Another Friday has arrived. Since last week, the weather on Sanibel and Captiva Islands has continued to be summer-like. Days have been in the mid-to-high 70’s and low 80’s with plenty of sunshine and a few intermittent clouds. That is expected to change on Monday when a cool front arrives. Being originally from Maine, it still cracks me up when they say a cool-front is daytime temperatures in the 60’s – in January. That coolness may be short-lived though. Temperatures are expected to be back into the 70’s by Thursday.
Most years, island business picks up after January 15th, particularly when the snow is flying somewhere. This year there already has been good real estate action here. The changes reported since last Friday in the Sanibel/Captiva Islands Multiple Listing Service are after a couple of news items below. (First a picture from our friend, Scott, who shares his wonderful island photos.)
Sanibel & Captiva Islands Association of Realtors® Installation of 2020 Officers & Awards Breakfast
Yesterday was the annual Islands Association of Realtors® installation of officers and awards breakfast at The Sanctuary. Florida Realtors® Director of Local Association Services, Anne Cockayne was the installing officer. Past-President Joel Goodman emceed, and I presented pal Mary Lou Bailey with her Realtor® Emeritus pin (She’s our third island Realtor® to reach this status – 40 years and an active leader.)
Our local Honor Society recognized 25 members for their professionalism through education, participation, and community service (my 27th year), while six members completed the Sanibel & Captiva Islands Specialist program, earning their SCIS designation. Congratulations to all.
SanibelSusan Realty Associates
This week, SanibelSusan teammate Dave held several Open Houses and saw a noticeable increase in visitors. We also had some good listing inquiries and have future showings scheduled. Elise got a big post card mailing out and will process two more next week. I showed property last weekend, Dave is showing this weekend, and we also had a nice 2-sided closing Tuesday, which was the last island sale in 2019. Big thanks to Simmons Law for getting the needed court motion processed in time for the 14-day closing.
Outside-the-Box Mortgage Solutions
One of our long-time Association of Realtors® Affiliate Members, Dan Royal, sent an e-mail this week that caught my eye. Dan is a Mortgage Loan Originator with American Momentum Bank. He has been financing island real estate for as long as I can remember. Did a loan for my husband and I when we first moved to Sanibel – long before our first sale here. Here are excerpts from Dan’s email:
“$860,000 Sundial Resort Condo mortgage just funded! Non-warrantable condos welcome here. Fannie Mae has “in the box” strict guidelines. Our Portfolio Loans are “outside the box”:
- 5% down to $1 million primary home purchase
- Non-warrantable/resort condo 15% down
- 0% down new professionals
- Construction loans to $5 million
- Foreign borrower loans to $3 million
- Investor loans to $3 million.
“Please contact me if you need some out of the box mortgage solutions.”
Reach Dan at DRoyal@AmericanMomentum.Bank or toll free at 866-530-2265.
Joanna Gaines: Keep These Tacky Items Out Of The House
I saw this article on-line a few weeks ago but saved it for sharing after the holidays. It is long but has some interesting, sometimes funny, points. Written by JJ Foster, posted 11/26/19 on www.BridesBlush.com:
“The Fixer Upper Has Spoken – If there’s one person who knows what it takes to put together an awesome living room, then it’s Joanna Gaines. The reality TV personality has spent the last few years hosting the show Fixer Upper with her husband Chip. Together, they renovate and redecorate people’s homes and have helped take “Farmhouse-chic” to another level of popularity. However, with an eye for great decoration, Gaines also knows what interior designers should avoid doing. The living room is a place for play, relaxation and family time, and Gaines has shared some of the tackiest things that homeowners should keep out of their living rooms.
“Fake Plants – Sure, real plants might attract a few creepy crawlies here and there, but there’s something about them that adds a whole lot of life to the living room. More often than not though, fake plants can stick out like a sore thumb and it’s clear that they are definitely not real. As far as Joanna Gaines is concerned, you’re better off having a living room without plants than one with fake ones. She thinks they are lifeless and extremely tacky.
“Chintz Wallpaper – Chintz is a form of textiles that can trace its origins all the way back to India. However, the design, which consists of flowery patterns, is recognized these days for being used in the rooms of many bed and breakfasts, especially in the New England area. Joanna Gaines certainly doesn’t want people making their living rooms resemble anything like this. In fact, it’s more likely to look like the kind of building that contains a tomb from the 1500s.
“Ruffled Furniture Skirts – While skirts are a perfectly acceptable clothing item for certain individuals to wear, furniture isn’t one of them. Anything that doesn’t have a heartbeat and is designed to be sat on in a living room shouldn’t be wearing a skirt. We’re looking at you, sofa, table, chairs and armchair. Ruffled skirts make a modern living room feel like it’s stuck in a much older era. Either expose those furniture legs or at the very least, give them a straight skirt instead.
“Plastic Storage – So many families use plastic storage as a more affordable option of putting away stationary appliances, clothes and virtually anything else. However, there is something about seeing these structures in a living room that screams out, “I shouldn’t be here.” If it’s a child’s living room, then it might make a bit more sense. But if your kids are fully grown and you want a living room that blends luxury with sophistication, then this is not the way to go.
“Bold-Colored Walls – Joanna Gaines can’t stand it when she walks into a living room and the walls have been painted in a really bold color. As a child, she remembered that the home her family moved into had the worst-looking walls imaginable and they needed to give them a completely new coat. Not only was the living room a disgusting lime-green color, but the dining room was in her words, “cherry-red.” If you’re living room looks like Sonic’s drive-thru menu, you know you’ve got problems.
“Bookcase Wallpaper – Joanna Gaines has lost count of the number of homes she has walked into and seen this kind of decoration plastered all over the back wall of the living room. Seriously, who are these people trying to fool? It is obviously not a real bookcase. If you want to show the world that you’re educated, get some shelves and put some books on them! The irony is that those who have this wallpaper probably don’t read that many books.
“Matching the Couch With Curtains – Joanna Gaines is a firm believer that curtains and couches shouldn’t be made from the same fabric – it just shouldn’t happen. However, this will be forgiven as long as they don’t share the exact same color or pattern. It’s important to diversify the living room, finding a balance between furniture that compliments each other, while also serving its own unique, aesthetic purpose. As far as the Fixer Upper is concerned, the living room should have a motif, not a uniform.
“Mandala Tapestries – While many young people decorate their homes with mandalas, they don’t necessarily know the spiritual symbolism of this Eastern pattern. Then, there are people who discover the pattern later on in life and decide it’s a nice thing to display on one of the walls in their living room. Joanna Gaines thinks that if you don’t share the philosophy that the mandala is connected to, then it’s best to move on and decorate your living room with something a bit more understated.
“White Rooms – While a white motif can be pleasant, you should never decorate your living room in just white. Fine, white walls can work, but think of it as a canvas in which you can add various other colors to it. At the end of the day, purely white rooms remind us too much of sterile hospitals, a place where people are often struggling to stay alive. Let’s not try to remind people of that in our living room. Also, it makes un-cleanable stains look so much more obvious.
“Weird Lamps – If your living room lamp has more arms than your fake plant has branches, then you need to watch some episodes of Fixer Upper as soon as possible! It is very easy to get carried away with the design of a lamp. If your lamp resembles the Burj al-Arab or some other uniquely designed skyscraper, then something’s seriously wrong. Definitely avoid the lamps that have multiple bulbs with different colored light filters. Just go with a traditional lamp with a shade.
“Cliché Art – While it’s perfectly normal to hang up art in the living room, Joanna Gaines hates it when people go for one of the most famous paintings and treats it like some sort of cool ornamental idea. If you are planning on hanging up a copy of Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in your living room, then that’s a bad omen for the room in general. Why not go for a more obscure work of art by a famous artist? Stay original, folks.
“Mounted Animal Heads – While many hunters hang animal skulls on their walls like some sort of bragging rights, many people who are not hunters buy them and hang them too. However, Joanna Gaines has her own thoughts on the matter. Whoever’s hanging these in the living room obviously has no idea what they are doing. If you are responsible for that skull, at least put it somewhere where it is not going to upset anyone. The Fixer Upper has spoken!
“Futons – Unless you are between the age of 13 and 18 and frequently having friends over for slumber parties, a futon is no longer the way to go. By the time you have graduated from college and are out there in the real world, you should have enough funds to afford something a bit more elaborate than a futon. As we get older, it is our duty to outgrow certain things and futons should be, at the very least, the top five in that list.
“Temporary Furniture – While the aim of temporary furniture is to make it look like something that is cool but also a work in progress, Joanna Gaines has zero-tolerance for the concept. As far as she’s concerned, this kind of furniture has no place in the living room and homeowners should just go with traditional furniture instead. She believes that temporary furniture only looks cool for a couple of days, that’s until it breaks for one reason or another – it’s too fragile!
“Cluttered Cables – In the age of technology in which we live, it makes perfect sense to have a plethora of devices that have wires and cables hanging from them. This takes nothing away from the fact though that a pile of cluttered cables looks ugly on the eyes. A perfectionist like Joanna Gaines would never stand for such chaos in her living room, let alone anyone else’s. At the very least, hide those cables behind the TV table, away from visitors’ eyes.
“Cheesy Photo & Picture Frames – There are so many accessories out there that people use to display family photos on. More often than not, the frame itself can distract the person away from what matters the most – the photo. With tons of cheesy imagery and buzz words on either side of the photo, these tend to just get in the way. At the end of the day, a photo needs a frame, not a dramatic canvas that might be telling a completely different story. Stick to a frame – plain and simple.
“Plastic Couch Covers – People put plastic covers on their couches for a variety of reasons. While some apply them to prevent pets from causing damage to them, others use them so that they don’t spill something on them. Either way, a plastic couch cover is always for practical reasons, not aesthetic ones. It’s less to do with the fact that it looks tacky – it just looks terrible in any situation. At the very best, it looks like the scene of a crime.
“Shot Glass Collections – Whether it be stamps, coins or Coca-Cola cans, everyone seems to have something they love to collect. However, we’d never advise hanging your collection up in the living room. Joanna Gaines especially detests it when people decide to show off their shot glass collection as some sort of living room ornament. While it may have impressed your friends back during the college years, it just looks kind of sad by the time you reach your mid-30s. Collect something new and hide it somewhere!
“Gold Fixtures – There was a time that gold fixtures were a standard “fixture” in pretty much every other house, and that was back in the ’80s. For some reason, there are families who have hung onto those gold fixtures for the last 30 years and, unsurprisingly, they have weathered and no longer look as shiny and glorious as they used to. Maybe one piece of gold furniture here and there is acceptable, but gold motif for the living room is unacceptable unless you are a Saudi prince.
“Pallet Coffee Tables – A trend that has been floating around the world of interior design is DIY pallet furniture. Better known for being used to transport large objects on forklifts, interior designs are now making pieces of furniture out of these wooden structures. One of the examples is the coffee tables which is made out of pallet. While some families might like their living rooms looking like a pile of lumber, Joanna Gaines wouldn’t be seen dead with this type of coffee table in her home.
“Shag Carpeting – While some people might like the cosy feel that shag carpeting provides, Joanna Gaines is certainly not a fan. She believes that this design trend should have stayed in the ’70s where it belongs. She compared the texture and the appearance of shag carpeting to that of wigs. Moreover, she believes it would have the same effect if you laid some hairpieces on the living room floor instead. While it might be a matter of taste, this is not Gaines’ “cup of tea.”
“Wood Paneling – There is something about wood paneling that just screams out a 1980s thriller, with the likelihood of someone in the family going on a violent rampage at some stage. Joanna Gaines believes that this style goes against what a living room represents – relaxation, fun and family time. Unless you actually live in a cabin in the woods, wood paneling is extremely dated and should have no place in any part of your home whatsoever, never mind your living room!
“Curtain-less Windows – Seeing that we are encouraged to avoid using so much electricity and resort to natural lighting, you’d think that it would be recommended to refrain from applying curtains to your living room windows. A bit of natural lighting could do your home the world of good, right? Well, gone are the days that you can kick back with a tub of ice cream in private, people are always going to see what you’re doing as they walk past.
“Blanket Ladders – If you want to have a living room that looks rustic, at least don’t make it look as if you’re trying so hard to be. One tacky design choice that is indicative of this is a blanket ladder. While these were more commonplace back in the 1800s or in one of the stories from Little House on the Prairie, some have decided to bring a ladder back and use it to hang blankets on in their living room. What’s wrong with just leaving them on the sofa?
“Barn Doors – Our only theory for this one is that someone who was having way too much fun one night ended up trespassing on someone’s farm, stole a couple of barn doors and then woke up the next day with them leaning on the wall of their living room. While Pinterest has undoubtedly built up the hype of having barn doors in our homes, and Joanna Gaines is a farmhouse chic specialist, we have no interest. If it’s not being used in a barn, it shouldn’t be used.”
Sanibel & Captiva Islands Multiple Listing Service Activity January 10-17, 2020
Sanibel
CONDOS
4 new listings: Sanibel Arms #A7 1/1 $359K, Sanibel Moorings #1512 2/2 $549K, Loggerhead Cay #514 2/2 $1.045M, Sanddollar #C201 2/2 $1.199M.
6 price changes: Sanibel Inn #3514 2/2 now $725K, Sand Pointe #227 2/2 now $739K, Pointe Santo #D32 2/2 now $749K, Oceans Reach #3A1 2/2 now $894.9K, Sundial #E108 3/2 now $1.225M, La Playa #B1 3/2 now $1.299M.
4 new sales: Sandpebble #1A 2/2 listed at $439K, Blind Pass #F204 2/2.5 listed at $445K, Sanibel Shores #A2 2/2 listed at $459K, Sand Pointe #227 2/2 listed at $739K.
No closed sales.
HOMES
7 new listings: 1667 Atlanta Plaza Dr 2/2.5 $439K, 1339 Tahiti Dr 3/2 $540K, 1774 Bunting Ln 3/2 $659K, 1068 White Ibis Dr 3/3 $759K, 940 Lindgren Blvd 3/2 $948K, 5633 Baltusrol Ct 4/4.5 $1.949M, 1314 Seaspray Ln 5/5.5 $6.995M.
13 price changes: 1684 Bunting Ln 2/2 now $489.5K; 430 Old Trail Rd 3/2.5 now $547K; 1536 Bunting Ln 3/2 now $588,595; 433 Lake Murex Cir 3/2 now $629K; 678 Durion Ct 3/2 now $649K; 1567 Sand Castle Rd 3/3 now $799K; 5659 Sanibel-Captiva Rd 2/2 now $800K; 1010 Kings Crown Dr 3/3 now $997K; 2857 Wulfert Rd 4/5 now $1.199M; 1671 Hibiscus Dr 5/3 now $1.249M; 1133 Golden Olive Ct 3/3.5 now $2.269M; 3009 Turtle Gait Ln 4/4.5 now $2.595M; 5145 Joewood Dr 5/4.5 now $2.75M.
6 new sales: 1458 Sandpiper Cir 3/2.5 half-duplex listed at $489.9K, 4619 Brainard Bayou Rd 3/2 listed at $595K, 668 Anchor Dr 3/2 listed at $958.5K, 2739 Wulfert Rd 4/5.5 listed at $1.375M, 228 Violet Dr 4/2/2 listed at $1.749M, 5618 Baltusrol Ct 4/4/2 listed at $2.195M.
7 closed sales: 401 Raintree Pl 3/1.5 412.5K; 1558 Sand Castle Rd 3/2 $565K (our listing & sale); 238 Daniel Dr 3/2 $747,126; 245 Christofer Ct 3/2 $750K; 1121 Skiff Pl 3/3 $985K; 526 N Yachtsman Dr 3/2 $995K; 572 Kinzie Island Ct 5/5 $2.15M.
LOTS
1 new listing: 1331 Par View Dr $349K.
1 price change: 1837 Buckthorn Ln now $599K.
No new or closed sales.
Captiva
CONDOS
No new listings.
1 price change: Lands End Village #1667 2/2 now $1.189M.
No new sales.
1 closed sale: Bayside Villas #4212 1/2 $345K.
HOMES
3 new listings: 15000 Binder Dr 3/2 $1.325M, 16801 Captiva Dr 5/5 $2.295M, 16531 Captiva Dr 8/8 $2.85M.
No price changes or new sales.
2 closed sales: 11509 Chapin Ln 4/4 $1.325M, 11559 Laika Ln 2/2/2 $4.25M.
LOTS
Nothing to report.
This representation is based in part on data supplied by the Sanibel & Captiva Islands Association of Realtors® Multiple Listing Service. Neither the association nor its MLS guarantees or is in any way responsible for its accuracy. Data maintained by the association or its MLS may not reflect all real estate activity in the market. The information provided represents the general real estate activity in the community and does not imply that SanibelSusan Realty Associates is participating or participated in these transactions.
Until next Friday, enjoy your weekend!
Susan Andrews, aka SanibelSusan