January 1, 2012 Cape Coral, FL USA

Cape Coral real estate broker, Susan Milner of Cape Coral real estate brokerage, Florida Future Realty, Inc (That’s Me would like to take a moment to wish every one of you a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

As each new year approaches we tend to look back over our previous year and make new plans for the coming year. As a huge fan of planning, goal setting and living life to its fullest I want to extend my best wishes for your best year ever. If you haven’t already made a plan for the coming year (and beyond) I encourage you to sit down for a few minutes and write something up! It is amazing to watch life unfold exactly as written/planned. I firmly believe that great things do happen to great people and those people who are not afraid to set, and believe in, grand goals.

And if your goal happens to be real estate related I’d love to chat. We can assist you with buying a retirement home here, purchasing a second home, investment property or relocating to Cape Coral, Florida. Cape Coral real estate is predicted to continue to rise slowly over the next few years and this year may be the last year for many years to come to acquire a great Cape Coral property at a reasonable price. Our Cape Coral real estate team has great experience with short sales and foreclosures in Cape Coral along with experience with more traditional real estate sales in Cape Coral. Allow us to guide you in the process.

There are never any fees to buyers no matter how hard we work to find you that perfect Cape Coral property.

So come on down, or call or email us today to learn more about Cape Coral real estate and how buying or selling in Cape Coral can be a reality in this new year.

As always, should you have ANY real estate questions do not hesitate to call or email us for more information. We look forward to working with you.

To get started you can start your online search now for Cape Coral property or fill out our contact form to have an agent contact you right away about Cape Coral real estate!

We look forward to working with you!

We also work with sellers of real estate in Cape Coral. If you own a Cape Coral waterfront or off water property and would like to see it featured here; please let me know. We are looking for realistic sellers who want to get the most out of their property within a reasonable timeframe. We also handle short sales in Cape Coral.

Yours in Success,

Susan Milner, REALTOR Broker/Owner ~ e-PRO, GRI, SFR, CDPE, and (TRC) TransNational Referral Certification

Florida Future Realty, Inc

Search Cape Coral real estate

(239) 542-8521

I’m always looking to hire more motivated and professional licensed Florida real estate agents. If you are interested in learning more about Florida Future Realty, Inc. feel free to contact our office at 2816 Del Prado Blvd. S., Unit 1, Cape Coral, FL 33904, via phone at 239-542-8521, online at Cape Coral Real Estate Career or via email at FloridaFuture@gmail.com. Susan Milner, the broker in charge & owner of Florida Future Realty, Inc. can also be reached on her personal cell phone at (239) 218-2229. All contact will remain strictly confidential.

Unless otherwise noted all content Copyright 2012 Susan Milner.

Hey consumer….Yeah YOU ~ I want to earn your business but I’ve allowed too many non-real estate companies in the way. They got bigger than us agents because us agents and our organizations allowed them to! How did that happen? Well some would say via having access to all of the listings, others might say by getting us to be ‘experts’ or ‘bloggers’ on their sites, and many others may simply disagree with this statement altogether.

First of all let me preface this by saying that I am ALL for capitalism and businesses filling a void and earning a profit for said service or product.

What I do not like is when this diminishes the consumer’s experience or overall professionalism of an industry.

As a consumer you probably do not have a great deal of understanding as to how the real estate business works. And why should you care? As a consumer myself I am only concerned with how something directly affects me. Perhaps that makes me ignorant but that is how I handle my life. I prefer to live in my own bubble.

But now there are outside influences attempting to break into my bubble. I admit it ~ I allowed it for the most part. I added great content to many different online real estate information websites. Why? Well because at first it was actually helpful to my business. It was easier to spread my knowledge across the net through some of these companies. In turn, I was able to get in touch with many more real estate consumers and assist many more families with their real estate needs.

But now it is becoming challenging. Companies that used to just be a blogging site have added additional revenue streams to their sites (don’t blame them in the least for wishing to be profitable) however now they have been ‘bought out’ by largest companies who are changing things around and costing agents more to be involved and they want to take our content, get you the consumer to their site, then make us (as in US I mean any agent who subscribes to their paid plans) pay to be able to contact you. Heck, the large one that most of us pay dues to belong to is also doing the same. Don’t you want to get in contact with the source of the information you were seeking and found valuable? Or do you like finding a great article or listing, asking for more information and having your name and number be sold to the highest bidder? That agent buying your name and number may not have a clue about your needs or know anything about that article that someone else wrote.

In recent days very large companies have been acquiring other fairly dominate real estate service provider companies. My issue is that soon perhaps every real estate service provider will be owned by maybe just a handful of large corporations or even just 1 or 2 of them.

My concern is how that will affect our real estate industry as a whole. Will it diminish your experience? In most instances a monopoly is never good for the end user. Great for the owners but not so great for those who are forced now to do business with that company.
I am not a fortune teller but I definitely see where this could go.

As a consumer what are you looking for? Obviously you’ve spoken and you want access to the best information around. You want to look through listings without having to necessarily speak with a real estate agent. You probably want to get your real estate questions answered without having to commit to anyone specifically. But do you really want to give your information to these huge conglomerates who in turn sell your information to ‘just anyone’? I’m curious. What are your thoughts?

Yours in Success,

Susan Milner, REALTOR Broker/Owner ~ e-PRO, GRI, SFR, CDPE, and (TRC) TransNational Referral Certification

Florida Future Realty, Inc

Search Cape Coral real estate

(239) 542-8521

I’m always looking to hire more motivated and professional licensed Florida real estate agents. If you are interested in learning more about Florida Future Realty, Inc. feel free to contact our office at 2816 Del Prado Blvd. S., Unit 1, Cape Coral, FL 33904, via phone at 239-542-8521, online at Cape Coral Real Estate Career or via email at FloridaFuture@gmail.com. Susan Milner, the broker in charge & owner of Florida Future Realty, Inc. can also be reached on her personal cell phone at (239) 218-2229. All contact will remain strictly confidential.

Unless otherwise noted all content Copyright 2004-2011 Susan Milner.

Cape Coral houses ~ what are they REALLY selling for?

Have you been considering a move or purchase in Cape Coral, Florida?

Why wouldn’t you? Here are just a few reasons why Cape Coral is so great:

The prices are great * The area is truly like being on vacation every day!  * Our weather is awesome!  * We rarely have a day where we do not get to see our friend the Sun  * We have over 400 miles of canals ~ many of which lead you directly into the Gulf of Mexico. * We are about 30 minutes from awesome beaches like Sanibel, Captiva & Fort Myers Beach * We are within a 2-3 hour drive of Tampa and Miami for those day or weekend getaways! & SO many more reasons.

So then you want to know how much you will pay for one of these houses? Since January of this year there have been 4,052 single family homes sold in Cape Coral. This doesn’t count condos, investments or vacant land. Out of those 1,268 (or 32%) were foreclosures (or bank owned, corporate owned, REOs) and 878 (or 22%) were short sales (where the owner sells the house for less than what is owed and negotiates the balance with the bank). This means that about 46% of the sales were traditional sales. This could mean that an investor purchased a short sale or foreclosure and then resold it but it could also mean a regular home seller as well.

What percentage of their list price did these Cape Coral homes actually sell for?

This depends upon if you were looking at the short sales, foreclosures or traditional sales.

As you can see from the chart above when first on the market Cape Coral foreclosures actually go for MORE than asking price. This is because foreclosures are typically priced very aggressively by the banks. Once a Cape Coral property has been on the market for some time though the % goes down quite a bit; actually foreclosures then have the lowest list price to sales price %.

What does this mean to you? It shows you that if you see a brand new Cape Coral foreclosure listing on the market you better be prepared to come in with an above price offer to have the chance at buying that house. If it has been on the market for quite some time you may be able to buy it at 80-90% of its list price.  Conversely if you see a brand new Cape Coral short sale listing hit the market you may be able to offer 90-95% of the list price. Remember that this varies considerably on short sales because the bank has NOT set this price. The price has been set by a real estate agent and/or the seller and they typically do not yet know what price the bank is going to be willing to accept.

I hope this chart gives you an idea of what our market is currently looking like for buyers in Cape Coral. We are still in what is known as a buyer’s market but you must be educated in the market or work with an educated Cape Coral real estate professional in order to secure the property you are seeking.

Prices for single family homes in Cape Coral start below $100,000 for a standard 3/2 off water. They go up depending upon if you want a pool – closer to $200,000 and if you want to be on the water you can find awesome estate style homes above $1,000,000. (These are current prices as of 2011).

Whether you are seeking a cash flow investment or the home of your dreams in Cape Coral we are here to assist you.

Yours in Success,

Susan Milner, REALTOR Broker/Owner ~ e-PRO, GRI, SFR, CDPE, and (TRC) TransNational Referral Certification

Florida Future Realty, Inc

Search Cape Coral real estate

(239) 542-8521

I’m always looking to hire more motivated and professional licensed Florida real estate agents. If you are interested in learning more about Florida Future Realty, Inc. feel free to contact our office at 2816 Del Prado Blvd. S., Unit 2, Cape Coral, FL 33904, via phone at 239-542-8521, online at Cape Coral Real Estate Career or via email at FloridaFuture@gmail.com. Susan Milner, the broker in charge & owner of Florida Future Realty, Inc. can also be reached on her personal cell phone at (239) 218-2229. All contact will remain strictly confidential.

Unless otherwise noted all content Copyright 2010-2011 Susan Milner.

Cape Coral Real Estate and the Fort Myers real estate market are making headlines all over!

Did you read about the Cape Coral market and Fort Myers real estate market on Inman News?

http://www.inman.com/news/2011/05/23/10-markets-with-fastest-rising-real-estate-prices
“Two Florida markets saw the highest jumps: median list price in Fort Myers-Cape Coral rose 25.7 percent to $225,000, and the median in Miami rose 8.6 percent to $239,000.
Shreveport-Bossier City, La., followed with an 8.1 percent increase, to $173,000. Fort Myers-Cape Coral and Miami also saw the biggest year-over-year drops in inventory: -25.3 percent and -29.9 percent, respectively.”

What about CNNMoney’s take on the rise in prices in Cape Coral ?

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/real_estate/1104/gallery.10_turnaround_towns/6.html

Even Realtor.org had a blurb about the Cape Coral real estate market:
http://www.realtor.org/rmodaily.nsf/pages/News2011050503?OpenDocument

The Gulf Coast Business Review reminded us that our Fort Myers local board of REALTORS announced that Foreclosures are fading in comparison to traditional sales here in the Fort Myers and Cape Coral areas:

http://www.review.net/section/detail/5-18-2011-foreclosures-fade-in-fort-myers/

They also let us know that we may be turning point central:
http://www.review.net/section/detail/5-20-2011-fort-myers-recovery-central/

Want to read other great news coming out of Cape Coral? We are ranked the second safest city in all of Florida:

http://www.news-press.com/article/20110520/CRIME/110519055/Cape-Coral-second-safest-city-Florida

Summer is historically our ‘slowest’ time of the year for Cape Coral real estate sales so if you are looking to make a home purchase in SW Florida come on down this summer and see what we have to offer. I have a strong suspicion that come fall (our typical busy season) we will see more price and inventory adjustments here in the Cape Coral real estate market.

There are so many different unique opportunities right now for buyers of Cape Coral real estate.

Some experts warn that this ‘new’ news may leave Cape Coral home sellers confused about pricing. I’m sure it will confuse some of the sellers in Cape Coral. That is why it is the best idea for Cape Coral sellers to consult with a reliable and honest real estate professional who specializes in Cape Coral real estate. Considering selling your home or property in Cape Coral? Contact us at Florida Future Realty, Inc. to find out if now is the best time for you to sell your Cape Coral real estate. We market our listings internationally & have a solid reputation for selling houses in and around Cape Coral, Florida.

Canadians have been making a big splash in our market as have the Europeans, Chinese & Australians! See what Canada has to say about the SW Florida real estate market:

http://www.canada.com/Gulf+Coast+real+estate+market+down+buyers+shop+homes+resales/4848120/story.html

I recently created a video update showing the 2011 first quarter’s statistics for the Cape Coral real estate market that I’m sure you’ll find interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZueAR3m9Aiw (Yes, I’ll admit sort of boring ~ #s and all but I know that many of you enjoy crunching numbers so enjoy!)

As always, should you have ANY real estate questions do not hesitate to call or email us for more information. We look forward to working with you.

To get started you can start your online search now for Cape Coral property or fill out our contact form to have an agent contact you right away about Cape Coral real estate!

We look forward to working with you!

If you own a Cape Coral waterfront or off water property and would like to see it featured here; please let me know. We are looking for realistic sellers who want to get the most out of their property within a reasonable timeframe. We also handle short sales in Cape Coral.

Yours in Success,

Susan Milner, REALTOR Broker/Owner ~ e-PRO, GRI, SFR, CDPE, and (TRC) TransNational Referral Certification

Florida Future Realty, Inc

Search Cape Coral real estate

(239) 542-8521

I’m always looking to hire more motivated and professional licensed Florida real estate agents. If you are interested in learning more about Florida Future Realty, Inc. feel free to contact our office at 2816 Del Prado Blvd. S., Unit 2, Cape Coral, FL 33904, via phone at 239-542-8521, online at Cape Coral Real Estate Career or via email at FloridaFuture@gmail.com. Susan Milner, the broker in charge & owner of Florida Future Realty, Inc. can also be reached on her personal cell phone at (239) 218-2229. All contact will remain strictly confidential.

Unless otherwise noted all content Copyright 2010-2011 Susan Milner.

Cape Coral vacant land is priced right. If you have been dreaming of owning your own parcel of land in Florida now is the time to make it happen. With lots ranging as low as $4,000 in Cape Coral and as low as $2,000 in nearby Lehigh Acres why not make that investment into Florida land today?

Our office currently has quite a few vacant lots listed from residential to commercial including waterfront and off water lots. See them by clicking:

Cape Coral area lots for sale

You can also view these vacant lots and other vacant land in Cape Coral and nearby areas by viewing the currently available properties below: