The new law pertaining to the Florida Homestead Exemption increases the exemption $50,000. The law states that every person with legal title to a residential property, can show that this is their primary residence and does not currently have a homestead exemption, is is now entitled to and qualifies for the exemption. The key is that the applicant must be able to show that he or she is a legal Florida resident on January 1st of the the initial application year.

If you are a current resident already receiving a homestead exemption, it is not necessary to re-apply for the additional amount exempted. It will be automatically added to your current exemption. The deadline for a new filing is March 1^st of the qualifying year. Normally you can make application either in person or by mail. (Naturally mail applications for this year are too late, however, you could still fill in person.)

In order to file you will need a copy of your deed or tax receipt, as well proof of residency. That proof could could be a voter registration card, your driver’s license, vehicle registration or any other form of a permanent residency card. Information can be found on the Collier County Appraiser’s web site at: www.collierappraiser.com or you can also go to www.colliertax.com.

If you are going to transfer the exemption difference to another permanent residence within the State of Florida, you have until March 3^rd to file for that transfer.

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In this picture perfect pristine town that we live, Naples, Florida, where literally a blade of grass isn’t out of place, they are at it again…the sign cops are out in full force! (I really don’t know whether it is Code Enforcement or the Naples City Police, but whoever it is, they are out there!)

This past weekend I decided to help a realtor friend of mine who was out of town. She had asked me if I would sit an advertised ‘open house’ for her, since she was going to be away on a short trip to North Carolina. Having sat my listings for the past couple of months, I decided that a change was necessary…besides this was a beautiful new-construction home in the heart of Olde Naples.

So an hour and a half later, after setting up shop and seeing no one, I start thinking ‘how can this be’? Here I am in a highly desirable home, in a fantastic location just three blocks from the Gulf of Mexico and I haven’t seen a soul. Just for the heck of it, I decide to go outside and nose around and what do I find, my signs are gone. (Both were brand new at $12.00 each.)

Now I realize that having two signs on a property is a no-no, but give me a break, in a down real estate market don’t the police have anything better to do than pull real estate signs and throw them in the trunk of their cruiser? Heck the way I see it, he or she could have left me one of the two…why take both. Disgusted, I went to the trunk of my car and put another one out…yes this time only one.

Just another day in paradise…Not!

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Insurance premiums are going through the roof, and while the legislators in Tallahassee seem in a quandary as to what to do, we are saddled with rocketing costs. It is our choice to live in a coastal area of Naples, Florida, but still do we have tyo be so heavily penalized for it?

There are some things that we, as homeowners can do to help in holding down the cost. Certainly the first thing is to make sure that you are insuring your dwelling only and not the market value of the property. It sounds simple enough, but there are many people that I have recently talked with that have not looked at their policies in years and have no idea of what they are actually paying for, never mind insuring.

It always is advisable to purchase both your homeowners policy from the same company that you are buying your auto insurance from. Many times you will save a bit that way!

With regard to your homeowners policy, another area where you can cut your cost is your deductible. I would do what I have done and take out the highest deductible allowable that you can afford. For example, if you get a quote on a $5,000 or $2,500 deductible versus a $500 deductible, you will find the annual savings quite dramatic.

A little known fact is the type and breed of dog you own residing in your home can effect your insurance rate. Insurance companies, in many cases, are now raising rates for Pit Bull owners, since historically the owners have a higher rate of liability claims against them.

A few changes here and there with your policy can make a world of difference, while we wait for relief from our legislators!

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It is with a heavy heart that I get ready to attend Cinco de Mayo for the final time at one of my favorite Naples’ establishments, Meson Ole in its present location, the Oaks Plaza in Naples.

Understand it’s not that Meson Ole is going out of business or anything like that, far from it, but rather the wonderful Spanish style neighborhood plaza where they have called home for many years is to be razed to make way for a new 16,000 square foot Walgreens which in my opinion is needed like a hole in the head.

Meson Ole will in fact be moving the following day to their new home, the former Ditkas, of Mike Ditka fame. Somehow it just won’t be the same as the small, intimate restaurant at the Oaks, where for years Pat and I have enjoyed walking over and sitting at the small bar, sipping (or in some cases wolfing down) margaritas and eating a meal. Now Meson Ole will have a much larger facility, with a huge bar.

It’s all in the name of progress, or so they say, which I will forever fail to understand. But Walgreens and the Naples City Council, in their inimitable wisdom, hammered out a deal that I’m sure was like St. Patrick’s Day, a lot of green.

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I know that the following has absolutely nothing to do with real estate or the like, but I was out in my yard taking pictures today and got an inspiration.

One of the nifty things about living in Southwest Florida is the great variety of fruit trees that are all over the area, and having grown up in a family with property in Jamaica, I’m especially fond of mangos. I fondly remember the Jamaican women walking along with breadfruit and mangos nearly overflowing the baskets so well balanced on their heads.

I vowed that when I first purchased a property here in Naples, I would for sure have a mango tree. As it so happened, I actually had to purchase that mango tree at a local nursery, since the property that has now become our primary home had grapefruit and lemon, but no mango.

That tree was purchased three years ago, the very first year we were here, gently transported home, lovingly planted and fertilized. (I don’t even know what kind of mango tree it is, there are some 30 or 40 varieties, all I know it’s a mango and that is all I wanted.) We re-planted it after that first year to the spot where it resides now, then watched and waited. That second year the flowers and eventual buds that became tiny mangos flourished and it was with great excitement that I followed their progression. Just as they were looking as though they were going to take hold, that spring we had a torrential rain storm and afterward I went on to check on them and they were gone from the downpour.

I was totally dejected, because I was so looking forward to eating my first mangos from my tree. Later that summer, we had the hurricanes come through, causing even more damage to the fruit trees, which would bear no fruit the following spring.

Last year the summer rains nurtured the tree and with no hurricanes, it once again bore a wealth of spring flower buds and eventual tiny mangos. The picture above was taken today and is of one of the early buds that has now ripened, ready in a few weeks to be picked. There were only 6 that survived that original budding, (this being one of them), but the most amazing thing has happened, we have since had a second flowering, which means a second late harvest as well.

Interesting, because it must have something to do with the hurricanes of two years ago and no flowering following them. I guess that the tree is trying to make up for that year of nothing. All I know is that I’m going to have a full tree of mangos and I can’t wait. I guess that as we grow older, sometimes it’s the littlest of things that makes us the happiest!

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One of the fun things to do in Naples, Florida is walk the miles and miles of public beaches. In Olde Naples, every avenue ends at the beach and once there, you can turn either north or south depending on what your motivation is. Not only will you get a tremendous amount of exercise walking in the white sugar sand, but you will get a good indication of just how the other half lives.

If you turn north, you will, (assuming that you start from somewhere in Olde Naples,) walk toward the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, an unmistakable old landmark. Along the way and further to the North as you head toward the Moorings, you will see some magnificent examples of architecture in many of the mega-homes that line the beach.

But probably the most impressive array of mega-mansions lie to the south, as you meander down to Port Royal and Doctor’s Pass. It is here that you walk by estates that will totally blow the mind, almost as if each was built to surpass the neighbors’. (Actually, in some cases, that was exactly the intent). 

Be that as it may it is quite a site to behold, and should you be into “The Secret” and The Law of Attraction, I couldn’t think of a better place to start!

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Sometimes I feel as if I just can’t keep up with all the new technology that is coming on scene, and yet, I have to tell you that I’m excited! I often say to people that I wish that I were going to live another hundred years, so that I could experience all that will be coming out.

As much as I read and as much as I experiment with different things for my website, blog and newsletter, I feel overwhelmed. There is so much out there, so much in beta and so much that is down the road being talked about that it excites, but confuses the mind.

I often wonder whether we, as real estate professionals sometimes loose sight of the fact when it is all said and done, our responsibility is to establish a relationship with our prospects and clients and sell real estate. Yes, we certainly need to cultivate leads and the internet is one great way to do it, but the bottom line is that the more that we are fooling around playing with all the new gadgetry, software and other tech stuff, the less we are concentrating on what we are really supposed to be doing…SELLING REAL ESTATE!

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One thing that absolutely drives me crazy, and it’s no different here in Naples, is small town politics. You vote for politicians, because you feel that it is your civic duty, and expect that they will listen to the will of the people. Boy how wrong we are in our thinking!

Directly behind our lovely home, resides a beautiful Spanish style small shopping plaza (The Oaks Plaza) with a good array of businesses, including one of our favorite restaurants, Meson Ole, a wonderful Spanish eatery. Not only is the food good, but it has been a favorite of ours because we can walk there in three minutes or so, making it extremely convenient. Well, that is all about to change. With the rapid rise in commercial real estate, small parcels like this plaza have become targets for the mega-stores and national chains who have the deep pockets and a price tag of $5,000,000 or so is but a mere pittance to them.

The plaza is surrounded by residential properties, including ours, and had been on the market for about a year, when along comes Walgreens, who sees the chance to break away from their lease at The Naples Plaza, where they have been for years and years. Now I certainly can’t blame them for their thinking of wanting to own, rather than rent, but all of a sudden, as an abutter of the property, I worry about the effect a big mega-chain store will have on the area and the effect it will have on the general landscape.

With an organized effort, many of the area residents attend and follow the Planning Board and City Council Meetings and voice concerns with many of the Walgreens proposals, such as allowing the store to stay open 24 hours a day, a 24 hour prescription drive-thru, and such. The residents, including myself stood up and strongly voiced our concerns. We said that there was absolutely no need for a 24–hour store in a residential neighborhood and certainly no need for a 24–hour drive-thru.

No matter how hard we pleaded and what was said, in the end, a majority of the City Council turned a deaf ear toward us and voted for almost everything that Walgreens wanted, with the exception of allowing the store to stay open 24 hours a day. They did vote to allow them to stay open until midnight, and I’m sure that when no is looking, they will be back before the council to ask for the full 24 hour opening. (To me it’s like college, when we were allowed to have women in the dorm rooms until 3 o’clock in the morning. What’s the point?…if you are going to let them stay that late you might as well let them stay all night). I’m sure Walgreens feels the same way. One of the city council men rationalized that if one life could be saved, it would be worth it. I told him that if Walgreens were coming to his back yard, he wouldn’t vote the way he did and I asked did he really think that the Naples Community Hospital was really releasing patients, in a life threatening situation, leave the emergence room to go get a prescription filled at 3 o’clock in the morning. The whole thing was not only small town politics, (you can’t tell me that Walgreens wasn’t passing something around), but insanity as well!

Now I’m sure that you’re wondering what all this has to do with eagles, and believe me if I were reading this, I would also. Here is the deal, I come out of my house one day recently and I happened to look up in a lone pine tree on what is now the Walgreens property and to my absolute amazement I see these two majestic creatures, a male and a female just sitting there, like they owned the place. I run for my camera to grab pictures of the two of them and my heart is racing on two fronts. First because it is a most magnificent sight and I want to capture it and secondly because if these two build a nest, there is no way the State will allow the plaza to be torn down and a Walgreens to be built. Eagles in Florida have a right away wherever they go, they are that prized.

Well, the long and short of it was that they stayed for a few hours and then soared off to some other big tree or somewhere else. And here I thought that we, (actually it would have been the birds), had beaten small town politics. Sadly…not to be. I guess the only good news is that I will now be able to walk a few minutes to get all those prescriptions filled that my doctor makes me take.

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