Posted on 04/07/2012 10:34:02 AM PDT by clifcrds
BTW, I did not mean that “antennas” could be seen daily in the Caloosahatchee (dang spellcheck). I meant anhingas!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhinga
The Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga), sometimes called Snakebird, Darter, American Darter, or Water Turkey, is a water bird of the warmer parts of the Americas. The word “anhinga” comes from the Brazilian Tupi language and means devil bird or snake bird.
It is a cormorant-like bird with an average body length of 85 cm (33 in), a wingspan of 117 cm (46 in), and a mass of up to 1.35 kg (3.0 lb). It is a dark-plumaged piscivore with a very long neck, and often swims with only the neck above water. When swimming in this style the name Snakebird is apparent, since only the colored neck appears above water the bird looks like a snake ready to strike.
The Ding Darling nature preserve on Sanibel is a birders paradise with roseate spoonbills galore...and even a handful of Florida crocodiles...to go with the alligators. We have alligators on our golf course to make the game more interesting... http://www.fws.gov/dingdarling/
In addition to Chinese drywall and mold have the home inspected for radon. Homes in Florida have a significant amount of concrete and there can be radon in the concrete. Many homes and condominiums built in the mid 2000’s boom have shoddy construction.
If you buy a condo, make sure the association has adequate reserves and is building reserves. Look at the association books and budget. If the community does not have reserves you can count on significant special assessments to pay for the cost of maintaining the infrastructure. Find out how many units in the community are in default an not paying into the association. The amount of monthly homeowner’s dues you will pay will be higher if there are a large number of property owners in arrears or default. Determine if the homeowner’s association is currently involved in litigation as either plaintiff or defendant or frequently involved in such litigation.
If you buy into a golfing community make sure there are enough members paying dues to keep the club and the course going. Some south Florida golfing communities have let the courses go back to nature. There have also been instances where the land on which the golf course sits has been sold to a developer and developed.
The lakes in the Gulf Harbour community were improperly constructed which is resulting in the erosion of the shoreline. The developer declared bankruptcy and was relieved by the court from responsbility so the county is requiring the community to fix the issue. It will result in significant assessments of several thousand dollars per property owner. If you buy in Gulf Harbour, make sure you write into the contract that the seller will pay some or all of the upcoming assessment for the lake repairs.
Check crime statistics of the neighborhood. This information is available from the sheriff’s office.
Be extremely diligent in researching prices in the neighborhood you are interested in. Don’t let your real estate agent get away with telling you to ignore short sell prices. Also, make sure you are away of any upcoming special assessments, or circumstances that might result in special assessments, by the homeowner’s association.
Houses and condos are selling at 50% or more off the price at the hight of the boom in 2005-2006. Don’t hesitate making lowball offers. Offers are frequently start between 50% and 30% off asking price. There are many nice homes on the market and many people desperate to unload.
Short sales can take a significant amount of time but there are bargains to be had with short sales.
It is also advisable to obtain a service contract on your air conditioning system and major electrical appliances. There are many power surges and outages which are hard today’s computer controlled appliances. A service contract can pay for itself if an air conditioning compressor goes out in a lightning storm or the electronic panel in an oven shorts out during a power surge. If the current owner has a service contract, check to see if it can be assumed.
Due to sea breezes, Florida heat and humidity are not as bad in the coastal regions as inland. In any event, coping with Florida summers is mostly about air conditioning and of timing and limiting when one is outdoors.
In addition to beaches and boating, Naples-Ft. Myers has an extraordinary number of golf courses. There is excellent fishing, with the best to be found offshore near Marco Island south of Naples, and further south in the Ten Thousand Islands, an estuary of the Everglades.
Drawn by the affluent population base, there is a rich variety of shopping in the Naples area -- including Florida's only Trader Joe's, a grocery store known for good deals, a quirky atmosphere, and a rabid customer following.
Good luck on your relocation and retirement.
Too cold for me but beautiful. Nothing beats AZ. I love it! Left for two years for Raleigh ..BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. House on the market now to return to my beloved Sonoran Dessert! Praying for a buyer —likely as NYers are headed here in droves to recreate the hell they’ve left behind.
When the house was built, I had the builder reposition the downstairs bedroom door to open into the hallway rather than into the bedroom. That allows me to place two full size desks alongside that bedroom/garage wall.
We ordered extra insulation in the concrete block walls (Structured Foam) and in the Attic directly under the roof. We also ordered sound insulation in all of the interior walls and the upstairs floor.
We expect to live here for the rest of our lives so we splurged on the options which we felt would make the house more comfortable and save on heating/cooling costs.
During the construction, we had all of the rooms wired for Internet and cable TV along with ceiling fans (pre-wire only) in all of the major rooms. The ceiling fans helps to lower the AC electricity costs.
The house comes with two AC units which also reduces the cooling expense by only running either the upstairs or the downstairs depending on need. The outdoors compressor/pre chiller is larger than the downstairs unit because the upstairs areas are always naturally harder to keep cool than the downstairs areas.
The extra costs may seem large if one has to pay all of the costs at once but it quite affordable when spread out over the life of the mortgage loan.
I bought our home using my VA benefits and therefore had no down payment other than a $4,000.00 incentive for the loan handler to begin construction. At closing that $4,000.00 was repaid to me by the builder as part of the closing costs that they pay as incentive to the buyer to purchase their houses.
WE also got a few thousand dollars to spend at their design center to help us design the house the way we wanted.
We took pictures almost every day during construction so we could know exactly where all of the plumbing and wiring was within the walls.
If you want some pictures of the finished building, send me an email with your email address to danl@dglang.com.
When we were looking for a retirement home, Arizona was very close to being our choice because we do like the dry heat and my wife’s twin sister lives in Phoenix.
Florida won due to other considerations which Phoenix didn’t have.
From Naples Daily News:
Naples Home Prices to Increase 10% This Year
Naples homeowners can expect as much as a 10 percent increase in the value of their homes by the end of the year, a national economist told a packed house of Realtors at an economic summit held Friday in North Naples.
In fact, all the speakers at the 2012 Economic Summit were optimistic about the real estate market in Southwest Florida.
Real estate is in recovery, locally and nationally, buyers have stepped up and prices are firming up, said Lawrence Yun, a chief economist and senior vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors.
Some of the hardest hit markets, including Naples, have been leaders in the recovery, he said. That has a lot do with their location.
“As you all know all real estate is local,” Yun said. “You can not pick it up and move it somewhere else.”
He predicted as much as a 10 percent appreciation in home prices by December in the Naples market over last year.
“This is not some wishful thinking,” Yun said, adding that he believed an over correction in the local market has pulled prices down too far.
While the markets in neighboring Lee County are recovering too, it’s not happening as fast because they saw more overbuilding during the boom years, he said.
Nationally, Yun said he expects home prices to increase by 1 to 3 percent by December. He expects increasing sales nationally, which he said could be boosted by 15 to 20 percent if banks just went back to using “normal underwriting standards,” instead of using such strict standards that are so limiting.
He talked about a shortage of new homes, locally and nationally.
“You build it, they will come,” he said, adding that the buyers may not all come this year, but they’ll come in the next year or two.
The key to more housing demand is more people with jobs and that’s happening in Florida, he said.
Yun was just one of five speakers at the 2012 Economic Summit, a first-time event sponsored by the Naples Area Board of Realtors, or NABOR. The event, held at the Realtor association’s conference center off Pine Ridge Road, attracted a sell-out crowd of 250.”It sold out before we could even advertise it to our members,” said Brenda Fioretti, a Naples broker and NABOR spokeswoman.
Next year, NABOR will move the event to a larger venue with seating for up to 500.
The other speakers were John Tucillo, a chief economist with Florida Realtors, a statewide trade group; Shelton Weeks, a real estate professor and director of the Lucas Institute for Real Estate Development & Finance at Florida Gulf Coast University; Doug Duncan, a vice president and chief economist for Fannie Mae, and Cindy Carroll, the vice president and manager of the residential division at Carroll & Carroll Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants in Naples. All of the speakers delivered a heavy dose of optimism about the real estate market in Southwest Florida, but it came with some caution.
What happens in real estate depends heavily on buyers’ perceptions and expectations, Tucillo said.
“People outside the state still think we’re in the dumper,” he said.
But they’re wrong, he said, pointing out that home sales have steadily increased virtually ever month since last year in Florida.
“I think Florida real estate is back in a mini-recovery,” Tucillo said, but he added there’s still a long way to go.
Uncertainty over how the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act will affect banks in the future is limiting their willingness to give out mortgage loans because they are worried about the “sword hanging over their head,” he said.
Distressed homes that have yet to hit the market, known as shadow inventory, are still a concern, but on the bright side the inventory has been shrinking and foreclosures have slowed, Tucillo said.
The good news about the local real estate market came on the heels of a strong season.
On Friday, NABOR released its first-quarter report, which showed the overall housing inventory shrinking by 13 percent and pending sales – or new contracts written – up over the same quarter last year, which was a strong one.
Mike Hughes, vice president and general manager of Downing-Frye Realty Inc. in Naples, characterized the sales activity in the first quarter of this year as “one of the top five ever.”
“It was phenomenal,” he said. “Really, the amount of pending contracts that were written in the quarter were staggering.”
Pending sales increased 14 percent in the $300,000 to $500,000 market. They were up 29 percent in the $500,000 to $1 million market and rose 14 percent in the $1 million to $2 million market.
The median home price in the quarter increased 14 percent. The median is the price at which half the homes sell for more and half for less.
NABOR’s report tracks home and condo sales made by its members in Collier County, except in Marco Island.
“I think the mood among the Realtor community is optimism,” Hughes said.
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