Cape Coral Real Estate

The basic of a Real Estate transaction is obviously a seller willing to sell to a buyer willing to buy. Once you have those terms agreed upon, you are half way to closing.

But if the seller have to settle for a low ball offer from a buyer, everyone involved in the deal may lose time and money. This is where a clever agent can use valuable skills to negotiate the deal and make it happen all the way to the closing.

One thing I use to do is really showing the temperature of the market to  my buyers. I think it is important that they acknowledge how the today’s Real Estate market in Cape Coral is reacting to. I compare sold pricing instead of listed pricing, and this can be valuable to sellers as well in order to ask the right price instead of waiting an offer forever. Once my buyer understand the market, of course, it is ultimately their decision on what to put in their offer. But at least they know the potential result.

Also, I like to compare what’s comparable. I recently visited a seller. It was a “by owner” and his price was close enough to what the neighborhood was asking for. However, the features of his home were very different and a realistic price should be much lower. That’s why it’s still for sale with no showing today, after months on the market. So, I show only similar features home for comparing and make a wise decision about the offering price.

Low ball offers usually waste buyers’ time. And that time is valuable. If a buyer is offering low ball offers on 20 properties and getting denied each time, offering a decent price at the first one would most likely had given equity by now to that buyer. Not only he had money in the property, but he is an owner instead of nothing, hoping for “the best deal” to happen. Make low ball offers if you don’t need to buy, not if you are looking for a roof to live under.

Now, if you see a property bought around 2005-2007, when the Real Estate was at peak, chances are the seller is selling at lost. He knows that and it is already difficult for him. Showing a low ball offer right there is to shoot yourself in the foot. This is something I have the need to emphasize for the health of a transaction. Sellers are people with families they have to take care of, not just a number. Ultimately, again, my buyers have the last decision about their offer.

Low ball offer

But let me tell you something that happened in the last few months when a buyer from Pennsylvania emailed me asking for a “good deal” foreclosure. I had several of them and even if I explained that the market is bouncing back, often with multiple offers, this buyer wanted to get a bargain in a location where everything was dirt cheap.

I found a nice pool home located in the SE of Cape Coral with access to the gulf of Mexico. It was a foreclosure well priced at $179,900. He told me he would pay that price when he saw the other similar sold properties I sent to him. But he wanted to “grab a deal” and he made an offer at $150,000, hoping a counter offer in the mid $160K from the bank. The scenario I told him just happened. They was a counter offer, but to another buyer who offered $175,000 and who ultimately close on that property. At this time, there is no more gulf access pool home in SE cape under $200K. No need to say the buyer made an easy $25K equity in one month. My buyer? He closed on a lovely property with a nice pool for $195,250. He does not have access to the gulf of Mexico. He’s on a fresh water canal. He knows he missed it.

So, if you are thinking of low ball offers, just know what to expect. And don’t make me wrong, I make low ball offers myself time to time, but I don’t have to buy. If I close it, great. If not, oh well, next…Not a big deal

Comments (0) Apr 25 2012

The number of foreclosure has hit the its lowest level. Today, when I checked those bank owned properties for Cape Coral, there were only 214 units. For your information, there were 1085 in December 2010. And that’s most likely why we see more interest in the non distressed market, often with multiple offers.

All is all, there are 1774 properties for sale in Cape Coral and we have experienced 451 sales in the last 30 days. That’s mean we have about 3 months inventory out there, making it a seller’s market now. And if you add the fact that multiple offers occur more often now, buyers have a harder time to have their dream home under contract. That is exactly what my french speaking buyers from France experienced. They use to make a search online for ” maisons a vendre a Cape Coral “, find me there, give me a call to begin the search and get very frustrated after looking around for a few weeks, seeing nothing good is available anymore.

Cape Coral luxury foreclosure

The thing is, today, if you plan to buy a property here, be prepared. Get your financing handy, bank letter, pre-approval. And once you see a property you like, make that offers good enough to have the seller put his signature on your contract. Unfortunately, if you don’t act quickly, chances are the property will be pending before you realize it. Prices are still the lowest in the nation here, especially if you compare the amenities that Cape Coral is offering with cities in the middle of Tennessee for example. Not only the weather is more attractive, let’s face it, but also the proximity of the water, with the gulf of Mexico and the beaches.

So, in my opinion, 2012 shows the switch from a buyer’s market where sellers were waiting for a single offer to show how low was the price offered to a seller’s market where the buyers are competing so ferociously to have a chance to buy that property at often a price above the asking price.

If you are entering the market for selling or buying a property in the Cape, give me a call or send me an email. There is still time to find your dream house at an excellent price, but don’t delay.

Comments (0) Mar 25 2012

My wife and I were spending great quality time last week-end during the shrimp festival in Fort Myers Beach. We were with our 18 month old grand daughter and I think that was her first time she saw the beach and the water there.
The city was crowded with people and also with students who came down for spring break. The ambiance was hot and noisy
At first, we were redirect to park on vacant lot before the bridge. The police closed down the bridge because of the parade. Of course, there was a guy taking advantage of tourist asking for 5 bucks for parking. He was maybe a neighbor trying some few quick bucks.
So we went crossing the bridge walking, which was OK, it’s not that long and you get nice view from the top of it. Once there, we were trapped in the middle of the parade. That was really nice. My wife got several pearl pendents, especially from those 6-pack firefighters dancing on their char
Then we headed to the shrimp festival place where we ordered the $10 shrimp menu served for and by the lions club. We got some nice well cooked shrimps, and some were just huge, with some slaw. Bottle of water were at $1.
After a nice meal, we went to the pier. Our grand daughter could appreciate the water view and a couple of pelicans sleeping right there, on the spot where fishermen clean their catch of the day. The beach had quite a lot of beach bums that week-end. Not only because it is high season for vacationers, but also and mainly because of the nice weather we have here in winter. I took a picture of the beach to show you how it was. So, make sure to make plan for your next vacation here in Fort Myers Beach. You’ll be glad you did. And you plan to buy a nice little home In Fort Myers Beach for your holidays and renting it in between your stays to help to pay the mortgage or the expenses, feel free to contact me through www.1capecoral.com or by calling me at 239-240-7346.

Comments (0) Mar 12 2012

I read an article published by cnnmoney about the 10 best places to retire. Cape Coral was voted #2!. So that’s good news after all the effort put into making Cape Coral a better place to live.

The single most effective move in making your retirement stash go further is, well, a move. “There’s nothing more powerful than relocating from a high-cost-of-living area to a low-cost one,” says Baltimore financial planner Tim Maurer.

If “low cost of living” conjures up visions of some bleak backwater, think again. MONEY combed its Best Places to Live database to find affordable cities and towns that offer lots to do, both inside and out. Places that are safe, with violent-crime rates below the national average. Where there’s good medical care close at hand. And where at least 30% of the population is over the age of 50, so you’ll have no shortage of golf or bridge partners.

The ten places you’ll read about in the story that follows offer all that — plus they’re exceptionally kind to your wallet. Their cost-of-living indexes range from 87 to 97, meaning that as little as 87 cents buys residents what a dollar would buy the average American. Homes are affordable, with median prices below the $173,100 national median (some well below). And tax rates are reasonable, with either no state income tax or significant exemptions for retirees. Could Cape Coral be your new home?

You can read the full story by following this link

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Comments (2) Sep 22 2011

I wrote an article about virtual staging for Real Estate few months back, using a virtual staging software. I was explaining the advantages of using a software to stage an empty home instead of renting furniture to stage it, which is more expensive.

Today, I did receive some updates from the company doing the software (Virtual Staging Solutions) and they have added a few more options that can greatly help to generate a very nice layout. The best use in my opinion is to vitually stage your empty listings, get the results on your website and let the buyer’s agents where to go to see how nice the property can be once furnished! It will bring a clear idea of the transition from a house to a home in your buyer’s eyes. It can be the difference between losing your time showing a property and an offer! Your vacant listings will sell faster.

The first new feature is the choice of furniture available. They said on their website that they were working for more than a year with designers in order to bring the brands of furniture available in stores! So you will be able to browse a furniture gallery.

Secondly, they have worked on a personalized way to have your documents out there. They have especially developed those pages for the mobile use. So, your virtual staging listings will be ready to be seen on all mobile devices out there, which is very convenient knowing that it’s easier to bring a cellphone or an iPad with you instead of a laptop.

And last but not least, your presentation of your virtual staging will be in video mode instead of just plain pictures. Today, the video is almost the next big thing.  People are leaving the world of blogging to enter the world of vlogging!

I had an email the other day, asking me questions about the virtual staging software. But honestly, since I’m not involved with this company, it’s probably better to ask directly to them. They website is www.virtualstagingsolutions.com . They have a help sections where your can find email address, phone number and a bunch of frequently asked questions. They offer several plans from $197, which is most likely much cheaper than renting furniture to furnished a living room, a family room and 2 or 3 bedrooms!

For more details, visit their website at www.virtualstagingsolutions.com and get your empty listings sold fast

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Comments (0) Sep 17 2011

I love IDX. Not only it’s a tool I use daily but it looks like my IDX page is bringing more than decent traffic.
I have leads from it every week. I use it to get sellers calling me and I send buyers to use it for search.
It’s very effective. Maybe too much.

Regularly now, I have phone calls from agents. Basically, they call me saying their buyers were surfing the web, got to find my IDX page, made some search and called them with the property details. All they have to do is calling me for more details.
Obviously, my thought is, if you as an agent get to that position, you are not working properly for your clients.
I explain that’s IDX, I’m not necessarily the listing agent, and so on…
Now, some of them, once they get in touch with the real listing agent, they explain that their buyer found it advertised in another agent’s website. And this is when I got the listing’s agent phone call: “You advertise my listing without my authorization, I want you to remove it and I’m emailing your broker because you’re misleading the public saying you’re the listing agent”. That agent has been licensed since 2005, so she’s not new in the business, as I thought she had to be. Plus, we all know that IDX listings always show the famous “Courtesy of [Brokerage's name]“.

So, what gives?
Let’s say you do not what is IDX. Let’s suppose you never heard about it.
Don’t you want to have your listings to be seen in every single Real Estate websites for free? Don’t you want all and any kind of advertising for your listings out there, free of charge?

Of course, I explained that it’s not easy to just remove her listing alone. I sent her an email to apologize but also to explain the benefit of it. Hopefully she’ll get it. It looks to me that more and more agent are working part-time or not at all unless they find a buyer somewhere. Those, I guess, have little continued education and missing few important thing for their career.

Now, fellow Realtors, don’t even think about asking me permission to advertise my Cape Coral listings. Just go ahead. You have not only my authorization, but also my benediction to proceed. Use newspapers, internet, TV ads, put a sign on the moon, hire D. Trump to talk about it, spend millions of dollars to put a banner of my listing with your phone number on every cabs, every cruise ships, every aircrafts, in every cities in the world. Oh, and since you’re at it, try to make my listing in your IDX in bold or, even better, blinking, Las Vegas style. In short, just do it! Because at the end of the day, no matter how was your advertising, I’ll be paid!!

Comments (0) Jun 28 2011

I have a certain number of phone calls from out of state potential buyers. They’re looking online for Cape Coral properties and usually, they can see low price homes that look very nice. When I check them, most of them have defective drywall. And most of those buyers have a vague idea of what is defective drywall, most commonly called chinese drywall.

Most of the time I can explain the issue, but recently, I was showing few properties and came across a home showing the effects of the chinese drywall. I took the opportunity to shoot a few photos. A picture worth a 1,000 words

The next 3 pictures show the 2 copper water pipes underneath the kitchen sink. The corrosion of metal in general and copper in particular due to the defective drywall shows a black substance on the copper. The first pictures is the actual 2 pieces of copper. On the second one, you can see my finger is clean while on the 3rd picture, I touched the pipe and got that black substance on my finger.







The next pictures is the lightning fixture in one bathroom. You can see how the metal coat is pealing badly due to the defective drywall.


You can also see the effects of the chinese drywall on the silver behind mirrors. I try to catch a few pictures of mirrors where the silver is pealing behind, showing a kind of black stain.






Here is a picture of an electrical outlet where you can see the screws all blackened and any part of copper wiring out the plastic cover is balck as well.


Another picture where you can see the metal is pealing.



Of course, I’m only a Real Estate agent. For confirmation of what can do chinese drywall, you should talk to a drywall specialist. He or she will be much more qualified to explain the effects of chinese drywall.

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Comments (0) Mar 17 2011

I saw the big title in the newspaper today. There had been 656 foreclosure lawsuits filed in Lee County in October, the lowest range in a lot more than three years, according to statistics released Monday by the South West Florida Real Estate Investment Association.

It was a rare ray of hope in a grim situation: The Lee County and Cape Coral  foreclosure rate is normally within the top five metropolitan areas nationwide, with only Las Vegas consistently worse.

October’s variety is down 31 % from September’s 953. Yes, you read me: 31% less than the month before. The pace hasn’t been this slow since quite a long time.  555 had been filed in February 2007 as the wave of mortgage failures that followed the housing boom was just obtaining under way.

Experts stated that the decline likely was part of a long-term downward pattern — but that’s not all.

Foreclosures possibly plunged at least in aspect since for the past month, some banks have been holding off on foreclosures whilst they sort out issues including who truly owns the note and whether attorneys basically read all the paperwork, but the holding was only for 1 week and from 2 banks, including a major one though: Bank of America.

But the recent lender troubles alone couldn’t have caused a drop as sharp as October’s. Bankers “did knock some things out, but in the totality with the trend, no. 10 to 20 percent of your mortgages might be affected,” but not enough to account for the whole drop.

County Clerk of Court Charlie Green said that whatever the trigger, the downward pattern has helped whittle away at a daunting backlog of foreclosures within the court system: Public auctions disposing of properties are now outnumbering new filings.

Only about 14,700 cases are from the pipeline now, Green mentioned, down practically half from the 26,000 when the difficulty peaked at the end of 2008.

Still, he cautioned that there’s a substantial “shadow inventory” of houses that banks are selecting not to foreclose on. “I believe we’re clearing some out, but the banks are holding back.”

But we don’t really know how many far more. Next month will give us a better indication as to whether or not it was a normal trend or lenders stopping until they figure out what the issue with their process was.”

Also the pace of foreclosure doesn’t occur in a vacuum: if the winter tourist season is strong, it will reduce unemployment and keep far more people financially able to keep their homes, which is the case in South West Flroida, which include Cape Coral.

I think it will be only in April, May, June of next year that we’ll see how this season’s sales and the economic effect of your season influenced foreclosures.

A big builder in Cape Coral, stated that whatever the short-term pattern, foreclosures can’t sustain themselves at that pace. It’s going to sooner or later start slowing up. And I think it is happening right now.

Also, the issues with the foreclosure process have made some prospective buyers skittish about buying a previously mortgaged house.

However, while I find it easier to sell to prospective renters a house where owners are living in than a foreclosure, that  non distresses market has a hard time to compete with the foreclosures. Plus, new potential buyers have still a hard time to accept the fact that most of the time, there is a multiple offer situation on every foreclosed properties, ending by an accepted offer above the asking price. Often, those buyers go through a 3 step buying process. The first is the below asking price period where the buyer experience the frustration of being outbid. Then there is the full price offers period of time, which is usually shorter than the first one. Most of the time, the buyers learned their lessons and go the third period, the above asking price offers moment where they finally get a property under contract.

It’s now even more difficult with the decrease of the number of foreclosure and with a possible increase of pricing, even for foreclosures.

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Comments (0) Nov 02 2010

So you want to purchase a property in foreclosure here, in Lee County in general and in Cape Coral in particular? Good move. It’s time to buy. Properties values are increasing little by little, month after month since spring 2010 and you can expect a sweet equity very soon, especially if your purchase a Cape Coral foreclosure.

However, lots of potential buyers I talked to believe that if a foreclosure is price at, let’s say, $100,000, they can offer 10% or 20% less than the asking price, empowered by a solid down payment, and thinking that after all, it’s foreclosure time for everyone.

Well, the reality is not as simple.

So far, 100% of my buyers who actually were successful at purchasing a foreclosure, paid more than asking price.
And, all of them learnt how to get that property after several offers. Some below asking, where they were outbid. A few at asking price, where they were outbid. And finally their own purchase, paid at higher than asking price, like everybody else.

So, contact me if you want to purchase a foreclosure in Lee County, but make sure to be ready:

1) Get your Pre-approval document

A foreclosure’s owner is a bank or sometimes a person or a company who made a private financing for the buyer. You will most likely make an offer to a bank though. Banks are not in the Real Estate business but in the money business. Therefore, they don’t want to waste any time and want to make sure that the next buyer is fully capable of buying. They will not review your offer if there is not a pre-approval document, signed by your bank or mortgage broker even if your offer is twice their asking price. A pre-qualification will not help. Just get your pre-approval in hand.

2) Get your proof of fund for the down payment.

Most banks, if not all of them, required a proof of fund for your down payment or if you plan to pay in cash. If the bank can’t see a proof that you have the money, they will not sign your offer. Period.

3) Be prepare to offer a price HIGHER than the asking price.

For this one, you will have a hard time to believe me. Fair enough. But know right now that 95% of the time, your below asking price or even your asking price offer will not fly. I have seen attractive foreclosed homes sold with an easy 15% higher than asking price. So be prepared.

Now, don’t make me wrong. Ultimately, you will be the buyer, the one who will pay and with the last word. But then again, you’ll be entering in the club of the buyers who need a proof of what I’m saying here.

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Comments (0) Oct 24 2010

In today’s World wide web world of cellular phones, text communications, as well as fast texting, it’s no wonder yet an additional device is growing, the QR Code. Obviously, it would stand for “Quick Response.” Everything is about fast data these days, plus the QR Code for true estate is no exception.

Any person with a smartphone that has the QR code reader computer software installed could capture a picture of that image and they might be taken for the web page for that code.

Describing it a bit much better, you’ll need to have a web-enabled cellphone. That’s becoming much much more widespread nowadays. There might be even much more soon, as the cell providers are upgrading their networks and offering net access at lower rates. Once you’ve the software program on the mobile phone, you’ll be able to shoot a picture of those qr codes wherever you see them. They’re appearing in print ads, on brochures and numerous other places. When you scan a single, you’re taken for the web page the marketer wants you to determine. Of course, it is going to be improved for viewing on a cell phone.

There are already several retail companies which use qr codes to direct clothing buyers to a internet site optimized for taking clothing orders from cell phones. That is fun, but how can we use this instrument in actual estate? Follow via to the subsequent page to see how these codes are already being used in authentic estate.

We’re not looking at the future right here. These are actual businesses doing innovative advertising with qr codes.

Personally, I print a QR code of my listing and put it on that specific property rider. Possible buyers stopping by can use their smartphone, take an image of the QR code and they’re redirected for the webpage I did for that incredibly same house. They get all of the inside pictures and all of the details without to get in, which is safer for the sellers, and so they can contact me directly from that webpage if they have more questions about it. All of my Cape Coral Authentic Estate properties have their quite own QR code.

The beauty of these yard indicators is the “cool factor” plus the ease with which a prospect can get to a internet site with color photos and full detail facts about a itemizing. But, there’s an additional advantage at the same time. You don’t need to post the sign at the house. You may spot a single of these QR code image signs anywhere. Perhaps there may be a local property show, and there may be a booth for swimming pools. You place one of those near that booth. Your listing gets targeted visitors!

Put in your marketing cap and think about the possible here. The number of phones that are capable of making use of the codes will increase significantly inside the next year or so. Get your plan together now, and you could possibly be seeing targeted site visitors to your custom listing sites from these codes. Remember, you are able to have a code for your personal web page as well, placing it on your business cards and in additional promotions.

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Comments (0) Sep 29 2010