A top notch building lot is located in a residential street which is paved and has street lights. The spot where the house is going to be build should be elevated. The other homes around should be clean and owners proud of their properties.How close to schools, stores, markets,hospitals, fire station, police station and your job, unless you work from home? How is the traffic there and how long does it take to get to downtown, the beaches, the restaurants? A corner lot may be more interesting, the size is at least as much as the average on the street . For a waterfront lot as on canal, the depth of the canal and width should be checked and you have to know in the off rainy season as in winter the depth of the water.What access do you have? Are there any bridges or not?( can you use a sai... 11/12/2006

Certainly there is a certain form of drastic drop in sales in the major cities in the USA. Boston, Las Vegas, Miami and many others were hit hard and here in Fort Myers we have seen average prices of single homes going from close to $300K to the mid $200's. The good news? interest rates seems to hold as of nov 2006 in the lower 6% and its a great time to buy because as we all know it will go back up. Some project that it will take 12 months, others say it will take over a year a half to see some healthy appreciation back. So its a good time to buy for these who are not flippers and want instant gratification. The rectification was needed as we saw over 40% appreciation in the last 2 years and the prices were just going to high. We are seeing many major national builders trying all they ... 11/11/2006

Do you want acquire properties in the Fort Myers FL area or just want a list of available quality deals in the area and want to see what is available. 1031 tax exchange, first time buyers or relocating?Just browsing and want access to the local MLS? Let's talk.Realtors, Brokers and lenders welcome.Selling your home? Let's talk.LLoyd Nichols239-810-2980RENS 11/11/2006

I am a corporate officer of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors' Association. You can see our website at www.swflreia.com. We bring in speakers and resources to help people get better educated on real estate investing. We have well over 300 members and we meet multiple times a month in Lee and Collier County. We do fall under the national REIA and have several benefits but one that we have successfully negotiated is pretty darn cool. We have negotiated successfully with First American Real Estate Solutions to offer our members access to a software called Agent First, which, has the capability to pull comparable sales, nation wide! This is not access to nation wide MLS's, it is access to closed sales that have hit the property appraiser database across the nation. Membership to t... 11/03/2006

Last night we had the Future Wealth club in Ft Myers and it was AWESOME! Thanks to everyone that came, 78 people is our largest turnout yet and I think EVERYONE learned a lot and really enjoyed it. The two biggest tips I got from Marc's presentation were if you are doing lease options, you want to be prepared for litigation if it happens, here are two tips I thought were awesome. 1) When you write your lease option and you are the seller, you want to put a clause in there that any dispute has to go through mediation first. Marc, being a lawyer, told us that lawyers will rack up their bill on both sides of the clients only to have it go to mediation anyway. Going to mediation from the beginning will save you thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.2) Some investors save peolpe from foreclosu... 11/03/2006

How to prosper and protect yourself with Lease Optioning Marc Shapiro is a local lawyer that is going to be speaking on Lease Optioning, how to protect yourself, what to watch out for, and how to structure your contracts for selling and buying. This is an educational session, not a sales session. Mr. Shapiro has been an investor and a real estate lawyer since 1992. He has personally purchased more than 90 houses through pre-foreclosures and at the courthouse steps. He is an ACTIVE litigator and has seen every aspect of real estate investor deals, what can go wrong and how to protect yourself. This is a GREAT change to see March speak and hear from one of the real local pros.REIA members are free to attend, non-members are $20 at the door Where & When 12635 S Cleveland AveFort Myers, Flo... 10/30/2006

I don't know about you guys but I do a lot of direct mailing. I used to buy lists from address companies but you know where you can get local data very inexpensively? Try your county's property appraiser! Here in Lee county, they will put data on a disk or email you almost whatever address data you can imagine for very cheap. $35 per hour to put the data together with a min charge of one hour, $25 first process fee and .01 per parcel address for maximum charge of $300. That is pretty cheap compared to address companies that can charge anywhere from 8-10 cents per address depending on your criteria. I still feel I get the best deals from my direct mailing efforts. Check out your local property appraiser and you may be suprised at how cheap you can get your data!Ray Higdon 10/14/2006