Hey all,

Well, homes sales in Florida are on the move, which is good news… but, ironically, the buyers that we are seeing are more foreign than domestic.

Which makes sense, I guess, beings that many foreign tourists that come to vacation in our beautiful state nearly always leave saying that they “would love to own a second home here”.  With prices down about 30%, they are now saying “Why not? Now is the time to buy”.

With Sanibel and Captiva being a little off the beaten path, we don’t see AS many foreigners as, say, Miami, Cape Coral or Naples might, but they do make their way over here every now and then and they definitely like what they see.

This article, “Foreign Buyers Lifting U.S. Home Sales”, references a few more statistics for you regarding this information and I’ve also pasted the chart in that article below for a quick glance and just where these buyers are buying within Florida and all of the United States.

Have a great week ahead,

Sandy and Rob

p.s. SanCap One Source Realty is located on 695 Tarpon Bay Road, Suite 14 – Come see us!

Image Credit to USA Today - Data from Trulia.com

This is a "Virtual" image, not a photo! Pretty amazing!! Image Courtesy of www.News-Press.com and www.TundraHomes.com

Hey all,

As the summer starts to heat up, not so surprisingly, so are home sales, as more and more tourists come down to our beautiful enclave and want to “stay forever”.

With inventory at an all-time high, meaning a great selection of homes to choose from, and home prices and interest rates at an all-time low, it’s pretty hard for an investor or someone looking for a second home to pass up these opportunities.

Enter… Rob and I, at SanCap One Source Realty over at 695 Tarpon Bay Road, who can not only show you all the perfect homes to match your specific homebuying checklist, but we can also give you the full “monty”, so to speak, as far as what it’s like to live on these gorgeous islands.  No one knows Sanibel and Captiva like Rob Coscia, that is for sure, having lived here for more than 30 years!

The other option that we are hearing some buzz about is tourists wanting to come down and build… hmmm… interesting.

Our best suggestion for those folks is to bee-line it over to our friends, David and Heidi, at Tundra Homes in Cape Coral, where they can put together a virtual model of the home that you are thinking about and let them show you exactly how to save time and construction costs by viewing it on the computer first in vivid 3D color.  Pretty cool, to say the least!

Whatever you or your friends and family decide when it comes to living on these islands, don’t hesitate for a second in contacting us about any little thing on your mind regarding a move, the type of home you are looking for or any of the community activities available to you here as a new resident… we LOVE to share our experience in living on these islands with new people!

We hope you have a great week!

Sandy and Rob

Hey everybody!

Welcome to THE Sanibel Captiva Real Estate Blog’s new look!!

Soooo, what do you think?  We’re really excited to start off a fresh new year with a fresh new look and we would love your feedback…

Our team has got a LOT of new things going on this year for our customers and we’ve hit the ground running here in 2011 so far… Whew!

Our web team has been hard at work maintaining the integrity of our past great content about Sanibel and Captiva, while providing a little bit of “familiarity” over there in the right hand column giving some consistency to our readers, so that you know you’re in the right place when you land here!

We don’t want to lose any of our avid readers due to landing on this page and thinking that it’s not still Rob and I here communicating with you, so you will see the same links and photos for your reference… We’ll add to them over the course of the year, but for now, we’ve kept them just the same.

So, this new format has a great (and OBVIOUS!) comment box after every post and we fully expect you guys to use it!

Give us your feedback and constructive comments (and criticisms, if need be) because it will only help us make this blog a better resource for you and everyone else reading it… so comment away!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Sandy and Rob

What a GREAT holiday gift!

The SanCap One Source Realty Team has invested in a brand spankin’ new VAN called “Island Home Adventures”, where we take prospective home buyers around to show them the island and the different areas in route to scoping out their new home on Sanibel or Captiva!

This is so exciting and we are having so much fun in seeing our customers’ faces and hearing their awesome feedback after gliding through Sanibel and Captiva in our smooth new wheels!

So, if you happen to see us driving by, be sure to honk and give us a wave, so that we know that you are an avid reader of our blog and that you know the latest and greatest of what’s happening on Sanibel and Captiva…  :)

Have a great, great week!

Sandy and Rob

p.s.  SanCap One Source Beach Homes on Sanibel and Captiva…

Ok, take it for what it’s worth, but it seems that Barron’s magazine has voted us into the Top 10 locations in the U.S. for building a second home.

It quotes our median home price as being $3.5 million, but that seems a bit high for me, especially working directly with homeowners every day, and the likes of a home in that price range are few and far between.

I’m going to check our MLS numbers this week and update this post with our actual numbers, but I would probably say off the top of my head that our median home price on the Islands is more around $1-$1.5 million of late.  We’ve seen a few for more than that price range, but the median range is probably somewhere in there.

So, I guess we’re in the right spot for the future, if people should want to come and build/invest here…  but, then again, we already knew that, right?  :)

So, have a super weekend and we’ll catch up with you next week!

Sandy and Rob

p.s.  We have deals in ALL price ranges if you stop by our website at SanCap One Source today!

Well, let’s just say that it’s really no surprise that Lee County is experiencing the same thing that the majority of the country is experiencing, and that is a fall in property values across the board.

Depending on where you are in the country these days, with very few exceptions, homeowners are seeing between a 10%-50% drop in the value of their home.

One job that I certainly would not enjoy at this moment is that of a real estate appraiser.  These folks are not looked upon positively by homeowners as they arrive to do their inspections and make their relatively subjective assessments.

However, do keep in mind that they are answering to someone above them, as well, that is giving them the new ranges of home values to base their numbers on relative to the area where the property is located.

Take for example, the article that just came out yesterday regarding Lee County Property Values, which specifically speaks of Lehigh Acres, just inland from Ft. Myers away from the beach.  The homes there are taking a beating, however, we are also here in Lee County and our location is still holding pretty strong!

Yes, we are working with island and beach property homes and investments, but there are beach communities everywhere up and down the east and west coasts that are seeing home values significantly decline, but thank goodness, our investments for clients are still hanging in there!

Bottom line: Call us to list your property IF you need to and definitely call us if you are searching for quality investment opportunities, or just a great second home with some seriously fun island living attached!

That’s it for this week…

Have a great weekend,

Sandy and Rob

p.s. Sanibel Island Real Estate awaits your visit…