Florida Beachfront Properties

[northcaptiva]

There are more motivated sellers of Florida beachfront properties right now than I have seen in my career as a real estate broker. If you have been looking for that perfect island beach retreat or retirement home, I think that this might not be a bad time to start looking. In my experience, the wealthy owners of these homes can turn from motivated to not motivated the instant the see a potential recovery of the market... so it might pay to be slightly early. My area of expertise is in the barrier island of SW Florida such as North Captiva.

[Codythebest]

The florida problem is more in the insurance and property taxes than in the price, right?

[northcaptiva]

The taxes will be coming down next year with the plummeting property prices. There is some tax legislation coming, but I don't think it will help nearly as much as the falling prices. Insurance will continue to be a problem, especially if we get hit with more hurricanes. That said, insurance isn't a problem for everybody. My in-laws in Celebration are doing ok with their insurance. And while most of my neighbors here on North Captiva have seen a good sized increase, I am paying less in wind and flood policies than I did in 2004 ( due to a little luck, height above sea level (being high up is good for flood rates), and a house built to very high engineering standards ( which is good for windstorm rates) ). My personal problem with insurance here in FL lies with my regular homeowner's portion (which has nothing at all to do with hurricanes) where they keep jacking both my rate and structure value up 10% per year.