Bonita Springs and Fort Myers FL Area

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

JLB - how do you put your quotes in shaded boxes at the top?

I believe you did it the right way, by clicking Quote instead of Reply, but, then in deleting from my message you accidentally deleted a piece of the bracket that makes it a quote.

Probably.

[pkyorkbeach Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close pkyorkbeach]

So many here at work wish they were in Florida right now. I have been having a great deal of fun/happiness reading the posts and investigating the areas of Florida. Now we are looking at the Tampa area and surronding towns. In a conversation DH said yes it would be a nice thing to have a Florida home. So that is my go ahead......YES!!!!!

As I lay in bed at night listening to the snow plows go by I invision a nice warm Florida vacation home.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

[QUOTE=desertgal;428244]

Here is a nice Bonita Springs (Shores) location and house. An auction worth watching:

BONITA SPRINGS Auction - 187 2ND ST BONITA SPRINGS, FL 34134 - (Event# H-240) - Auction.com

A condo in the same area:

BONITA SPRINGS Auction - 3910 WINDWARD PASSAGE CIR BONITA SPRINGS, FL 34134 - (Event# H-240) - Auction.com


The house is a little small for us, but the condo looks nice. On Homepath, it's valued at $119,900 with $456 HOA and $2576 taxes. Won't the taxes be adjusted to the new house value? Do I need to contact the agent to ask what the HOA fee includes?

Can you view completed auctions on auction.com or homepath or elsewhere?

Houses can be added onto. But I appreciate that you might want a place easier to leave.

Yes, you need to contact the listing agent. Do it by phone as my experience is that homepath agent are hard to get a response from. It took probably 6 calls/emails to get in to see the house we bid on, and then it was another agent that sorta had to come do it.

You might try to see if you can find an office for that condo development.

As in most things, the more you can do for yourself the better, so try to fin d tax and sales information on the Lee County sites:

Start at the Lee County Property Appraiser, and click I Agree:

On the left under Database Search, if it is not already on that page, click on Property Data Search. Mine was already on that page.

Click on Property data search and enter the address in the appropriate place. On that page you could select a list of Lee County Fannie Mae foreclosure by entering Federal National Mortgage Corporation under company name.

In this case, the address did not work, so I did the alternative and now have a list of 92 pages (920) Fannie Mae properties, with addresses.

Estero starts on Page 59. Bonita Springs starts on page 61. Here it is on Page 66. and I click on Parcel Details:

Property Data for Parcel 04-48-25-B4-0140S.1010
FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE ASSN
1000 TECHNOLOGY DR MS 314
O FALLON MO 63368
3910 WINDWARD PASSAGE CIR 101
BONITA SPRINGS FL 34134
BERMUDA CAYS CONDO
DESC OR 2075 PG 2312
PH III BLDG S UNIT 101

I highlighted how it is listed by address . . . you need the 101.

There is a picture and a footprint. Nice place. Two story condo, left end unit.

The 2010 appraisal is $135,600.

Click on Sales/Transactions at the bottom:

The only qualified sale is:

106,900.00 10/01/1995 2647/1835

The last numbers are clickable book and page number so you can look at the deed.

Sales in 1989 and 2010 (the bank taking it back) were disqualified.

At the very bottom it says TRIM, and a list of years, 2000 through 2010, where you can check historical appraisal values an property taxes. I won't do them all, but here's a few:

Oops, the site is down, so nothing right now, but it is all right there. Normally.

It's timed out, so I will try again.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Now we are looking at the Tampa area and surronding towns.

I think you will be happier further south, at least Sarasota. Trying not to be too alarmist, but beware of the cities. They are cities like other cities, with city problems.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

The Lee County Property Appraiser site is still down. Too busy probably.

Back up, this time searching by strap number: 04-48-25-B4-0140S.1010

2000 88,000 88,000 25,000 0 63,000 Taxes: 1193.75
2006 234,000 101,940 25,000 0 76,940 Taxes 1297.06
2007 262,000 262,000 0 0 262,000 Taxes 3897.24
2010 135,600 Taxes $2,291.25

This is a good example of the property tax situation in Florida. The owner had a Homestead Exemption, so that when appraised value increased, the taxable value was limited to 3% per year increase. In 2006, the market value was 234,000, but the owner was only taxed on 101,940. $1297.06.

Then, in 2007, the owner did not have a Homestead Exemption, so paid on full market value, 262,000. $3897.24.

A new owner now will likely pay based on the new purchase price, but without an exemption, which you cannot get on a winter home, unless one spouse declares it as their permanent residence, which is very iffy, even that will be fairly high, like the 2010 $2291.25 on 135,600 value.

Have fun!

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

If you decide to bid on anything, do not bid until the end of the auction. Watch it and see if you have a chance. If you don't, you don't.

If you do, bid the minimum increase with 20 seconds left to go. Then, the auction will be extended for two minutes. If your competition does not bump it up, you won. If they do bump it up, and just the minimum, make your statement. Bump it up more than minimum, telling them you are serious.

When we did that, we got it.

At 20 seconds left, ours was at $39,500. The last-minute bumping ran it to $45,000. Ours was listed on homepath at $68,900.

In order to bid you have to register and auction.com will put $1000 hold on your credit card.

As to a previous question, at the end of all auctions, they totally disappear and you will not be able to see winning bids.

If you win, you will execute an electronic contract and have 24 hours from the time you submit it to wire earnest money to the closing agent. Our earnest money was $2500. Auction.com's Buyers Premium was $2500. Hmmmmmm?

I believe earnest money is $2500 or 5% of the winning bid, whichever is higher.
- - - - - -
OTOH, if you have time, you can submit an offer via the listing agent. You can even do that while the auction is running, and if your offer via the agent is higher than the winning bid, you will get it. And save the Buyers Premium.

The problem with that is guessing how much to offer.

I spose you could do both, present an offer through an agent, and if the auction goes higher than your offer, bid. It would take earnest money to make an offer.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

I still prefer the house.

Closer to the beach/water. More land and freedom of choice. Fence it in if you can, say with a block wall to make it a villa, and have a property manager. It would be a high-dollar vacation rental, if that was allowed there. Plenty of property managers in the area.

There is a canal right across the the road, and, it appears, some vacant lots. More options there.

In any event, there are boat ramps not far away.

Whatever you decide, say you are buying it as second home, cuz that keeps you out of the investor category. Don't even mention vacation rental or investor or flipping or anything like that.

Gotta go shovel the other half of the driveway.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Quirky county line, the house on 2nd is in Colllier County.

Here's it's sales history:

10 / 2005
3902 - 3167
$ 275,000.00

11 / 1993
1887 - 1359
$ 82,000.00

04 / 1992
1707 - 1167
$ 70,000.00

Here's it's 2010 Taxable value: $ 99,633.00

2010 taxes: 1177.95
2007 value was 226,347 and taxes: 2520.64

Can't see before that . . . 2007 probaby would have been the highest, or close enough.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

another front page in the Newspress saying foreclosures dive, at least for now. one reason is lawyers and lenders mishandled paperwork, they think it is a delay reather than a cessation.
they say one foreclosure for 428 houses in Fort Myers/Cape Coral, compared to one in 82 for Las Vegas.

that house up for bid is 40 years old which means high insurance, it has a carport instead of a garage, it has only one bath and two bedrooms. If you rented for season you would not get that high a rental as it has no amenities and a property manager would take a very high percentage. you could bike to the beach however. I don't know if you could rent for season or not.

We could have saved a lot of money buying a home in a regular neighborhood. we decided we wanted a community with activities. When you move to a neighborhood that is filled with working families, and you are on vacation, it is a big difference. We rented in Ocala one winter and don't think we had a conversation with anyone else all that time. You won't have work friends, etc like you do at home.

We own a half acre lot in Spring Hill. We did not build on it because we were concerned about leaving our home for months and also no swimming pool available, no amenities whatsoever.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

There's 92 pages, over 900 properties, just for Federal National Mortgage Corporation (fanne mae) in Lee County. That's only one entity of many that are holding foreclosures.

The house on 2nd St coming up for auction, for instance, is not theirs. It is GMAC and something else. I'm guessing that's why it snuck past me, because homepath is just fannie mae foreclosures.

Driveway's done, now I gotta go shovel snow outta the boat.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

a friend just called who is staying at her neice's condo in Naples in a gated golf community. they just looked at a two bedroom condo,newly furnished, turnkey, for $120 thousand. they saw another for 130 thousand. The subdivision is called Countryside. if you own the golf is a great price, if you are a guest, not so good. those prices sound really good.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

I have been assured by the people doing fannie mae closings that the mishandlings are a thing of the past.

Also, not mentioned, some condos here have been offered fully furnished. Some properties have appliances. Some don't have either.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

More thoughts.

The house on 2nd Street starts today. It shows a previous value of $360,000 and bidding starts at $15,000. The condo on Windward Passage is 2/27. The previous value is $165,330, but the starting bid is $29,000.

The condo has homepath financing, and the house does not. That could be a big deal. The house does have national auction.com financing, but I don't know anything about that other than they had one contact me, Bank of America, and I got rid of them in favor of a homepath lender as soon as I could.

The house is a New Late Addition and the auction is an online auction, which is good.

The condo is a live auction being held in Ft. Myers, which is not good, in my thinking, unless you plan on being there. In which case it is still not good.

If you are really interested in the condo, you might want to make an offer through the listing agent before the auction. It could be that since it is in pre-auction, all an offer would be is something to be presented at the live auction.

I also just checked, and all of the Charlotte County auctions are going to be at the live auction in Ft. Myers on 2/27.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

just saw this on TV foreclosures jan 2010 3412, foreclosures jan 2011, 321

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

The 2nd Street house is up to $55000 the first day. That's not a good sign. Folks know where it is.