The long road to a property in Florida

The adventure of building a house begins with the land on which it is to stand. The search for a plot of land was a lengthy affair. It took almost two years. We first had the idea of buying a plot of land in Florida in 2013. We were back in Cape Coral for a long time and saw how one new house after another was being built. We also felt that our accommodation costs in the vacation home had been wasteful for a long time. On the other hand, at first glance there seemed to be an unimaginable amount of land for little money.

Property with access to the Gulf of Mexico wanted

However, a closer look put this into perspective. We didn’t want just any lot – that’s what the plots are called here – we wanted it to be on a canal with golf access. After all, we are in the city of canals. So we first looked at plots with golf access in the low-price segment. These were mostly in the east of Cape Coral and were not as lucrative in terms of location as the south-western gems. Prices here had recovered so much since the 2008/2009 crisis that you had to shell out around 200,000 dollars for a standard lot.

We finally found an oversized pieshape lot in the MLS near Skyline Blv a few days before our trip home. It didn’t have the ideal southwest exposure we would have liked, but we couldn’t have afforded that in the southwest either. The lot was really nice, the neighborhood made a good impression. We liked the land even better when we went there by boat from the water. It was also only 25 minutes by boat to the Caloosahatche River – all in all a brilliant offer.

So we drove there at different times of the day to see what the noise level was like due to two four-lane roads nearby. Eventually, we wanted to buy the property. We contacted the estate agent, negotiated the sale price down a few thousand dollars and this is how it works: you tell the estate agent what you have in mind. He knows the seller’s range and either turns you down or recommends that you make the seller an offer. The seller can accept it or make a counter offer.

If you have no idea about the customs, you make an offer and are excited. You have to sign many pages of small print, including – if the seller later accepts it – the purchase contract. We had asked what would happen if we changed our minds, but we didn’t expect it. In our case, we still had five days to withdraw for justified reasons. This could be, for example, unsuitability for a particular building project, which you clarify with the building company of your choice during this time. But who has a building contractor at hand right away?

We finally signed our offer and received a “congratulations e-mail” from the estate agent that same evening. What now? We bought a piece of land? We didn’t sleep well that night. We lay in our beds together with all the facts that made us think: should we or shouldn’t we? All the arguments in favor of the plot had suddenly gone overboard. The next morning it was clear: this is not our dream property. How do we get out of it? After all, it wasn’t a problem, but it could well have become one.

Affordable Northwest Cape Coral

So let’ s go back to the beginning: we really needed to be clear about what we really wanted and what was out of the question. First of all, we had to go back to Germany. It was going to take another two years, the shock was probably too deep for us to find our dream property.

In the meantime, property prices have continued to rise and it is now 2015. We have looked at a lot of plots in the meantime, from home on Google Earth and when we were there on site. Somehow we were starting to dislike any normal plot, not even a south-facing location could tempt us out from behind the stove.

Actually, we wanted the egg-laying wool-milk sow: the property should be oversized, preferably a southwest-facing pieshape lot, it should have a large canal, you shouldn’t be too much of a burden on the neighbors, it has to go out to the Gulf of Mexico quickly and it shouldn’t cost too much. Such a lot now costs between 500,000 and one million dollars in the southeast – depending on the distance to the river.

We had already extended our catchment area to the new Cape Coral in the northwest. When we started looking for a plot of land, the area still resembled a settler area. There were only a few isolated houses here. In the meantime, however, so much new construction has taken place that this impression can no longer be maintained.

In the meantime, there is already talk of the new Cape Coral, the Seven Islands, which will soon be home to a collection of hotels, restaurants and apartments, a beach is to be built and there is even said to be a new access to the Gulf Coast . Whether we will live to see this, however, remains to be seen. At least the expansion of Burnstore Road is already in full swing.

12917 ft² at the Intersection Canal

There were still some fantastic, affordable properties up here, but then again north of the northwest and therefore still a long way to the open water by boat. Except for one that suddenly jumped out at us during a routine inspection in the MLS and we were immediately hooked. We weren’t there at the time and asked a now well-known estate agent to take a look at the property.

She didn’t find anything negative, took us a few pictures, but we still couldn’t bring ourselves to buy the land without seeing it live. Fortunately, we flew to Florida a few weeks later and hoped that no one would snatch the property away from us. When we got there, we drove there straight away and were very impressed.

At exactly 12917 square foot, it is really huge and is located on an intersection canal, i.e. at a canal crossing in the all-encompassing southwest location. Due to the cake shape, you have a lot of water in front of the bow and you can see the neighbor across the street, but you don’t really notice him. It is also so quiet that you can hear the fish jumping in the water.

We were beside ourselves, but the asking price was about 20,000 dollars above our expectations. We went to the estate agent and consulted with her. She immediately took action and negotiated with the selling agent. What can I say, we met in the middle and were happy – sleepless night afterwards: Not a chance.