Bonita Springs Shark Gator Snake Python Attacks

For as long as I’ve been a real estate agent there’s been a variety of common questions consumers ask which seem to never go away. Besides the common real estate questions regarding purchasing are selling, there are the questions about critters and hurricanes.

Southwest Florida has been blessed with a few storm free years. Short of the deluge of rain last week, we’ve escaped the storms and the end of hurricane season is just around the corner. The whole “flooding” question, of course, comes up from time to time. Yes, there have been a few areas with standing water and an occasionally property damage but it’s not a flood of biblical proportion.

Drama makes it to the news on a regular basis because it sells. The last time there were “Bonita Springs has flooded” reports I drove to the couple of streets that flooded and photographed them, videoed the area, screen shot a Google map of exactly where it was and put it on my blog. Why? Well, because technology is awesome and now anyone can publish accurate news. Plus, many of my clients were half a world away needlessly losing sleep over the idea that their homes were under water when they weren’t.

Monsters live in the dark. The lack of information allows the imagination to take off. Folks not familiar with our area only see or hear sound bites of the scariest things. Hurricane this, shark bite that, rattle snakes, gators, water moccasins and now, python snakes “so big they found a whole deer in its belly”.

It’s a miracle there are still any human inhabitants left in Southwest Florida. All this time we might have been tempting fate taking that siesta on the chaise lounge in the back yard.

Recently, another real estate agent in my office asked me how I answer people who ask about death by reptile in Florida. I looked at him and told him the truth, “I have three, yes three, twenty-three year old children born and raised in Southwest Florida. Not one of them has been bitten by a shark, attacked by a gator, strangled by a python or snake bit by a rattler or a moccasin. Believe me, I think they even try … I’ve watched their YouTube channel. Those kids are hilarious.”

Hey, I figure if you have a kid with a duct taped cowboy boot, big dawg, a knife on his hip, NRA card, swamp buggy and an airboat the odds have got to be pretty darn high for becoming a reptile attack statistic … and probably a republican, too.

Now, what will probably eventually happen is some tourist will have a few too many umbrella drinks at The Lake House, loose a bet, do a half gainer into the lake from the deck not realizing there’s a gator down there lying in wait. This attack would simply be a big misunderstanding because he wasn’t lying in wait for people … he was waiting for more hot wings.

A lot of these accidents are just rookie mistakes with a reoccurring theme of consuming copious amounts of alcohol then the brilliant idea of taking a swim in a lake or poking at a snake. I mean, if you juggled knives you could actually get cut. If you get your Cuervo swerve on and swim in a lake in Florida you could get bitten by something plus posthumously win a Darwin Award.

All the fretting over potential critters attacks is a waste of worrying energy. What everyone really should be afraid of is the Kardashian family. There’s a better chance of them causing far more mental anguish and damage to the human race than any Southwest Florida critter ever could.

###

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 & Tomatoes  on The Information Super Highway

Most people, regardless of what they do for a living, now have an email brimming with speed of light requests to get things done. Email and the internet have revolutionized the way the world does business and has become one of the biggest time savers in just about every profession. The real estate business has benefited from the changes especially with online home marketing, contract preparation and contract delivery.

Speaking for my own business, there are forests of trees spared because it’s so much easier to be nearly paperless due to email, fax to email and “cloud computing” when negotiating and preparing contracts for real estate purchases.

Little did anyone know that information would move at the speed of light and turn humans into petulant children like Charlotte from Willy Wonka. The phrase, “patience is a virtue” should officially be changed to; “patience was a virtue”.

Everyone wants “the goose that lays the golden egg, now”. In a world where most people can click “buy now” and have the UPS man ring their door bell with their widgets the next day, actually waiting for something, for anything, has become an exercise in lack of tolerance for a fair number of folks.

So there I was minding my own bees wax when I get an email saying I didn’t respond to a question fast enough. I actually saw the email which was a really a comment on a blog that was sent to moderation. Unfortunately, that day I was putting my beloved dog to sleep and my secret team of webmasters was attending other matters and had escaped the shackles to their desks. It was Sunday, you know, the day that Chick-fil-A is closed so the staff was probably driving around looking for something to eat.

Apparently, someone wanted to know about farmer’s markets, and fast. Bonita Springs, like most cities in southwest Florida, has a few of them sprinkled around town on various days of the week.

Apparently, farmer’s markets are a very big deal to some people. So big of a deal that they would like to know when and where to get a goose that lays a vine ripe tomato, right now, and follow it up with a handful of emails explaining how disappointed they are with not getting the answers immediately. Why they were so disappointed, in fact, that they won’t even be moving here because farmer’s markets were actually the prime determining factor. (I’m serious) Not the hospitals. Not the lifestyle. Not the school system.

For what it’s worth, that pressing tomato question was actually answered within one day but it still wasn’t fast enough for the farmer marketeer.

Now, while I find humor in the fact that someone is this hell bent on getting fresh produce information at the speed of light from a real estate agent it doesn’t really matter what the information was that they needed. They wouldn’t have had patience if it was a pressing tomato issue or a short sale negotiation.

These days there is always something needed yesterday … last week it just happened to be emergency farmer’s market information.

Maybe people need to watch an old episode of The Rockford Files and see Jim run from payphone to payphone with a pocket full of dimes to appreciate how much technology has substantially improved their lives.

The fact of the matter is that even with so much of the communication being done on the internet there are still people, the human variable, at the other end of every transaction. Humans have to put the data there and take it down, reassemble it, deliver it or tell it where the nearest farmer’s market is and sometimes it’s just not going to be immediate.

###

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.

Price, Condition, Location & Value in Real Estate

The snow birds are on their way. This year, like many of the other years, the first signs of their return are the transport trucks delivering their automobiles. To that end, let it be known that a winner of the Facebook “car hauler bingo 2011” contest is officially declared. Vivian M. of Bonita Springs spotted the first car hauler offloading a four door sedan with Ohio plates a few weeks ago.

Fall brings with it the early snow birds, slightly cooler weather plus new hope for the seasonally stressed businesses … and home owners yearning to sell their real estate over the next winter season.

If you’re about to list your home or your home sat unsold over the summer it’s time to measure and compare with current market statistics and conditions so you can prepare for the winter season. After all, you’ll never know the progress of the real estate market without measuring periodically to check the results … or figuring out why there was a lack of results.

Why fix what isn’t broken? Take, for instance, the big three valuation and measurement tools in real estate; price, condition and location.

Price – The value of real estate is determined by collecting recent closed sale comparable data. Those closed sales should be as recent as possible and not more than six months old when listing the property to make sure that your real estate is priced within market range.

If your real estate was listed before summer, the comparable sales that were used to determine your old list price are as stale as yesterday’s doughnuts and you’re overdue for a fresh comparative market analysis.

You should also ask your real estate agent or the agent you’re interviewing to list your real estate for an absorption rate. You’ll want to find out how much inventory your home is competing with neighborhood wide or even in your home’s price range. Ideally, you should know how many months or years of inventory you’re competing with before you list and periodically throughout the listing period.

Condition – Home buyers are shopping long and hard for real estate before putting ink to paper. They have the benefit of comparing all of the competing real estate in a day or two. They hack through the field of available properties with a machete and get to the best of the best quickly. There is little opportunity for a second chance to get them back through the door once they’ve been turned off by something negative. It’s a downright shame if it was a correctable negative condition like cleanliness or neatness that turned them away.

Of course it’s a no-brainer that homes in better condition sell faster and closer to list price than the homes needing TLC. Sometimes, home owners are a little too close to the forest to see the trees or their idea of clean is, well, different from what others may consider clean. Reevaluate the condition by taking a fresh look or get an outside, second opinion of the home’s cleanliness and readiness to show to perspective buyers.

Location – Whether it’s the actual neighborhood itself or where the home is located geographically within the neighborhood, the location can influence buyers positively or negatively. Compare apples to apples and be prepared to adjust the price to correct the differences. For example, two nearly identical homes, one on a lake and one backing up to a sound wall next I-75, sport very different values.

A busy road or any other unattractive nuisance that can’t be remedied or removed is a form obsolescence which often can’t be corrected with anything but a price adjustment.

###

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.

Bonita Bay Offers Canoeing on Spring Creek

		Spring Creek Park Bonita Bay VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Within the gates of Bonita Bay is Spring Creek Park.  Bonita Bay is unique because it has two parks on the river and one park on the bay.  In addition to the many amenities of Bonita Bay, owners can also enjoy canoeing from the launch on Spring Creek from Spring Creek Park.

Besides canoeing and kayaking, Spring Creek Park also offers a bocce court, children’s playground, basket ball hoop, walking paths and the specialty of Bonita Bay, nature.  Grand Oak and pine trees have been carefully preserved to ensure shade and plenty of natural habitat for wildlife.

To learn more about the amenities of Bonita Bay, read also: Bonita Bay Golf and Country Club

Real Estate is Selling Off – Deal With It

So here we are half way through a sweltering southwest Florida summer. Worlds away are our seasonal residents who have all but forgotten us and cubical dwelling number crunchers who will soon be speculating about Florida real estate. Right about the time the first of the leaves start to turn and the migratory path of snow birds changes the projections about the future of Florida real estate will hit the glossy pages of magazines in the book stores of an airport near you.

With the recent news and ensuing speculation of economic turmoil the questions about real estate have already started. That means that the glossy magazines are cranking up the printing presses to get a slick story to those shelves with the latest breaking information … which will be a couple months old when it finally does hit the shelf.

I don’t know about you but I can hardly wait. The fact of the matter is that, even with bad news battering the air waves, we’re actually doing fairly well down here. The real hidden story and one that you will probably never hear about is how much standing real estate inventory we actually don’t have.

Like many of the other real estate agents, I’d given up on the so-called professional economists speculating about south Florida real estate and consistently being wrong. The latest statistics are available with a little digging and minimal work so why not “get local” and provide what’s really happening, whether community, city or county wide?

We had to sell off the inventory for prices to stabilize and start to recover. This month, when all was said and done, the closed sales for the month of July 2011 was actually up forty-five percent over July 2007 sales. A look at closed sales during the month of July going back ten straight years put July 2007 at the absolute lowest in unit sales. Sales, measured in units, have climbed consistently since 2007.

What’s most notable is that there is less than one year’s worth of standing real estate inventory in most building structure styles. For example, single family homes have less than ten and one half months of inventory and condos have a little less than a year. You can have your own real estate agent drill down for your neighborhood or price point to get even an even more precise idea of what’s happening in your real estate market.

So, when’s the last time anyone heard anything good about the Florida condo market? Good news doesn’t sell so you won’t hear about how much real estate inventory has sold off or the fact that the condo market on “this side of Florida” is drastically improved. There’s slightly less than a year of condo inventory, if you’re wondering. Depending upon neighborhood or if it’s higher than a low-rise, results may vary.

By the way, Southwest Florida has been nearly matching unit sales rates comparable with 2003 unit sales for the last three years … even during the summer months and I just thought you should know.

Knowing has to be so much better than the guessing or believing the lack of facts your friend from yoga class told you.

Real Estate Questions and Answers

Do I have to use a real estate agent in the state of Florida?

Well, probably not. Gawd bless ya if you’re a seller and you found a buyer on your own. It happens more often in the tight knit communities; pool side real estate transactions. Whether you’re a buyer or a seller, you don’t legally have to use a real estate agent for buying or selling your own real estate.

You might want to at least involve a real estate attorney to process the transaction, review whatever agreement you’ve engaged in and make sure all of your legal bases are covered. Some of the transactions are pretty complicated these days and whichever side of the transaction you’re on, you’ll want to make sure that proper procedures are followed and that the real estate changing hands has clear title.

When condominium or home owner association is involved, “you don’t know what you don’t know” so it might be to your benefit to have an attorney obtain the current homeowner association or condominium documents, as well as the financials of the community, so the buyer can perform their due diligence and get document review periods completed.

Can I give the buyers a credit at settlement for the faulty items found at the home inspection? One of the agents said it probably wasn’t allowed.

Here’s the deal, if the buyer is paying cash all parties can come to an agreement for the repairs, whether it’s a cash equivalent for the actual repairs or throwing in the dining room table as barter. I’d suspect the buyer was getting a mortgage which could mean red flags and snags in underwriting. Lenders are pretty particular these days and aren’t too keen on financing real estate and allowing money to filter through to the buyer. Some of them throw a stink over furniture, golf carts or even cars “tossed in” with the deal regardless if it is “for the convenience of the seller”.

Long story short, if there is a mortgage involved; ask the loan officer or mortgage broker about including personal property or cash back for repairs before it becomes an underwriting issue.

Is there anything my real estate agent can do to help speed up the short sale process?

Not really. For what it’s worth, most short sales are moving much faster than they have in the past.

If everyone involved in the transaction provides the required documentation in timely fashion, it’s helpful, but doesn’t guarantee a faster short sale. Occasionally, there’s confusion and redundancy that goes on internally with the lenders negotiator and investors that can border on absurd.

In the past I’ve enjoyed a front row seat when, within a three week period, there was four, as in 4, as in quatro, “arm’s length transaction addendums” all of which were identical but only slightly more April-fresh than the previous document. Each time they had to be signed and notarized by each party in the transaction; buyers, sellers, buyer’s agent, seller’s agent, each attorney, title officer. Seriously. That burned through weeks of time and accomplished almost nothing.

While we’re on the subject of faster short sales, Bank of America recently announced a new short sale program. If the buyer of a short sale walks away (because they grew weary from signing “arm’s length transaction addendums” ad nauseum) it is no longer required to go back to the beginning and start the next buyer’s transaction from scratch.

The announcement was just a few weeks ago and I’ve not seen this real estate unicorn with my own eyes so it’s only an announcement at this point. You’ll surely hear rejoicing when it hits Main Street.

###

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 Ever Expanding Real Estate Contract

For the first time in my career I looked at the massive pile of paper at the business end of my printer and said, “It’s official, I’m a one man ozone layer wrecking crew.” I may as well be fracking or strip mining and sign up for the Global Warmers Rod and Gun Club.

It’s now been twelve glorious years of adventure packed real estate and I’ve watched contracts grow from maybe eight or nine pages to whatever fantabulous number they end up at now. The last one I negotiated is hovering around forty-four pages and we’re not done collecting pages. That’s not even counting the condominium association documents or the lengthy home inspection report-slash-novel because home inspectors have to cover their rumps, too.

So, the unassuming buyers walked in at the home inspection knowing I’d have “a few addendums” for them to sign while they were there. They got an eye full of the stack that needed John Hancocked and they couldn’t believe it, either. The cost of doing business in our litigious society is the reams of paper we power through and the bucket of dead ink cartridges beside my printer with the split personality, aptly nicknamed Sybil.

There are officially more addendum pages than contract pages in a real estate transaction, at this point, and the contracts have never been bigger. Most are ten pages-ish. There are addendums for any and all fees, community development districts, mold, Chinese drywall, lead based paint, various local disclosures, special clauses, addendums scampi, fried addendums, coconut addendums … you get the picture.

Add that all to the sixteen thousand plus pounds of CO2 my car sprinkles around town each year. Yes, I did look it up out of curiosity: www.terrapass.com. I seriously wonder how big the carbon footprint is for the average real estate transaction these days.

For many consumers the average real estate transaction would involve a bank at one end of the transaction that will be losing the file from time to time or sending it through the shredder because someone used the wrong font. Now *those* carbon footprints have to be enormous. Bank of America must have a world class sized, collateral damage carbon footprint.

It sure wouldn’t hurt one bit if the lenders got with the program and inched toward paperless and actually recognized digital signatures. For crying out loud, you’ll let the public bank online with their collective trillions, if not quadrillions of dollars, but you won’t let them digitally sign a contract?

Back at square “get it done”, everyone involved in the negotiation gets to print out whatever needs executed, no matter where they’re located in the world, plus sign, fax and send back.

Maybe this hidden expense should now be disclosed on an addendum as a closing expense.

For example: In addition to title insurance, documentary stamps on deed, recording fees, loan origination fees and the like, you will spend an estimated $XXX dollars on paper, ink and, if you don’t have the capability to scan/email or fax, a dozen trips to the local Kinko’s plus whatever they charge to use their services. A rain forest may be negatively affected by your transaction, which is regrettable, but you may be minimizing your potential to end up in court PLUS we really, really, really have to make sure you don’t share DNA and/or are in cahoots with the seller of this short sale/toxic asset and we don’t make a poor business decision while we’re cleaning up the mess we created.

Welcome to bleeding edge technological real estate in 2011. Save your Office Max coupons. You’re probably going to need them. If you don’t need the coupons sent them to me; I need them.

###

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 Classic Look Back at Real Estate Inventory

How do you really know if now is a great time to buy? That’s a question I was asked a few days ago by someone who is looking at the real estate market in our area. They’ve been following the prices but also worried by negative, conflicting reports in the news.

Picking on Florida real estate is now a sport and sadly most of the time we, Southwest Florida, get lumped in with the row of vacant towers on Miami Beach and other pointes of slaughter still digging out from under their inventory.

So, how is a buyer supposed to know when the best time to buy is? As a buyer you might have educated yourself on the area, the closing procedures and the pricing but you want to know that you’re not “getting in too soon”.

The pundits will tell you that you can’t gauge the bottom and that the market is like a pendulum swinging, you can’t tell it’s passed the mid point at the bottom until it’s already began to swing upward. What they don’t tell you in the “now is a great time to buy commercials” is how to calculate if it’s really is a great time to buy in your city or neighborhood of choice.

Inventory and location are the two factors to consider when deciding whether or not to purchase real estate. For the sake of the buyer that was in a quandary about moving forward we did a couple of simple calculations to determine how much inventory was in the neighborhood they were considering.

It’s called an absorption rate and it determined, for this buyer, that there was six months of inventory in the community. Six months is a balanced market, by the way. It was only a few years ago that there was seventeen years of inventory in this very neighborhood, which drove prices down. Yes, you read that right … seventeen years.

The current six month of inventory is actually misleading, and not in a bad way, because there are really only three active units and a pile of pending sales not yet closed which is creating illusion that there is more inventory. A typical buyer would have not suspected that the values in that neighborhood have actually risen nine percent over the last year due to the lack of inventory.

Since its summer and I had a little time on my hands and it got me thinking about the real estate market as a whole. Just for giggles I did a broad stroke of the southwest Florida brush and calculated the inventory for single family homes in the multiple listing system.

The total came up to about twelve months of inventory which really shouldn’t mean a whole lot to you unless you’ve been watching the market and knew that two years ago there was a little over twenty-six months of inventory.

Bad news sells so you probably wouldn’t ordinarily hear about that sort of market improvement. If you were expecting news like half of the real estate inventory being absorbed to be trumpeted by television media portals we should have emailed it to Sarah Palin so they could have at least discovered it.

Keep in mind that lumped in that twelve month pile are likely neighborhoods with far more inventory than twelve months and even some with less. The point is that you need to get those hyper local figures from your real estate agent prior to even placing an offer.

Finding out existing inventory and the local absorption rate for the city, the neighborhood or even the street should be a step in your decision making. If your real estate agent can’t do those figures for you, you’ve probably got the wrong real estate agent.

###

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.

Gulf Access Riverfront Real Estate

Some of the choicest riverfront, gulf access real estate is located along the Imperial River in Bonita Springs and the Estero River in Estero, Florida.  The wider, deepest stretches of the river are dotted with luxury real estate, single family homes with boat docks.  Occasionally, there may be an offering of a vacant riverfront lot.

Riverfront homes in Bonita Springs are not generally located in deed restricted communities unless they are in Bonita Bay, River Reach, Serrano, Brendan Cove or Paradise Village.  Homes on the Imperial River were built independently, over a spread of years so the houses vary in design, style and age. Riverfront real estate is generally irregular size and varies in square footage or acreage.

Riverfront real estate varies in price but generally becomes more affordable towards the east, furthest from the Gulf of Mexico. 

The choice to live riverfront is made by those who enjoy boating, fishing, canoeing, kayaking and pleasure boating to many of the waterfront restaurants in Bonita Springs, Fort Myers and Naples.

The back bays of Bonita Springs and Estero are accessible via the Imperial and Estero Rivers.  All combined, the waterways are also part of the Great Calusa Blueway.  The back bays are the west coast version of the Intracoastal Waterway.

In addition to riverfront real estate, there are some offerings of creek front real estate, also.  Spring Creek is “small craft navigable” starting near the area of the community of Cedar Creek. Spring Creek continues west, circles Pelican Landing and begins to head north near the Fish Streets and exits into the bay.

If you’re searching for riverfront real estate the following major rivers and creeks are located in south Lee County:  Imperial River, Estero River, Spring Creek, Oak Creek. Cocohatchee River is in north Collier County and easily accessible by boat from the Bonita Springs and Estero areas.

Riverfront Real Estate, Riverfront Homes, Homes on the Imperial River, Homes on The Estero River, Bonita Springs Riverfront, Bonita Springs Riverfront Real Estate, Estero Riverfront, Spring Creek Real Estate

Local Real Estate Statistics Trump Census #Duh

At dark o’clock this morning I sat down at the computer with a cup of coffee and the first email I read began, “If my brother is trying to scare me, it worked. What do you have to say to counter this article?”

The referencing article was a CNN Money article with some reconstituted stats from an old article written a few months ago which touted the gloom and doom of Florida real estate. Didn’t hear the freshness vacuum seal pop? Well, neither did I. The stats in that article stunk the first time I read it months ago. When it was re-heated as left-overs it was even less palatable.

The article included fabulous blood red graphs which indicated the vacancy rates for Lee and Collier Counties. The data was collected by the totally-accurate-for-ten-year-increments census bureau.

There probably isn’t a real estate agent in southwest Florida who didn’t show property with census notes on the door of vacant condos or homes. I know I did. I also know that the market has changed dramatically since then, too. We’ve sold off a staggering amount of real estate since the census data collection.

What’s was not included in the re-reporting of those numbers was any sort of update with viable recent sales figures. What is included in the numbers is, well, everything else lumped into a pile.

When the term “Lee County” is used, Sanibel Island is lumped in with Lehigh Acres and Bonita Springs is lumped in with Cape Coral. When they got to Collier County there were even guestimates that Naples would not “come all the way back” until the late 2030’s.

The question begs to be asked, “Come back to what?”

Simply back to a balanced real estate market or back to the prices the real estate was in 2000, 2003 or 2006? Was that speculative date for the beachfront condos, Golden Gate Estates or all of Collier County?

According to someone in a cubicle two thousand miles away, if any of us do live beyond December 21, 2012 Naples real estate won’t recover until 2038.

There is one thing certain and that is that if I was going to be buying a condo in Las Vegas, Cleveland or Southwest Florida my first call for inventory, absorption or vacancy rates data wouldn’t be the United States Census Bureau or an analyst based in Pennsylvania.

Market statistics are only reliable if they’re collected from a relevant, current source, not from recycled, stale information or the census bureau’s year old data. I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would speculate the prognosis of Southwest Florida or Naples, without accessing and referencing local data.

Our real estate isn’t all puppies and daisies but it’s not in the dumper until 2038. The only way to find out whether or not you should be in or out of any real estate market is to arm yourself current, local data and then make the judgment call.

Good news or bad news, if you’re reading a national publication and it doesn’t include local real estate stats you simply do not have the real story or all of the information. Period.

The link to the CNN Money story is here: http://budurl.com/Naples2038

Five days later Bloomberg had this to say about Florida real estate: http://budurl.com/NaplesRises

###

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.