Canadian buyers are very active in the real estate market here in Southwest Florida. At this time, approximately 7% of our website traffic originates in Canada and over 10% of our transaction in the last year have been with Canadian buyers.
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The battle royale between New Jersey firefighter Victor Vangelakos and Fort Myers high-rise developer the Related Group is an ongoing fight. What is the best golf community in Fort Myers? Dramatic developer discounts have jump started sales at the North Star Yacht Club in North Fort Myers. This community fronting the deep-water Caloosahatchee River boasts twin 12-story high-rise towers. Tucked away in South Fort Myers off Cypress Lake Drive between Summerlin Road and McGregor Boulevard is the gated community of Palmettto Cove. The most expensive home to sell in Lee County Florida during January 2010 was a Fort Myers riverfront single-family estate located at 14000 Schultz Road, Fort Myers. My e-mail inbox today contained an e-mail that really troubled me, here it is with the senders name redacted: Subject Casa Del Rio, the home of former WCI Chairman and former Ambassador to Portugal Al Hoffman, is on the auction block. The latest report on the Lee County rental market released by RealFacts of Novato, CA detailed some significant shifts in our rental market for 4Q09. WGCU hosted a panel of Southwest Florida real estate experts including Dick Hogan from the Fort Myer News-Press. One of the buyer misconceptions about our current Fort Myers area real estate market is that banks will approve ultra-aggressive, low-ball offers on short sales and foreclosures. Approving low-ball offers in Lee County has absolutely not been the operating model for lending institutions during 2009. The Miami Press reports on new guidelines coming out from the U.S. Treasury that will place a 10 day limit on bank approval for a short sale. These guidelines cover mortgages for institutions participating in the Home Affordable Modification Program including JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Time Magazine covers the re-emergence of flippers to the Florida real estate market. We have certainly seen this in the Fort Myers area, particularly in the entry-level single-family home foreclosure market. One of the featured 2009 newsmakers is convicted real estate deal-maker Samir Cabrera. If you are interested, he is now making his home in Pensacola at the Federal Prison Camp. If you have spent any time looking at Cape Coral foreclosures or Fort Myers foreclosures, chances are you have visited a home or condo that has been stripped of its appliances, cabinets, fixtures and sometimes even more. Throughout much of 2009, the News-Press has been chock full of local Realtors discussing how our Southwest Florida real estate market has reached the bottom……and is headed upward. The St. Petersburg Times reports that the bottom feeding foreclosure workout firms will face significantly more scrutiny in Florida. These workout specialists promise miracles, typically charge a desperate homeowner a large upfront fee and then don’t do anything to help save the home from foreclosure. Here locally, there are firms operating in under the guises of [...] The Realtor Association of Fort Myers and the Beach released November 2009 home sales numbers which highlight significantly increased levels of activity in our market. These figures reinforce the sentiment of our team which has been extremely busy with second home buyers looking to take advantage of our reduced home prices. Highlights from the November 2009 [...] Wink News reports that the foreclosure auction held last night at the Harborside Event Center netted sales of 75 homes. Our market is still heavily weighted towards foreclosures with approximately two-thirds off all homes being sold falling into the distressed category. We continue to see significant activity mostly from second-home buyers looking to take advantage of [...] The November 2009 Credit Suisse Monthly Survey of Realtors confirms what we are currently seeing in the Fort Myers market. Pre-retirement baby-boomers are taking a serious look for a second home in Southwest Florida. Our highly discounted prices are very enticing and the continued strength of the stock market this year are two of the key [...] The real estate market in the greater Fort Myers area has been dominated by foreclosure and short sale activity. This REO activity has driven significant price declines in Southwest Florida real estate. In the third quarter of 2009, home prices in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area dropped on average 40%. This 40% decline led the nation [...] With the Loonie at parity with the US Dollar and across the board price reductions, many Canadians are now considering an investment in Southwest Florida real estate. The Canadian Press reports that the currency equality is very enticing but shouldn’t be the key driver in your decision to buy real estate in Florida. Some of [...] The Naples News reports that single-family home re-sales in the Fort Myers area are up 120% for the first nine months of 2009 vs. the same period last year. In the January thru September period this year, 12,526 single-family homes were sold, up from 5,727 in the same period of 2008. This dramatic increase in sales [...] The first wave of foreclosures to impact Lee County were dominated by investor-owned single-family homes in Lehigh Acres and Cape Coral. Many of these were the speculative products constructed by the likes of First Homes and sold to under-qualified and inexperienced investors. These investors were the first to fall and many just walked away from [...] Business Week reports on the tightening short sale standards that banks are imposing these transactions. Time frames to close short sale deals are widening and lenders are looking for increased concessions from many sellers. Short sales have been challenging in our market for quite some time. The sheer quantities of short sales in Southwest Florida has [...] The Wall Street Journal provides an in-depth review of the dispute between Bonita Bay Group and the members of the golf clubs in its various communities. The net-net of this battle is that Bonita Bay pitched that any member could have their deposit returned without conditions if they no longer wanted to be a member [...] How about a new way of segmenting the neighborhoods of Fort Myers? Most real estate websites carve up a community by zip code or subdivision, this approach works well if you are familiar with the area and know which zip codes cover the the neighborhoods you are interested in. Although we offer both zip code and [...] In figures recently released by RealtyTrac, the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area was second in the nation in foreclosures during the first half of 2009. One in every 14 homes in the region was in some stage of the foreclosure process during this timeframe. Our region only railed the Las Vegas market, where one in every [...] Luxury carriage homes for under $250K If you have ever dipped your toe in the water at Miromar Lakes and thought about buying a home………now might just be the time to dive in. Home and condo prices at Miromar Lakes have dropped significantly and this wonderful community is now financially feasible for a broader spectrum of [...] |
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