Southwest Florida Southwest Florida shines again. The sunshine state explains itself. "My main motivation for moving here was the weather," said Tyler Thompson. According to Trulia.com, More people are flocking to our backyard -- permanently. "The sunshine, the beaches... it's a good... place to raise a family," said Kyle Beauvios, of Orlando. And, according to one home search site, Cape Coral and Fort Myers rank number 2 out of 10 "top cities in the nation to move to in 2017". Local realtors are not shocked by this prediction. "Add in the fact that "Interest rates are low; taxes [...]

  Shopping Mortgage Rates Shopping mortgage rates is a bit like trying to buy a new car that has five different sticker prices on the window. You know that you won’t end up paying any of those prices, but you have no idea which one is even close to what you’ll pay. Here’s how to get a real mortgage rate. Those Low Mortgage Rates Might Cost You Put a few details into an online mortgage rate tool and see what happens: You get a page full of results with dozens of different mortgage rates. You’re certainly [...]

The Florida Cost Of Living It's true. $100 buys more in Florida. The Tax Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit research organization that has monitored tax policy at the federal, state and local levels since 1937. Recently they published a map  that shows the relative value of $100 in each state. The map shows us that prices for the same goods are often much cheaper in states like Missouri or Ohio than they are in states like New York or California. As a result, the same amount of cash can buy you comparatively more in [...]

Some say that big and national are the way to go when searching real estate.  Just how complete and accurate are the national site real estate web-sites? There are a number of reasons why the big box sites just can’t compete with local knowledge. Bigger and more is always better, right?  Not necessarily.  I can only speak to our area of southwest Florida but I have noticed that many more properties appear for sale on the big box sites than are actually for sale in our local multiple list system (MLS). Considering the MLS [...]

Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell this week, remaining near historically low levels at the start of the spring home-buying season. Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday the national average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declined to 3.78 percent from 3.86 percent last week. The average rate for a 15-year mortgage, popular with homeowners who refinance, slipped to 3.06 percent from 3.10 percent last week. A year ago, the average 30-year mortgage stood at 4.32 percent and the 15-year mortgage at 3.32 percent. Mortgage rates have remained low even though the Federal Reserve in [...]