Harvey and Susan Desnick sold their house in Cape Coral for $540,000 recently — more than $100,000 less than their original asking price, but they still feel lucky. They built the house themselves for about $200,000 five years ago. “That’s a good return in a five-year period,” said Susan Desnick, from their new home in Copper Harbor in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

Prices are still falling and the pace of sales is well off from the fevered pitch of last summer, said the Desnicks’ agent, Michael Schneider-Christians of Century 21 Sunbelt Realty.

Numbers released Thursday by the Florida Association of Realtors show the median price of an existing home in Lee County in April increased 7 percent to $280,500 from a year ago but was still below the March figure of $281,300.

The number of sales dropped 28 percent from last year to 916. That number was also lower than March’s 955. For condominiums, the median price increased 20 percent to $322,500, while the number of sales fell 59 percent to 259.

Around the country, the picture was no better as sales of existing homes fell in April and the median price increased 4.2 percent to $223,000 from April 2005 — the smallest year-over-year price gain since September 2001, the National Association of Realtors reported.

Local numbers are telling, Schneider-Christians said: more than 500 price cuts per day and only 50 price increases, plus new listings of 400 to 500 homes and only about 150 pending sales per day for the Multiple Listing Service of the Realtors Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach, the largest association in Lee County.

The trend is continuing, he said. “It hasn’t changed or stopped.” Buyers are still there, Schneider-Christians said, but many are looking for bargains. “They try two or three or four offers until they get what they want or find a seller who is really soft and weak and wants to get out.”

Susan Desnick said she and her husband could see the market was flooded with houses. About 22 houses were for sale in their neighborhood before they sold. Falling prices have created opportunities for some who couldn’t have bought at higher prices, said Lucy Quinones, general manager of Century 21 Birchwood International. Cape Coral, Fort Myers and even the somewhat higher priced Bonita Springs are becoming more attractive to her clients, Quinones said. “Financing is able to be obtained and facilitated much better than before and the fact of the matter is that buyers are buying.”

Michelle Garcia-Allen, president and broker of Bonita-based EdgeWater Real Estate Group, said that while “traffic has slowed down a bit” in the highly seasonal market, there’s no shortage of buyers. Mainly, she said, “We’re seeing more of an aging America type of traffic,” people looking for a place to retire or have a second home. “They’re looking for convenience to stores and restaurants,” she said. “They don’t want to get in their car and drive very far.”

In Collier County, the median sales price increased 7 percent in the past year to $503,500 while the number of sales dropped 45 percent to 274. The Collier median price was down from $505,800 in March, but still wasn’t too much off the all-time high of $511,400 set in January. Lee County, by contrast, reached its peak at $322,300 in December and has fallen more than $40,000 since then. The median price of a condo increased 13 percent to $418,800 while the number of sales fell 56 percent to 255.

Bruce Babcock of John R. Wood Realtors said Collier has held its value better because among the wealthy, “it still is, I think, considered prime location like Aspen or Jackson Hole or Palm Beach, some of the other high-end resort areas.” Still, he said, the area has its problems. The traffic over the last few years has gotten to be more than just a nuisance because of the rising population and the lack of roads. They can’t keep up.”

Elsewhere in Southwest Florida, Charlotte County prices increased 5 percent to $223,400 while the number of sales dropped 33 percent to 299. Charlotte condo prices increased 143 percent to $550,000, although the number of sales fell 98 percent, from 81 to just 2.

Up until now, the housing industry had enjoyed a boom powered by the lowest mortgage rates in more than four decades. However, rates have been rising this year, with 30-year mortgages now at 6.6 percent, the highest level in nearly four years.

David Lereah, chief economist for the national association, said he expected the 30-year mortgage would keep rising and would be near 7 percent by the end of the year. He said that was consistent with his view that the country was heading for a soft landing in housing but not a crash.

Other economists worry that with a large overhang of unsold homes and rising mortgage rates, the industry could be facing a more severe outcome. For April, the total number of unsold homes hit a new record of 3.38 million units, which represented a six-month supply at the April sales pace. The time period needed to exhaust the current supply was the highest since January 1998.

By region, sales fell 3.7 percent in the Midwest, 1.9 percent in the South, 1.4 percent in the West and 0.8 percent in the Northeast. Lereah said the new hot markets were in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, Utah and New Mexico.
“This is a tale of two markets. Half of the country is heating up and half the country is cooling off,” Lereah said.

Decidedly Collier home prices dip in Feb.
More activity noted in Lee; buyers go after houses with price cuts
 

BY DICK HOGAN
Originally posted on March 24, 2006

Collier County was the only area in Florida to show a decline in February home prices from a year ago, according to statistics released Thursday.

The median price of a house sold with the help of a Realtor was $492,300, down 1 percent compared to $498,400 in February 2005.

That's the only negative year-to-year figure in the state, according to the Florida Association of Realtors, which compiles the monthly figures. The next weakest performance was by West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, which showed an 11 percent increase.

In Lee County, the numbers were incomplete because data from the Cape Coral Association of Realtors was not available.

Nationally, mild winter weather sparked the biggest increase in U.S. home sales in two years last month, signaling the predicted slowing in housing will be gradual.

Bruce Babcock of John R. Wood Realtors in Naples said Collier's market is definitely in a downturn. "There's still a lot more listings than there were six months ago and they're not moving. The buyers are being cautious, they're kind of waiting on the sidelines. I'm still showing properties, I'm encouraging offers, but they're still of the belief prices will come down and if they wait, they'll be able to get the properties at a lower price.''

Meanwhile, he said, "There are plenty of price decreases, some of them two or three times" over the past two or three months.

Higher-priced homes have done relatively well, he said. "Port Royal is very active and I've got a new listing on the beach on Gordon Drive for $16 million. There's lots of showings, lots of interest. It's the ones that are lower priced, say between a million and two million, that are pretty slow."

In Lee County, there's been "a little more activity" recently as buyers go after houses that have had deep price cuts, said Michael Schneider-Christians of Century Sunbelt Realty, based in Cape Coral.

"The sellers are coming down and some people are realizing those are good prices."

One of his clients, Carolyn Reynolds, sold her Cape house recently for $299,000, down from her original asking price of $365,000.

"I was extremely relieved because I'd already bought another house outside the area and I was sweating it out," said Reynolds, a retired Allstate Insurance employee.

"We put it on the market in late December and not one person came to look at it for three months," she said, but after cutting the price to $299,000, "from last Friday I showed it to three different prospective buyers and the third one bought it."

Now she's moving to Aiken, S.C., "a smaller town, more like Fort Myers used to be when I first moved here 25 years ago."

Emanuele DiMare of Sellstate Landmark Properties said prices of lots in Lehigh Acres have fallen from $55,000 last summer to about $35,000 now.

He's encouraging clients who are investors to buy a lot and build a house on it. Although prices are soft now, he said, "In 12 to 14 months from now when the home is finished, the market is going to be strong again."

Diane Cox of RE/MAX Realty Group said there's still a lot of action in the market. "People are moving out because of hurricanes and whatever and moving to the mountains, and baby boomers are looking for properties they can retire to."

Dave Drabik of Sellstate Superstars Realty said he's kept track for the past four months of home sales reported by the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach and prices have held steady at about $335,000 on average.

With the incomplete figures, Lee County in February had a median price of $279,900, down 2.5 percent from $287,200 in January but up 22 percent from February 2005.

In Collier, the price fell from $511,400 in January to $492,300 in February, a drop of 3.7 percent. The number of homes sold in Collier dropped from 264 in January to 228 in February, a drop of 13.6 percent.

Charlotte County's median price was $226,300, down less than 1 percent from January but up 20 percent from February 2005.

Nationally, sales of previously owned homes rose 5.2 percent during the month to an annual rate of 6.91 million, compared with a revised 6.57 million a month earlier, the National Association of Realtors said in Washington.

"It shows there is still solid underlying demand for housing and that activity this year, while slowing, is not going to collapse," said Michael Moran, chief economist at Daiwa Securities America Inc. in New York.

The median price of an existing home rose 10.6 percent in February from a year ago to $209,000, after an 11.1 percent year-over-year rise in January, the Realtors group said.

— Bloomberg News also contributed to this report.

Decidedly Downturn won't last, experts say
 

BY DICK HOGAN
Originally posted on February 22, 2006

"If you want to sell before the market changes, you must have your home sold before September — last September."

That was the black-humor message to homeowners and real estate investors from residential real estate broker Denny Grimes on Tuesday night. Grimes spoke to a sold-out crowd of more than 1,400 at The News-Press MarketWatch at the Harborside Event Center.

A luncheon presentation today at Harborside, in downtown Fort Myers, also is sold out.

"Welcome to the morning after!" Grimes said, likening recent declines in prices and sales to a hangover after a wild night on the town.

But like a real hangover, he said, the downturn won't last forever.

Buyers haven't give up on this area even though the big run-ups in price of the past two years are over, Grimes said. They are simply turned off by high prices and scared by what he called the "irrational decline" of the past few months.

Here's what experts are saying about real estate in some specific areas of the county:

CAPE CORAL

"Cape Coral will have its own regional mall," D'Alessandro predicted.

The location will be along Pine Island Road between Chiquita Boulevard and Burnt Store Road on 200 acres put together by Cape real estate broker Greg Eagle.

But the project is five to seven years away because zoning and road widening have to be taken care of first, D'Alessandro said.

He also predicted strong growth in the part of downtown Cape Coral where the city is offering developers incentives to rejuvenate the area. "There's $800 million worth of development in the pipeline."

Michael Schneider- Christians, of Century 21 Sunbelt Realty in Cape Coral, noted that about 400 new listings appear every day for Cape properties, but only about 100 sales go pending. At the same time, there are about 600 price reductions per day.

One waterfront home was reduced Monday from $1.2 million to $989,000, he said.

Speculators drove residential prices in 2005 far beyond where they could be sustained, Schneider-Christians said. "My personal opinion is that the next two years will definitely be a correction."

BONITA SPRINGS/ESTERO

D'Alessandro also said there's a concentration of retail development taking shape along Interstate 75 south of Alico Road: Gulf Coast Town Center mall at Alico and I-75; Miromar Outlets at I-75 and Corkscrew Road; Coconut Point Town Center on U.S. 41 south of Corkscrew; and International Design Center at Corkscrew and I-75.

The design center, especially, will attract high-end home buyers from other markets because it will cater to architects and interior designers of luxury homes, he said.

But Bonita in the short run is exhibiting a surplus of office space, he said, noting that there is an 18 percent vacancy rate there despite relatively low rates in the rest of the county.

LEHIGH ACRES

The price of lots in Lehigh Acres has fallen off sharply in the past few months after being driven sky-high by speculation, Grimes said.

But houses in Lehigh up to about $250,000 continue to sell because there's no competition in other parts of the county for homes that inexpensive, he said.

COMMERCIAL

For commercial real estate the picture was considerably brighter, said D'Alessandro, a commercial broker who also writes a column on real estate for The News-Press.

The commercial sector saw a huge increase in construction, he said: 2,143 units permitted in 2005 for a 78 percent increase over 2004.

But there's plenty of demand to absorb that growth, he said, noting that vacancy rates were low across the board for commercial: 3.7 percent total with 2.8 percent for retail, 6.4 percent for office and 4 percent for industrial and flex space.

It isn't until vacancy rates hit about 10 percent, he said, that the traditional wisdom is for developers to "put the brakes on."

Forecasting the future for commercial is difficult, he said, because there are so many factors involved — such as escalating prices for materials such as concrete and steel. "How do you forecast that?"

Still, D'Alessandro said there likely will be a cooling-off period of 18 months to two years while the rest of the nation's economy catches up with Southwest Florida's recent boom.

For residential real estate, the downward trend was clearer, although not an all-out disaster.

"The buyers are sitting down and saying, 'Am I really willing to pay more than 30 percent more than last year considering the number of things I have to choose from?' " said Michael Timmerman, Naples-based managing director for Florida at Hanley Wood, a national company that collects and analyzes data for home builders.

"But is the sky falling?" he asked. "Absolutely not. The fundamentals are still there. It's a healthy change."

He predicted that in the short run, suppliers of labor and materials will come down on their prices as demand for construction fades, and that will be a good thing for people looking to buy or build a house.

Source: The News-Press

Decidedly German Accent
 After a drop following the Sept. 11 attacks, The Germans are returning

BY ROGER WILLIAMS
Special to The News-Press

German nationals are coming to Southwest Florida in significant numbers.

They arrive both as tourists (about 84,000 last year alone, according to the Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau), and as real estate investors who buy or lease homes and property for businesses. And more Germans are expected. Southwest Florida International will have nonstop or direct service to three German cities after Wednesday, when LTU International Airways debuts a weekly flight between Munich and the south Fort Myers airport. LTU also provides Dusseldorf~Fort Myers flights; Condor offers local service to Frankfurt. "There was a dip in ' Germans coming here after 9/11, but that's gone, that's just forgotten," said Michael Schneider-Christians a German citizen and Century 21 Sunbelt Realtor. He has lived and worked in Cape Coral for almost 20 years, using a United States government-issued green card.

Schneider-Christians recalled another dip when the dollar went sky high and German investors here moved their money home and made large profits. But now the market is hot, like the climate in Southwest Florida. "I have three clients right now who are opening businesses here," Schneider-Christians said. "One just signed the lease for a wine and beer import business, another is opening a restaurant and delicatessen off U.S. 41, and the third is looking for a site to open an international cooking school."

Schneider-Christians' story is typical of German immigrants here. He inherited five lots in Cape Coral in the late 1970s, he recalled. When he came to look at them, he fell in love with the sunshine and the friendliness of the natives. "It was love at first sight," he said late last week. "In Germany in the winter it can be like Chicago, you know, or any of those northern cities. And now; I'm sitting at my desk at this very moment and looking out the window at my canal - beautiful, just beautiful." His wife, a South African native, is comfortable here. His two German-born children, now adults, are "100 percent American," he said. "They love it."  At Cape Coral's Oldtimes Bakery, owned and operated by Germans for more than two decades and frequented by German immigrants, the story is much the same. "My husband likes hot weather, and he can boat, and it's very hospitable here," said Luisa Schendel, who works behind the counter. Around her, the fresh-baked fragrances of rye breads, rolls, cakes and tortes mix with the carnal odors of German meats and sausages to create a rich olfactory symphony.  Better here than in Germany, Schendel said.

"We just went back (to Germany) recently, and I don't ever want to live there again," she admitted. "We have a lot of friends (here), both Americans and Germans." Not only that, but compared to attractive German real estate, prices here are enviably low; she said. "Unless you inherited money or make oodles of money there, you can't afford something nice. Here you can. The only thing I don't like is all the driving. But that's another story." While "nice" may be a matter of personal opinion and economics - many Germans prefer to spend only their winters here, avoiding the summer heat - Lee County has attracted Germans more affluent than the norm, Schneider-Christians said. Especially in Cape Coral. Before that, Lehigh Acres still a prominent locale for Germans - hosted the largest German community. But that's changed. "There was a German guy here with rental houses a number of years ago, and he had a total database of 3,000."

He advertised to (German) boaters and golfers and pilots, and he attracted more affluent people." People started to rent, then later they invested and stayed. Which is probably why Schneider-Christians describes one of his current listings ~ a three-bedroom, two-bath Cape Coral home with a pool and a canal with Gulf access - as "inexpensive." Price: $379,000. "This is the kind of home that appeals strongly to Germans," he said. "A million dollars is too much for a second home, but a lot of people could buy this."

Until fairly recently, that German market remained relatively untapped. "When I started (almost 15 years ago), I was one of the only German Realtors here," Schneider-Christians recalled. "Now there are more than 30." To compete, he defines the German market to include both the East and West, along with Austria and Switzerland, where German is spoken. And he pays a relatively small fee, he said, to a service which places all his local real estate listings both in key German publications, and online at such Web sites as www.Bellevue.de and www.Planetproperty.de. (Bellevue is a prominent German magazine, and Germans use ".de", for Deutschland, rather than ".com" for many Web communications). He also relies on direct-mail advertising to clients in Europe.

All of this helps Lee County, says Michael Shevlin, a longtime American Realtor who heads the Shevlin Group at Century 21 Sunbelt on Pine Island. "It's very good for business," he said. "I haven't seen as many Germans in the last couple of years, but that may be changing. Why? It may be that our economy is better - good investments on second homes, interest rates are low: There's a ton of reasons for them to come."

Source: The News-Press

Decidedly German Accent
 After a drop following the Sept. 11 attacks, The Germans are returning

BY ROGER WILLIAMS
Special to The News-Press

German nationals are coming to Southwest Florida in significant numbers.

They arrive both as tourists (about 84,000 last year alone, according to the Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau), and as real estate investors who buy or lease homes and property for businesses. And more Germans are expected. Southwest Florida International will have nonstop or direct service to three German cities after Wednesday, when LTU International Airways debuts a weekly flight between Munich and the south Fort Myers airport. LTU also provides Dusseldorf~Fort Myers flights; Condor offers local service to Frankfurt. "There was a dip in ' Germans coming here after 9/11, but that's gone, that's just forgotten," said Michael Schneider-Christians a German citizen and Century 21 Sunbelt Realtor. He has lived and worked in Cape Coral for almost 20 years, using a United States government-issued green card.

Schneider-Christians recalled another dip when the dollar went sky high and German investors here moved their money home and made large profits. But now the market is hot, like the climate in Southwest Florida. "I have three clients right now who are opening businesses here," Schneider-Christians said. "One just signed the lease for a wine and beer import business, another is opening a restaurant and delicatessen off U.S. 41, and the third is looking for a site to open an international cooking school."

Schneider-Christians' story is typical of German immigrants here. He inherited five lots in Cape Coral in the late 1970s, he recalled. When he came to look at them, he fell in love with the sunshine and the friendliness of the natives. "It was love at first sight," he said late last week. "In Germany in the winter it can be like Chicago, you know, or any of those northern cities. And now; I'm sitting at my desk at this very moment and looking out the window at my canal - beautiful, just beautiful." His wife, a South African native, is comfortable here. His two German-born children, now adults, are "100 percent American," he said. "They love it."  At Cape Coral's Oldtimes Bakery, owned and operated by Germans for more than two decades and frequented by German immigrants, the story is much the same. "My husband likes hot weather, and he can boat, and it's very hospitable here," said Luisa Schendel, who works behind the counter. Around her, the fresh-baked fragrances of rye breads, rolls, cakes and tortes mix with the carnal odors of German meats and sausages to create a rich olfactory symphony.  Better here than in Germany, Schendel said.

"We just went back (to Germany) recently, and I don't ever want to live there again," she admitted. "We have a lot of friends (here), both Americans and Germans." Not only that, but compared to attractive German real estate, prices here are enviably low; she said. "Unless you inherited money or make oodles of money there, you can't afford something nice. Here you can. The only thing I don't like is all the driving. But that's another story." While "nice" may be a matter of personal opinion and economics - many Germans prefer to spend only their winters here, avoiding the summer heat - Lee County has attracted Germans more affluent than the norm, Schneider-Christians said. Especially in Cape Coral. Before that, Lehigh Acres still a prominent locale for Germans - hosted the largest German community. But that's changed. "There was a German guy here with rental houses a number of years ago, and he had a total database of 3,000."

He advertised to (German) boaters and golfers and pilots, and he attracted more affluent people." People started to rent, then later they invested and stayed. Which is probably why Schneider-Christians describes one of his current listings ~ a three-bedroom, two-bath Cape Coral home with a pool and a canal with Gulf access - as "inexpensive." Price: $379,000. "This is the kind of home that appeals strongly to Germans," he said. "A million dollars is too much for a second home, but a lot of people could buy this."

Until fairly recently, that German market remained relatively untapped. "When I started (almost 15 years ago), I was one of the only German Realtors here," Schneider-Christians recalled. "Now there are more than 30." To compete, he defines the German market to include both the East and West, along with Austria and Switzerland, where German is spoken. And he pays a relatively small fee, he said, to a service which places all his local real estate listings both in key German publications, and online at such Web sites as www.Bellevue.de and www.Planetproperty.de. (Bellevue is a prominent German magazine, and Germans use ".de", for Deutschland, rather than ".com" for many Web communications). He also relies on direct-mail advertising to clients in Europe.

All of this helps Lee County, says Michael Shevlin, a longtime American Realtor who heads the Shevlin Group at Century 21 Sunbelt on Pine Island. "It's very good for business," he said. "I haven't seen as many Germans in the last couple of years, but that may be changing. Why? It may be that our economy is better - good investments on second homes, interest rates are low: There's a ton of reasons for them to come."

Source: The News-Press

Photo by: Stephen Hayford / The News-Press

BY JEFF CULL jcull@news-press.com

Herbert Clemen didn't want to retire to his native Germany when he was done working - he liked Cape Coral too much - so he decided to bring the European charm he missed closer to home. He built an authentic-looking Swiss chalet in the middle of a typical Cape Coral neighborhood full of Florida ranch- and Mediterranean-style homes. "This is my dream home from Europe," said the 71-year-old former bricklayer and building contractor. For 2Yz years, Clemen and a friend painstakingly laid every block, painted the Austrian flower Edelweiss on the window shutters, skillfully erected th.e hand-hewn beams and decorative woodwork, and installed a set of deer antlers near the roof gable. He toiled while curious neighbors wondered what was going up on Southwest 25th Place. But Clemen's two-story chalet is not the only Cape home with a different look, something that sets it apart from other Cape homes that are increasingly looking like the Midwest meets' the Mediterranean. Near Savona.Parkway, a parttime Cape resident from Germany bought' two homes on adjoining lots. He connected the two houses by filling in the vacant area with more house. The new single-family residence is nearly 10,000 square feet and has two of everything; separate two-car garages, on each end of thet extended home, and two swimming pools. It even has two house numbers.

"It's huge," said Michael Schneider-Christians, a real estate agent with Century 21-Sunbelt Realty Inc. wno sold the properties in the mid-1990s. "Some of these big homes are changing the picture of Cape Coral." Other unique homes range from a round house on Southeast 21st Terrace to a monstrous compound-looking home at the end of Chiquita Boulevard. Ultra-large homes also are springing up around the Cape including a local builder's $4.5 million spec home with 10,334 square feet of living space on four levels.

"People who have a lot of money get what they want, no matter what," said Jim Rickert, a real estate agent with Miloff Aubuchon Realty Group Clemen's home, however, is about as different as can be found in the citY where nearly 5,000 new homes Will be built this year.

America's freedom beckoned to Clemen's in 1954. He left postwar Germany with a penny in his pocket, he said, and moved to New York, eventually becoming a homebuilder. "I worked a whole week in Germany for a pair of shoes and one pair of pants - that made me decide to go to America," he said. Over the years, he built more than 100 American-style homes in the Northeast United States. But it wasn't until hanging up his trowel and work boots in 2001 that he decided to build the chalet. Some neighbors 'were skeptical at fIrst, Clemen said, but he hasn't heard a complaint since he finished the work.

"I really put my effort into it," he said. "This is really European workmanship." And that workmanship is in the details. Typical German and Swiss scenes are painted on discs that dot the exterior of the home. The stucco fmish is of European design that is unmatched in the city. "The eaves of the unique roof are made of scrolled wood, all work that was done by hand, Clemen's hand.

But the most interesting feature of this most interesting home is a water system that turns the entire house into a fountain. On the edge of each second floor balcony, a plaster lion's head appears to stand sentry over the yard. But hidden behind the stucco and block are small hoses that carry water to the lion's mouth. When activated, water spews out of the lion's mouth about 10 feet to the ground below.

Inside, many of the artifacts that line the walls came from Poland or Germany or Italy. Oddly, out of place was a pistol used in the American Civil War. Clemen said he bought that piece near Gettysburg, close to a housing development he built years ago. Of course, a cuckoo clock squawked from his office wall. There is also a cedar sauna bath and 12-foot painted mural of a German mountain scene in the dining room. Then there is the hurricane shelter. No bigger than a walk~in closet, the "hurricane suryiving room," as the sign on the door indicated, has concrete walls, floor and ceiling, and appears to be able to withstand even "The Perfect Storm." So what's a Swiss chalet that squirts water, sports a ceramic stork atop the chimney and has a hurricane shelter cost in Cape Coral: Clemen wasn't sure; he's, never checked.

Apd it doesn't really matter, he said, this is his last home. "You've got to know when you're happy," he said.

Source: The News-Press / Cape Life Section - June 19, 2004