Jupiter real estate, Botanica offers newer homes

When most people think of newer homes in Jupiter, they think of Abacoa.  Sure, Abacoa has plenty of great houses but many were built in the 1990's.  If you are looking at Jupiter real estate and like newer homes, there are limited choices.

A few homes are going up in Abacoa and Lennar is building Rialto out near I-95.  But for a central location with Jupiter schools, you might consider homes for sale in Botanica.

Botanica is comprised of 540 residences with townhouses, villas, single family homes and estates located north of Abacoa and east of Military Trail near Paseos.  These homes were built in 2005-2005 and so they are some of the newest homes around yet they have had a few years for the landscapes to mature so there are some beautiful palms and flowering shrubs like bougainvillea around.

The community also has other amenities like a community pool, walking paths, tennis courts and preserve areas.  And the schools are all Jupiter area schools.

Homes in Botanica

You can see all homes for sale in Jupiter including Botanica at Coastal Florida Real Estate or for some videos try my You Tube Channel.  If you need a little guidance getting started, I have lived here 22 years and can show you the best locations and some great opportunities.

Video email, how novel

Implix, an email marketing leader and online solution provider to global SOHO/SMB markets, has announced the results of an internal study conducted on almost one billion video emails sent following the July launch of GetResponse 6.0.

The analysis compared open and click-through rates (CTR) achieved by video emails and non-video mails. The emails containing video received, on average, 5.6 percent higher open rates, and 96.38 percent higher CTRs than non-video mails. With continued use, the expectation is that recipients will increasingly prioritize and open messages from known senders of video emails.

Rising to the top of recipients’ email “priority lists” is one of the biggest challenges facing SMB marketers today. With a 71 percent increase in online viewing time in the last year, video is clearly the fastest growing trend in Internet history. But small businesses don’t have the budget or the staff to create professional-looking videos, placing them at a competitive disadvantage.

Now to me this is a novel idea.  I mean isn't a video quite similar to...a phone call?  I hate to be old fashioned but I like phones and am not afraid to make a call.  My 19 year son uses his phone constantly to text, even when there is not response on the other end.  When I suggested that he call to speed things up he looked at me like I was crazy.

You may want to try this out, but if you are selling your house your agent may want to try this but we are so overwhelmed with email, and some fancy ones too, that I doubt if they will get opened.

Anyway, if you are looking at Jupiter homes for sale you can see them all at Coastal Florida Real Estate.  Every house and every picture is listed there in real time.  And before you leave this blog, be sure to subscribe.

Is everybody a specialist?

Jupiter real estate is some of the most fascinating in the world.  Out west there are estates with 20 acres in Ranch Colony.  Along the Loxahatchee River, guys like Steve Marino and Rickie Fowler have found waterfront estates to their liking.

On Jupiter Island, Alan Jackson built an oceanfront mansion.  Olivia Newton-John bought in a small community with views of the Jupiter lighthouse.  Tico Torres and Mike Schmidt prefer the seclusion of  Admirals Cove. And thousands of snowbirds have modest condos where they can escape the harshness of winter.

And sprinkled among all these Jupiter homes for sale are several thousand real estate agents.  Each agent hopes to uncover a few buyer/seller leads that might turn into some business.  Sellers know one thing for sure, they want to move.  Or say they do.

Buyers on the other hand may think they want to buy in a certain area then decide on something completely different.  This is where the phrase, "buyers are liars" comes from.  They aren't liars, rather their needs, wants and desires (and financial situations) change as they move through the buying process.  So while they may arrive on the scene thinking they want a certain type of house in a certain location by the time they get to the closing table they may have purchased something different.

Which leads me to this question?  Do you want to find an agent who is a specialist?  And further, when is a specialist a specialist?

Pick up the paper or look on the Internet.  Every agent says they specialize in a certain type of property which typically is:  country clubs, waterfront condos or estates.  Well, that covers about 80% of the properties around here.  So is this "specialist" really a specialist at all?

We have two other types of specialists.  One is the resident real estate agent who, so the theory goes, would know the Club better than anyone.  I would dare say the Membership Office knows the ins-and-outs of the Club better than anyone although the resident agent may know that a certain hole on the golf course always plays 20 years longer than the card says.  The resident agent is a myth.

The other specialist is the "geographic specialist".  These agents mark their territories by certain boundaries like only on Singer Island or only on the River or a certain city.  So if you choose a geographic specialist you should be prepared for them to hand you over to another "specialist" if you change your mind about what you are looking for.  This reminds me of the Andy Griffith Show where Barney would escort a wayward hobo to the town limits where they would be dropped off and told to move along.

What happens after you get passed off, see some new properties, then decide to come back to specialist agent #1?  Now, that's an interesting thought.  So conceivably you could work with several specialists until you finally decide to buy.  In fact, working with the geographic specialist might mean you would change cars several times in the same day and need a playbook to keep the agents straight.  Some companies have both geographic specialists and buyers agents who can move from location to location, so how can this work?  Either one model works or the other one works, not both.

So what should you look for in an agent?  How about a specialist/generalist?  What's that?  Well, someone who works across a broad spectrum of properties in a general location, like the North end of the County.  You are looking for the right agent, not the right business model.  When choosing a doctor do you inquire about their business relationship with the hospital?  I think not.  You are trying to find the right doctor not the right business model. 

So choose your agent the same way you choose a doctor.

You can see all Jupiter homes for sale at Coastal Florida Real Estate.  No other site has any more or more current data since we are all feeding our sites from the same MLS data.  And this site is designed to load as fast as possible.  You won't find any slide shows or links to the Chamber of Commerce, just every home and every picture.  Need some guidance?  Email me at: coastalflrealestate@gmail.com.

Jupiter real estate, the $ 600,000 shower

Every time you  think you have heard it all something comes along that rocks your boat...again.

One of the jobs of being a real estate agent is to counsel people on how to effectively get their homes sold.  However, someone once said that anyone who acts as their own lawyer has a fool for a client and the same could be said of real estate.  Just because you are selling your own house doesn't mean you won't fall into the same traps that keep only 1% of the For Sale By Owner homes from selling.

Remember, hope is not an effective selling strategy.

In selling your home, only five things make a difference.  And one of these five is accessibility.  Now I'm not talking about providing ramps to comply with ADA, I'm talking about making the home easy to show.

NAR statistics show that homes on lockboxes get shown 30% more than those that are not on lockboxes.  But what about the valuables we have around the house?  Move them out and lock them up, then put your house on a lockbox.

So what about the $600,000 shower?

Recently, I tried to schedule a showing on a home listed by the agent/owner for nearly $ 600,000.  I wanted to show it at 10 AM, but when I called her she told me she left for work at 11 and showered at 10.  Could I please make it another time?  Really?

Are you telling me that you wouldn't take a shower 30 minutes earlier than normal for $ 600,000?  YES!

Now, since every other house I had scheduled was "Appt. only" I took the only reasonable course.  We skipped her house.  If she thought I was going to reschedule my entire day so she could shower at her normal time she was really, really wrong.  Forget my schedule, what about everyone else involved.  Should I call them all again and ask them to move their appointments so she could take her normal shower?

Hope is not an effective selling strategy.

You can see all Jupiter homes for sale at Coastal Florida Real Estate where every home and every picture is listed for you in real time.  No other site has any more or more current information.

Tequesta home with private beach

Tequesta is Jupiter's sister city on the north side of the Jupiter Inlet.  Until very recently it was largely overlooked by home buyers since it had the connotation of being populated by mostly older residents, or as Rush Limbaugh calls them, "seasoned citizens".  And that might have been partially true.

Tequesta real estate was platted out in the 1970's so the home sites are larger and at one time it was a magnet for retirees.  Tequesta Country Club with its golf course was built as were homes on the Loxahatchee River.  Tequesta is surrounded by water on three sides and Jonathan Dickinson Park on the fourth so with limited land, no sprawling communities like PGA National could be built.

Although Tequesta waterfront homes are primarily along the Loxahatchee River and the finger canals that come off it, the Village also faces the Intracoastal Waterway and homes here look eastward to Jupiter Island.  These homes have a great location and some of the residents have installed private beaches that look like they came from a calendar of the South Pacific.  Take a look at the one below.

Tequesta waterfront home

This house is north of the Village of Tequesta and has nearly no neighbors.  But, you might ask, what about security gates and guards?  Well, there is very little crime of any sort here.  Once in awhile someone will leave their car unlocked and something gets taken but that's about it.

So if you are looking for an ideal waterfront location without paying high club fees, you might consider homes for sale in Tequesta.  The area has been discovered by younger families and gentrification is taking places, or another way to look at it is your real estate investment is safe here.

You can see all Tequesta homes for sale at Coastal Florida Real Estate.  Every home listed for sale and every pictures is there in real time and no other site has any more or more current data.  And the site doesn't have a lot of fluff so it loads very fast.