OUR STATE’S SELLER’S MARKET | Naples Florida Weekly

NO DOUBT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE living between Naples and Venice on the southwest coast were impressed when a daily newspaper trumpeted this headline recently: “Naples Sets New Home-Sale Record at $52 million.”

Dazzling as that is, the sale of a nearly four-acre property and its residence of six bedrooms and six-and-a-half baths on the Gulf in the Port Royal neighborhood was only one of several made recently by the Bill Earl and Larry Lappin team at John R. Wood Properties. They also sold a nearby home for $36 million, a Gulf-front home site for $13.5 million, and they have two pending sales, one for $39 million and one for $40 million, says James Schnars, vice president of marketing at John R. Wood.

That’s the difference between a firecracker and fireworks, between a one-off and a trend.

“I don’t see a slow-down coming because of what’s happening in the country,” Mr. Schnars explained. “People are wanting to move to Florida because of the state of things elsewhere, and they’re realizing they can work from anywhere. I think that trend will continue. This is a market built on demand — it’s not an investment market.”

Vince Marotta has this five-bedroom, 8.2-bath home at The Bear’s Club in Jupiter listed at $14,995,000. It has 10,401 square feet of living space. COURTESY PHOTO

For $52 million, you could buy 1,700 Ford F-150 trucks priced at about $30,000 apiece, or 560 Range Rover Land Rovers priced at $92,000, or 14 Lamborghini Sian FKP 37s, listed at $3.6 million each, and still have a million or so left to pick up a little place to sleep after you drove your vehicles around all day.

A very little place, if you’re living in the toney zip codes that punctuate north Palm Beach County, says Vince Marotta, owner of Marotta Realty.

Why just the other day Greg Norman, the golfer who once won 20 PGA and 71 international tournaments, put his house on the market. “He put it on the market for $60 million and sold it the next day. The rumor is, Les Wexler bought it,” said Mr. Marotta.

Mr. Wexler, a billionaire and founder of L Brands, stepped down as owner and manager of Victoria’s Secrets, the lingerie shop, last year.

The John R. Wood Properties team of Bill Earl and Larry Lappin recently sold 2750 Gordon Drive in Naples, pictured here. The 18,000-plus square foot home has 6 bedrooms and 8.5 baths, and sold for $36 million. The same team of Earl and Lappin also recently set a new homesales record in Naples — selling a nearby home for $52 million. COURTESY PHOTO

So what about a paltry million?

“For a million? You could get a home in a golf course community, but it would be a small product,” he said. “In the top 10 or 12 clubs, a million is a below-average price. A million won’t buy what it used to buy.”

But what could you get elsewhere in the southern peninsula, east or west, for a million? Or for that matter, what could you get for $500,000, or $250,000, or for $100,000? And what’s happening to this sizzling market that Realtors say they never saw coming a year ago, when the pandemic appeared to run both a muscular economy and a self-confidant culture right off the rails?

This week, Florida Weekly takes a glance at a sellers market that still has plenty of opportunities for buyers at every price range — especially buyers willing to move quickly when they see something they like.

“We thought that 2020 would be a disastrous year for real estate because of COVID-19. But it’s totally opposite that,” says Denny Sharma, a Coldwell Banker Realtor in Lee County.

MAROTTA

Homes are going away like migrating birds, there one day but gone the next. Paradoxically, however, there’s a home at every price point throughout the southern peninsula, he explained.

“If somebody says, ‘I can’t find anything,’ that’s not true,” Mr. Sharma said. In Lee alone, there are older condos for $100,000 or less in Fort Myers and Cape Coral, solid older starter homes for $175,000 to $300,000 and for $500,000 a lot of choices, he says: gated community or not, closer to downtown and the stylish neighborhoods near it, waterfront with docks for people who boat and fish, pools, and so on.

For a million dollars or more, he concludes, almost anything is possible, still, except for single-family homes on the beach in Sanibel, Captiva, Fort Myers Beach or Bonita Beach, where multimillion-dollar listings are common.

SHARMA

Realtors remain both gratified and startled by the market.

“This is the first time in my career I don’t have any listings at the moment — we have sold all of our listings,” said Michelle Noga, a Realtor with Williams Raveis in Palm Beach, formerly publisher of Florida Weekly’s Palm Beach County edition.

But that’s not a problem.

“We have to work to find things off-market for our clients, now,” she explained.

It’s not just her.

Jolene Munzenrieder, a Realtor at The Real Estate Agency of SW Florida in Naples who’s seen the market in almost every incarnation for more than three decades, has just sold out of her listings, too. Like Ms. Noga, she’ll have several new ones shortly. And like Ms. Noga, since she knows a lot of people, she can secure sales offers for her buying clients off the radar, so to speak. They haven’t even been listed because the sellers hadn’t considered themselves sellers. Yet.

“If you want to sell, now’s the time,” she added. “My buyers are coming from all over, especially Ohio, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. I have been doing this a long time and I have never seen so many multiple offers, before.”

NOGA

In one recent sale, “I just wrote up a contract that had an addendum — the price would go up in increments of $5,000 up to a maximum price to get the deal done. It had to be the highest and best offer. Fortunately, I made it happen.”

That may be unprecedented — the bubble in 2005-2006 notwithstanding — but opportunities for buyers exist everywhere.

Especially if the buyers are prepared with one of two things, Ms. Munzenrieder said: “Either A: have cash; or B: have a prequalification letter and be ready to roll. It’s not uncommon for me to make appointments with people on the beach in the higher-end listings, and by the time I get there with my customer, the seller’s agent steps out and says, ‘It’s already gone.’”

MUNZENRIEDER

From the high-end to the low-end, though, “know what you want and move quickly” is advice echoing across the landscape.

“There are two basic reasons for this” — for the seemingly huge influx of buyers from points north and west driving this market, Mr. Sharma explains: “One: people want to move out of cold climates in the Midwest and Northeast, and even from California and Washington state, but the weather is only one part. The second part is income tax there, and taxes in general that bring them here.”

It costs less to buy a home and maintain it in Florida, in many cases, than other warm places.

Since it’s a sellers’ market at the moment, therefore, “my advice for buyers is prioritize what you want, what’s most important for you,” says Ms. Noga.

“If you want to be on the water, if you want a four-car garage, if you want one story — you might settle for a three-car garage or two stories.”

“If somebody says, ‘I can’t find anything,’ that’s not true.” — Denny Sharma, a Coldwell Banker Realtor in Lee County

But if it will work for you, don’t hesitate, she adds, echoing the advice of many others, including Mr. Marotta.

“I tell buyers: if you see something you like, grab it,” he said. “Don’t mess around, it will be gone. So buy it.”

Ms. Noga, who specializes in high-end coastal properties, also has advice for sellers in any market, even if it is their market, even if they can sell property without having to negotiate these days — she can help them avoid leaving money on the table at a moment in time when most people aren’t concerned with the seller.

“At this point, when they’re getting top dollar, sellers haven’t had to do too much. So working with a good agent who understands not only comps but where the market is going — the trends — could help you.”

Comps, or comparable property sales and inventory in a given neighborhood, help sellers determine a price. But comps can change frequently. “So if you’re looking at comparable property sales over six months or even three months, you’re looking at the past,” she said.

Like looking at starlight. What you see, she suggested, is once-upon-a-time. It’s not what may be happening at the moment.

“A good agent will be able show you not just comps but trend lines, and where they’re going. At the moment, they’re rising steeply in many neighborhoods. So if a seller has not looked at trend lines, they’ll leave money on the table.”

Oh, and don’t worry if you’re not a gazillionaire — or a millionaire or a half-millionaire. On the southeast or southwest coasts in Palm Beach County, in Collier County, in Lee and Charlotte counties, there are decent homes at almost every price level.

In Charlotte County, for example, where Tom and his wife, Gay Weekes, Keller-Williams Realtors who have spent years watching the county’s market change and move forward, lay it out like this, at every price range:

“In the $50,000 to $150,000 range, you are getting a 900-square-foot condo for $99,000 built in 1981,” says Mr. Weekes.

“Or a manufactured home at $105,000 built in 1981, with 920 square feet. Alternatively, you can get a 1979 single-family home for 115,000 bucks built in 1979.”

You could buy three Ford f-150 pickups and still have enough to buy a big vacant lot in Charlotte County for that money.

“In the $200,000 to $300,000 range,” said Mr. Weekes, “you are getting a condo for $273,000 built in 2005 with 1,500 square feet or a manufactured home built 2005 (most pre-2005 homes in Charlotte were destroyed by Hurricane Charley in 2004) and 1,500 square feet for $260,000. And finally a single-family built in 2007 which is 1600 square feet, for $259,000 bucks.”

That’s not all.

“In the $400,000 to $600,000 range you are getting a $525,000 condo built in 2020 with 1,642 square feet, or a single family home built 2007 for $510,000, with 1,772 square feet.”

And there’s more, especially for buyers with some money. Money that would go a long way in the western side of Palm Beach County or the eastern side of Collier, Lee and Charlotte, if house-with-property and not just location with-status were the goal.

“In the $800,000 to $ 1.2 million range, you are getting a single-family home for $950,000 built in 2003, with 2,800 square feet,” he said.

Meanwhile, possibly on another planet, the historic $52 million home sale in Naples, or even the $60 million Greg Norman home sale in Martin County, just above the Palm Beaches, doesn’t particularly impress Mr. Marotta.

“A spec home on Palm Beach was on the market at $160 million and sold for $140 million,” he said. “In my own experience, we’ve had a couple listings recently in the $4 million to $5 million range and both had 30-some showings in the first week or two.”

It’s a seller’s market, alright. But if you’re a buyer, and you happen to have or you can borrow $100,000 to $200,000, or even less — and you don’t need more than one F-150 — it can be your market, too. ¦

In the KNOW

The Zillow picture

Zillow (www.zillow.com), a nationwide, online real estate company, offers information and details about residential properties for sale in each county, updated regularly. Here, we point to a few of many properties listed at prices ranging from roughly $100,000, to $250,000, to $500,000, to $1 million.

CHARLOTTE COUNTY:

There were 4,677 homes for sale in Charlotte County in late February.

For $10 shy of $100,000, you could get two bedrooms and two baths in 960 square feet of manufactured home on Moss Drive in Englewood (Lasbury- Tracy Realty).

For $240,000 you could get four bedrooms, two baths and 1,896 square feet on Orchard Drive in Punta Gorda (Engel & Völkers Fort Myers, Chris McBride).

For $489,000 on Arnaz Circle in Port Charlotte you could get four bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,462 square feet.

And for $985,000 on Grassy Point Boulevard in Port Charlotte, you could get five bedrooms, five bathrooms and 5,014 square feet in two stories. (Nix and Associates Real Estate.)

COLLIER COUNTY:

There were more than 3,000 homes for sale in late February.

For $275,000 you could get four bedrooms, three baths and 1,408 square feet next to Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands, for $275,000 — that’s in Everglades City. (Keller Williams Elite Realty 2).

Or, for the Neapolitan bound, three bedrooms and four bathrooms on Imperial Circle in Naples, with 2,667 square feet, for $769,900 (Marzucco Real Estate).

LEE COUNTY:

There were more than 8,000 homes for sale late in February.

Some standouts: You could get 1,080 square feet with two bedrooms and two baths on Captiva for $575,000 (Resort Properties International, Mark Muller).

For less than half that price, you could get a downtown condominium on West First Street in Fort Myers, where the streets of the historic district are paved with restored bricks that Thomas and Mina Edison walked on, for $224,900, including two bedrooms, two baths and 1,114 square feet (John Gee & Co., Ann Gee).

PALM BEACH COUNTY:

There were 12,967 homes for sale in Palm Beach County in late February.

For under $100,000 you could get a townhouse in West Palm Beach on Jasmine Court with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and 1,558 square feet — list price $89,900 (Landmark Realty Professionals).

For just over $250,000 — list price was $254,900 — you could get a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house in 992 square feet on Canal Circle South, in Lake Worth.

For almost exactly half a million — the list price is $499,900 — you could get 3,064 square feet with four bedrooms and three bathrooms on Isle Verde Way in Palm Beach Gardens.

Or, in Manalapan, you could buy 33 bedrooms, 38 bathrooms and 62,200 square feet on South Ocean Boulevard for an even $115,000,000 (Sotheby’s International Realty Inc.). ¦

— Roger Williams

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