FLORIDA REAL ESTATE CONSULTANTS, INC.
NAPLES, FLORIDA

She also owns and operates a domain name acquisition business which focuses on buying and selling domain names with an emphasis on travel, sports and real estate. or from walking in my door -- who are seriously interested in buying not just one property, but possibly more than one! And this is particularly interesting because we are coming out of our season into what is theoretically our slow time, but go figure. My calendar doesn't know we're coming into our slow time. Friends are getting together to buy multiple properties; families are thinking about relocating together,or starting their family tradition of a second home; retirees who thought they couldn't retire because of the economy are now rethinking that option based on low prices and low interest rates; and, of course, the investors, and yes, I hate to say it, but the flippers have been very busy, particularly in the last six to eight months. And the latter think their best chances for more heavily lining the ol' bank account is to buy before the coming season when optimism is expected to be a lot more entrenched into our thinking (i.e.: the thinking of the average population.) And honestly as far as Naples Florida homes and condos for sale are concerned, people are definitely making money already by reselling places, or at the very least are seeing some equity built up. Any day of the week this unit could resell right now for $80,000 which would still be dirt cheap for our part of the country. And people who see units at the $80,000 price currently are going to be saying to me six months from now: If you ever see one at $80,000... Yuk. I tell them they should have wanted to buy it two years back when nearly everyone was afraid to buy --- and not now when it is obviously worth double the amount. (And to make this story even more bizarre, the lady who originally put an offer on it sight unseen, came down to see it before closing, loved it, and then called me back a few hours later to say she was thinking about backing out because she thought she was paying too much! Duh!) I told her it was okay to back out because, for goodness sakes, the commission I was going to make after all the phone calls and weeks of work was not going to make or break me, but she was buying a great condo within a very few miles of Naples' beaches for the price of a car. And she said: "Oh yeah. I did pay more for my car!" The sound you now hear is me ripping my hair out! Another amazing deal, a Forest Glen "bundled golf" condo built in 2005 (many of which sold in the 300s and up) was on the market as a foreclosure (golf included) for $100,900. I took so many people to that unit, even though it was not my listing telling them they should just trust me and buy it! (Don't you hate that "trust me" terminology. If only I could think of something that sounds more sincere!) But back then, trusting real estate agents was not so cool -- and even if someone was my friend and did trust my judgement on a rudimentary level, they would have undoubtedly assumed I was being overly optimistic, or possibly delirious. As it turned out, that property sold for the exact penny and now the person could sell it tomorrow for $20,000 plus profits. The bad news for people who rely on that is they are reading old news and making decisions based on old news. The most savvy investors and buyers are those making their real estate investments based on current news that they acquire by working with honorable, intuitive, full-time agents who are most focused on long-term trust of clients than making a quick commission. These are the folks who know what is going on. Media people aren't the ones taking the clients out. They don't know what is happening in the present, except for what they hear. And in that regard, the most vocal public opinionators (love making up words) in newspaper blogs are the negative, bitter folks; the ones who sometimes shoot themselves in the foot and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Florida Real Estate Agents and consumers have been through the grinder over the past four to five years, and no matter what we as "Sunshine State" professionals know or think we know, the bottom line is that recovery in any kind of a business -- whether it be the stock market or the price of tulip bulbs -- relies on public perception. When we are all running scared, SCARED rules. When we believe prosperity is just around the corner, it is. Sometimes there are back trends, but backward trends always lead to forward trends.