While I’m in Fort Myers, on a more-or-less impulse vacation, I thought I’d find out about real estate—this town looks to have some values (Obama spoke here this week about the plummeting real estate, and the New Yorker I read on the plane down had a long article on SW Florida real estate prices collapsing in general), but I have some basic dumb questions (I own a coop in NYC, but never went through the home purchasing process, so I know very little about real estate sales in general).
I thought I might buy a private home, as opposed to a condo, because I want a garden but literally none of the homes here seem to have anything edible or particularly pretty growing on the property. Why is that, do you suppose?
I considered gardening on terrace of a condo, but they too seem to have no plants—no anything!—on the terrace. Do condo rules generally state “No vegetation on terraces” or something? I have a jungle growing from April through October on my NYC terrace, and many people in my building keep a lot of stuff—chairs, tables, hammocks—on theirs but here—nothing! If I can’t grow stuff, I’m staying where I am.
Related to that: I paint (oil on canvas) and was looking forward to being able to keep my easel and painting equipment on the terrace. Same problem: is that going to get complaints to the condo board?
Finally, a real real estate question: What’s a short sale? I see that term on several ads, usually for cheaper places. I’m not familiar with the term.
There is an article on the Florida real estate crash in the current New Yorker which you might want to check out. It doesn’t say anything about plants, though.
Take what I say with a grain of salt (since it’s been years since I lived in FL), but when I lived in south Fort Myers as a kid, the only things that would grow on our property were a lemon, avocado, and mango tree. The quality of the soil is of a sandier nature than the type of soil I’ve seen in northern gardens, so that may be why you don’t see many gardens.
I rented a condo in St. Petersburg and had tons of plants on the patio. I would imagine it varies among associations.
As for keeping your painting gear outside - even though it’s gorgeous here right now, it’s perty darn hot about 11 months out of the year so that idea may lose it’s appeal.
Well, you are in south Florida in February. Try it out in July-August and see how you feel. And it’s not a dry heat, wet, very wet and humid. Not a lot of gardens/vegetation since they need lots of water or they’ll get scorched during the summer.
I heard a lot of the home deals around Naples/BonitaSprings/Ft.Myers are on foreclosed homes that exsist in gated community type places. The banks now own them but are still forced to pay association fees. They want to get rid of these yesterday.
And ABSOLUTELY find out if the house or condo is part of a Community Development District. This is a tax unit for the subdivision that puts the cost of the initial utility installation and subsequent maintenance on YOU. You not only pay the assessment for the principal, but the interest as well. I can give you more details over the weekend.
I’d like to hear more about this. Here, the builder’s responsible for it, so it naturally forms part of the price of the house. No separate fees or anything silly like that. The “interest” on the cost is your normal, tax-deductible mortgage interest.
I’d avoid condos there for now. If the weight of home failures takes your condo association down, you’re screwed - either the place totally collapses or your condo association payments go through the roof to carry the weight of the empty condos.
Keeping stuff outside in Florida (your paintings) can be tricky because of the overall dampness (humidity + rain). Stuff tends to grow on that, like mildew.
As for the gardening, if you’re close to the water the soil won’t handle the plants you are used to. My parents deal with this by planting in larger pots that are rectangular, sort of like what you might put on your balcony. Just need to be aware that growing seasons are different here, insects are different and the direct sun can be brutal on some plants.
A Community Development District (CDD) is an entity that the developer here in Lee County creates to finance their infrastructure costs for utilities. The CDD has to be approved by the county, but if it meets the criteria, it’s in.
The CDD is a good example of both a seemingly good idea gone evil and just how big business can screw the little guy. There were times when a develper got permitted to build his subdivision but later failed financially. The result was a bunch of lots, sometimes with houses, that had no water or sewer lines. Bad news for the owners. So to prevent this in the future, developers created the idea of the CDD that would ensure the funding of the utilities infrastructure even if the initial developer went belly-up. So the developer creates the CDD and then posts a bond to install utilities. Who pays the bond off, you ask? Why, the eventual owners of the houses, of course. Each house is assesed and the owners pay off not just the principal, but any interest of course. This has resulted in “hidden” assessments that can total thousands of dollars annually. For as long as you have the house.
The mortgage crash has made it even worse since there are some neighborhoods where house have never been bought and there’s no one paying assessments. This means either the occupied homes have to pick up the slack or let the bond go unpaid, with all the financial repercussions.
I don’t know if it’s tax-deductible.
I liked it better under Balthisars way of doing things.
Yeah, we pay CDD costs here, too. I did not understand initially what it was, in fact I had originally thought it had something to do with wetlands conservation. I was apparently way off, but figured that out sometime ago.
I’m also aware that some older CDDs in our area have become “retired”. I think the pay down is over 20 years, though, so we are only about half way through ours. Which essentially means we’re on the back end of a 20 year “mortgage” (okay, bond) to pay out this stuff. And it’s a big part of our monthly housing payment.
I’ll have my wife research whether there is a tax angle. She’s good at that stuff. I’d guess at this point we’re about 50/50 on principal versus interest (SWAG).
Do either of you know who is next-in-line after homeowners for bond payments? Is there anybody? Or does the bondholder take ownership of the property at that point?
In other words, could homeowners negotiate with bondholders for a settlement? Sort-of like super-indebted companies who have no hope of ever paying back their bondholders.
They basically say… we owe you $100. We only have $30. So
(1) we can either declare BK, and then you get $0, plus the joy of owning our distressed assets or
(2) we can restructure to pay you $25 now, keep $5 for ourselves to live on, and also give you part of the assets now. You’ll at least get something if we do that.
Also, be sure to get an estimate of insurance costs. My parents own a townhome in Florida. After the hurricane hits that Florida has taking in the last few years, their insurance rates skyrocketted.
Don’t know. It sounds reasonable, but with the home buying chaos we’re swimming through it could be quite a while before things get worked out.
Also, it may be that some CDDs are retired. But not always. In some cases, future maintenance is handled by the county and there’s no further expenses than the original installation and interest. But some CDDs are designed to cover future maintenance and can go much longer.
