give time and maybe even a little life saving blood.
It’s pretty tough to write about blood in any manner that is either fun or fascinating, excluding the cookies, of course.
Typically, folks don’t know they’re going to need blood until they’re in a world of trouble.
Our area gets an influx of northern visitors and we often run on a short supply of life saving blood and blood products. Occasionally, there is a special circumstance when a local has a particularly large quantity of blood needed or there is a rare blood type in short supply.
If you’re *lucky* enough to have a rare blood type, you should consider giving blood right away if you’re in the Southwest Florida area. There is a particular need for a child in Naples, Florida with the type AB+ blood and a shortage that’s could quite literally save his life. You can be a hero before the day is out!
Every parent and every person is just a twist of fate away from needing to save themselves or their child’s life with a blood transfusion. I hope that if you’re in the Bonita Springs area and can spare about 20 minutes to give you’ll stop in Florida’s Blood Center and give.
The Blood Center is located on US 41, 24830 Tamiami Trail in Bonita Springs, Florida. It's on the west side of the highway in front of Pelican Landing Golf and Country Club, just south of CVS Pharmacy and in the same building with Comcast and Honey Baked Ham. There is a map below or you can call for directions:
Ste 1500, 24830 South Tamiami Trail
Bonita Springs, FL 34134-7031
(239) 495-8169
It’s probably happened to just about any real estate agent out there whether the agent realizes it or not. Cold hearted, white lyin’, running off into the sunset with another real estate agent kind of cheating.
The short sale phenomenon in the market has fanned the flames of real estate infidelity. With months of impatient waiting for a “maybe” purchase with so much time to kill, eyes start wandering and before you know it the pre-approved short sale or foreclosure home dreams are made of pops up on the internet.
If the buyers haven’t signed a buyer broker agreement they really have no legal reason to remain loyal to the agent they’ve been working with. The moral basis to be loyal is debatable. Sometimes the buyers move on and ever so quietly begin working on a transaction or two, elsewhere.
It’s a delicate balance placing offers on more than one home and not getting on the hook for all of them. If that happens it’s nobody’s fault but the buyer’s, of course, since the agents involved generally didn’t know anything about each others relationship with the buyer.
Why a buyer wouldn’t contact their original agent and just say, “We were nosing around the internet, found a home that looks interesting, will you help us take a run at it?” I’ll never understand.
It seems that it would make sense to keep the entire home buying process under control of one agent who knows exactly what’s going on with all of the transactions and even offer professional advise or opinion by comparison of all of the properties.
The buyers, now and then, bail out the transaction with a phone call but most often by flimsy excuse in an email. Getting dumped by email is now the “Dear John” letter of the 21st century for both romantic relationships and real estate transactions.
Here’s the thing about those out of the blue “we have to cancel the contract because my wife lost her job” emails. Unexpectedly laid-off buyers with mortgage contingencies still need to provide documentation from their lender stating that they no longer qualify for the mortgage.
The seller’s aren’t going to take their word for it. Which is probably smart, since their word … is worth what it’s worth.
Cheating and fibbing is a messy sport. If you’re going to play, you also risk getting caught and possibly being held legally responsible for your decisions and risking the escrow deposit.
Discovery by accident or just by poking around a little isn’t that hard. Just about anyone can log onto Facebook and see the “Wee! We found an even better house!” post put up for the world to see.
There are also a few wild cards out there that nobody counts on muddying the waters. Those escrow deposit verification forms and inspection reports get faxed or emailed to the agents involved. The wrong file attachment is karma’s funny little way of leveling the playing field and flushing out the truth.
Happenstance sometimes brings the right street, wrong house number file to an inbox and the realization that there is also an escrow deposit with the same buyers on a house four doors down.
That kind of blows that whole “my wife lost her job and now we can’t get a mortgage” fabrication out of the water.
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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 left 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.
There are several decent rivers and creeks in the Bonita Springs and Estero Florida area. This particular area is located at the east end of the Imperial River near Livingston Road/Imperial Parkway. If you’re an independent outdoors person you can launch a canoe from the weir at Bonita Grande Road and canoe the Imperial River.
There are also places to rent canoes in the area. To see this end of the Imperial River there are canoe rentals by Riverside Park and Everglades Wonder Gardens. It’s a fairly easy paddle upstream if the wind isn’t blowing against you or if there isn’t considerable rain run off.
Other places to rent a canoe in Bonita Springs:
The real estate bargain hunters came to Florida this year and totally cleaned up on deals. The biggest sector selling has been the $400,000 and under price point. A few of those sales have been on the Bonita Beach, but not many.
Our Keynescommunities of Bonita Beach and Barefoot Beach haven’t been hit as hard financially as the balance of the real estate in Southwest Florida. In the last year there has been one foreclosure in Barefoot Beach. It was a single gulf view family home that sold at $3.3M. There were no short sale homes or condos in Barefoot Beach within the last year March ‘09 – March ‘10.
On Bonita Beach, which is basically the stretch of land that is Hickory Blvd. There was one foreclosure, a single family gulf front home, which sold at $2.4M and was mid way through the construction process. There was about six figures worth of work to be completed, depending upon the level of finish.
There were a few short sales on Bonita Beach that were gulf front. One single family home and three condominiums were sold short. Buyers looking for bank owned, short sale or distressed real estate bargains on the beach may be surprised at how few there are out there.
They may also be surprised at the prices. That short sale on Bonita Beach closed sale at $1.5M. It was built in 1976 and was about 1,300 square foot of living space. The home was an adorable beach front cottage and appeared to be in great condition, well cared for and updated in part. The structure by size and price could be considered a “tear down” by an ambitious buyer or owner that had a desire to expand.
As of March 2010, the absorption rate for Bonita Beach Gulf Front real estate and Barefoot Beach Real estate is as follows:
All of the information is deemed accurate, not guaranteed, but just about as close as you can get to what’s really going on out there. This report isn’t limited only to Bonita Springs Real Estate, but all transactions listed and in the SunshineMLS in Lee and Collier Counties on the Gulf of Mexico, Hickory Blvd and Barefoot Beach.
If you’re looking for the name and contact information of any Bonita Springs, Estero Florida or Southwest Florida condominium association or home owner association it’s at your fingertips. It's the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations which keeps records for Florida Corporations which includes HOA and Condominium Associations.
The filing will display the Management Company's name, Registered Agent, Offices and Directors. etc.
http://www.sunbiz.org/
Sometimes “less is more” when searching for management company or officer information. Misspellings and the full legal name of an association can vary from what is actually commonly know. If you don’t find what you’re looking, use less wording in the name or search query.
The real estate market in Southwest Florida has been quite a roller coaster. As a homeowner or potential buyer you would have to know that the inventory wouldn’t last. It would eventually start selling off and the real estate market would stabilize. I guess people will have to start complaining about politics and healthcare.
You have to look back at what the market has done to see how far we’ve come. The month of March is usually a brisk month. It is a heavy month for tourism and our snow bird visitors. While we have the probability of selling real estate every March, it wasn’t until 2010 that we bounced and the real recovery started.
We’ve consistently been selling off inventory since November of 2008 but have gotten our momentum back this spring. If you’re wondering what price point is moving that is powering the local Bonita Springs, Naples, Estero and Fort Myers real estate market, read also:
What Price Range of Real Estate is Selling in Southwest Florida? March 2010
and
All of this information is deemed accurate, not guaranteed, but just about as close as you can get to what’s really going on out there. This report isn’t limited only to Bonita Springs Real Estate, but all transactions listed and in the SunshineMLS in Lee and Collier Counties.
If you’re a buyer of Southwest Florida real estate or even a home owner thinking of putting your home on the market it pays to know the competitive edge in the real estate market place.
March 2010 had over seventy-seven percent of all real estate sales priced under $400,000. What does that mean if you’re buying real estate? It means that the market is moving swiftly and depending upon inventory in your precise price range and the local neighborhood in which you’re shopping you can actually miss out on some great opportunities by not striking a deal quickly enough.
If you’re a seller and you are pricing your real estate in the $600,000 and up price range you need to sharpen your pencil and hone your list price to the finest point, based on the most appropriate comparable for your area.
We’ve absorbed a great deal of our entry level priced real estate but there is a ways to go for the higher end of the market.
All of this information is deemed accurate, not guaranteed, but just about as close as you can get to what’s really going on out there. This report isn’t limited to Bonita Springs Real Estate, but all transactions in the SunshineMLS.
The last couple of home or condos that I’ve sold have all had one thing in common. They’ve been fairly new, not lived in or barely lived in and nearly every defect that showed up during the home inspection was defective from the day the property received its certificate of occupancy.
Even before the big building boom home buyers weren’t fond of getting a home inspection on new construction. Many buyers don’t understand that it’s usually an illusion that a new home is perfect. It doesn’t matter who built it, it was still built by human beings who can make mistakes.
That huge amount of real estate inventory that we’ve been selling off was essentially built over night and maybe even at night. If it was an investor owned property it was likely one of a half dozen properties that was purchased on the “get rich quick” program. There were a lot of homes built to flip and corners were cut, most especially with getting the homes inspected at closing.
A simple investment of a couple hundred dollars in a home inspection could have saved thousands down the road. Those little issues could have been taken care of under the builders warranty if they’d just been discovered when the warranty was in effect or before the builder faded off into the sunset or went ten toes up.
Roof issues seem to be sleeper issues that balloon into a larger, costly fix. Skimping or just plain neglecting to install flashing is more common than anyone could even imagine. Mistakes are blatant enough for most of us to wonder out loud if a building inspector even looked at the roof at any point during the construction process.
Water is the enemy and we’re supposed to keep it from leaking into our homes at all costs but roofs aren’t water tight? Add to that, thresholds that are put in backwards to collect water in driving rain, windows don’t close completely and a classic new favorite: buildings with phantom leaks where everything is wet but nobody’s sure where the water is coming from.
What comes around has gone around. The original investors that finally get a buyer on board are often selling short and selling “as-is with the right to inspect”. If things get too hairy the buyer can bail out. This is where those little undiscovered defects that grew fangs change the game.
There’s nothing like the “M” word to scare buyers. The discovery of a little errant H20 followed by the phrase in the home inspection report “conditions conducive to grow mold” can put an end to the love affair with a home.
There are a lot of sellers and even agents that end up pointing fingers at the inspectors for killing deals. The fact of the matter is they’re just doing what they were hired to do.
They’re also doing the job that also should have been hired to do years earlier when the property was new, when the warranty would have covered the repair and before a mountain was created from a mole hill.
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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 left 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.