We often get asked, what will the bank take for that property…..will they accept an offer of 50% of the asking price? Unfortunately the answer is no, banks are not considering those type of low-ball offers.
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Many baby-boomers have childhood memories of a Florida in the 1960s and 1970s that just doesn’t exist anymore. This earlier Florida was dominated by farming, fields of palmettos and pines and free from a 7-11 or CVS on every other corner.
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RSW in Fort Myers has scored a major tourism coupe landing direct flights from Denmark cities of Copenhagen and Aalborg, Denmark’s fourth largest city. European discount operator, Comefly selected RSW for its Florida destination over East Coast destinations. Currently, RSW serves Dusseldorf, Montreal and Toronto with direct International flights.
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Everyone celebrates Christmas differently, and holiday traditions and festivities do not have to be limited to singing carols around snow-covered evergreens. The merry season can be enjoyed in any climate. People in southern locales such as Florida can delight in the cheer as much as anyone else.
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The Cape Coral-Fort Myers area was ranked fourth nationally as a retirement destination in a study just released by Portfolio.com. Our region was second in Florida only trailing Bradenton-Sarasota in the Sunshine State. This designation is a significant coup for our battered real estate market as it validates the overwhelming sense of value many are seeing in the market.
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The Associated Press ran a story yesterday titled Where fewer foreclosures are now bad for business which featured Lee County and detailed how the slowdown in the foreclosure pipeline is bad for business. The irony of this premise is thick enough to cut with a knife…..yes our economy has become dependent on foreclosure transactions to keep sputtering along.
[more] →The Washington Post covers the Southwest Florida foreclosure crisis with a powerful photo essay detailing some of the challenges in the market. At present, nearly 2/3 of our real estate transactions involve either bank-owned foreclosure or short sale listings. Valuations for distressed properties have in many cases dropped to levels below half of what these properties sold for during the real estate boom.
[more] →The Sarasota Herald Tribune has an in-depth view of the irony unfolding in Florida where tax laws that have traditionally stuck it to snowbirds are now actually favoring them.
The Save Our Homes Amendment, which was passed in 1993, was put in place to limit changes in home valuations for full-time homesteaded residences. The purpose of this amendment was protect Floridians from being taxed out of their homes as values increased over time.
[more] →We are wearing the contrarian hat this morning…..instead of discussing the hottest new listings to hit the MLS, lets take a look at the oldest, stalest listings in our MLS. These are the certifiable dogs of the market, all have been active since…….2005! Yikes, these owners have had their property for sale with the same Realtor for nearly five years.
The general consensus in the real estate industry is that listings have the most activity in the first seven days, have the best chance of selling in the first 30 days and become stale in the 90 day time frame. It is hard to imagine any buyer giving a second thought to a listing that has been on the market over 1700 days like these 2005 listings.
[more] →Fort Myers MLS Map Search
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