Need Information on Fort Myers (Miami, Sanibel: real estate, insurance, for sale)

[tjstrain]

I hope your renting a place first to get to know the area. There are some areas less desirable than others. Luckily my wifes brother had lived here for a few years before we moved here 8 years ago. So we had his advice and lots of his friends advise us on where and where not to look.We rented for almost a year before finding "the house" that we bought and still live in. We had many little desires that it had to accomadate for us to consider it for purchase. I am presently looking for land and/or a house on the Gerogia/SC border to eventually move to. Insurance costs and many other costs are rising down here, along with the over crowding "in season" with snowbirds. You have to wait at least an hour at all resturants for a dinner res.. There are so many old farts who should not be on the road here. I had another one just 2 days ago pull right out in front of me from a side street, I had to slam on the brakes and swerve to miss them. Some will just stop in the fast lane and wait for the sow lane to clear to turn right into a parking lot. Some don't even stop, they just pull in front of you. It must be those giant sunglasses they wear that impeads their vision. Sorry about the rant.
There are a lot of fairly new developments that look good to new people in the area BUT, you gotta be careful, most are over crowded with families/people for the area that their in. Most builders are cramming as many homes on their land as they can to maximise their profits. Once you move into one of those shoebox ugly houses with high community fees, most people regret it. IMO
I guess having the 22 years of building backround that I have makes it tougher for me to buy a house here. I'm real critical of the quality & workmanship of the local builders. My wife hated looking at homes with me due to the fact that I would rip them apart as we walked through.

If you need info on the area I'd be glad to assist.

[tjstrain]

The Middle schools, as the High Schools have a "Police person" (their called "Sherrif's" here) assigned to each one. A friend of ours is one, assigned to a school close by. I guess their the same all over the USA. public money paying the salaries, not a whole lot, so most teachers really are just killing time until retirement. Most teachers start out caring but then when they get into the "flow" with the gov. interventions and they just throw up their hands and give in.
Watch out for "School Choise" down here. It really doesn't matter what your choise is, unless you know someone like we did 8 years ago. They'll send your kids to a school 10 miles by bus away from you when there is a school 500 feet from your house. Our school system is wasting so much darn money and they really don't care. All they have to do is raise our taxes some more to have more cash to waste. The graduation rate really is low here, I'm sure there's a web page that you can see that on. We live in LEE County btw.

[tjstrain]

The really nice thing about Estero is we are only 20 to 45 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. There is a boat ramp only 4 miles from my house so when we desire to put the jetski's in the water, which we do year round, it's not like forever getting there.
They have just revised the FEMA flood maps for our area so the insurance co.'s will be requiring a lot of people to add flood insurance coverage to their policy. Luckily our house is not in that new area.
Allstate Homeowners Ins. has/is dropping 1000's of loyal clients, like ourselves, because of the hurricanes. And they made 17 BILLION dollars profit in the last quarter. Were paying about $3400 a year for a 2500 SF house.

[Floridian34210]

Originally Posted by Mom2KidsNY

Hi. My family and I are thinking about moving to Fort Myers in a few months. Does anyone here have some information on Fort Myers. How are the schools,houses,jobs,people, weather year round etc. We are in our mid twenties with 2 kids. Any info would be appreciated. Thank you !

I don't know much about Fort Myers, however I hear on the news everyday nasty things that would not make me want to live there.

I live in Southeast Cape Coral (it's near Fort Myers in Lee County.) Cape Coral is not a bad city. We are the 3rd Safest City in Florida with a population of over 100,000, and despite and some people might say in these forums, it is a nice city. I would consider moving to SE Cape Coral instead of Fort Myers.

[tjstrain]

Floridan34210, Isn't there an ongoing investigation about the two men who were tortured, killed and then were set on fire over there in Cape Coma? It was a gang thing, right? Cape Coral is one of those places that I was told to stay away from when we were looking. If you are retired It might be a nice place to live. One major thing is that every time you cross 2 of the three bridges you have to pay a toll. Traffic is really, really bad getting to and from Cape Coma, I mean Coral. The police are always, always out with radar and doing traffic stops. They are very strict with law enforcement there. They have very strange laws pertaining to how and what you can do with your house and vehicles parked around it. It's a boating community and you are not allowed to park your boat on a trailer anywhere insight from the road. Not even on the sides of your home. Pickup trucks were not even allowed to be parked in the driveway of your home. Cape Coral was developed as a retirement community so they made up rules that would accommodate the older folks.
The secret is that no matter where you choose to live, buy a house, you must ask for a copy of the deed restrictions and read them. The real estate agents are required at settlement to give you a copy of all covenants and restrictions for the neighborhood that you are buying in. To cover their a$$e$ they will give you a sheet that you must sign saying (slipped in with all of the other pages to be signed) that you received said doc's, but they rarely give you a the required doc's. There are lots of restrictions in 99% of the neighborhoods here. Even the non-gated ones.

Another area to be careful in is Lehigh Acres. There like Cape Coral is full of an abundant number empty building lots. While the builders are building the homes, the thieves are breaking in and stealing anything that the can get. Contractors of every trade will try and *********. If they don't take your money and then go out of business. Everyone with a tool belt down here thinks their a contractor. I've got over 20 years in the building trade so I know a tad about what I'm talking about.
One community that has no, NO, restrictions is " San Carlos Park". So there is a mix of houses and people living in there. You can have a really nice house right next to a semi-slum. There's a lot of rentals in there so the incomes vary. There are some nice and not so nice sections. We actually rented a home there for a year in a nice section before finding our present house.

[Floridian34210]

Originally Posted by tjstrain

Floridan34210, Isn't there an ongoing investigation about the two men who were tortured, killed and then were set on fire over there in Cape Coma? It was a gang thing, right? Cape Coral is one of those places that I was told to stay away from when we were looking. If you are retired It might be a nice place to live. One major thing is that every time you cross 2 of the three bridges you have to pay a toll. Traffic is really, really bad getting to and from Cape Coma, I mean Coral. The police are always, always out with radar and doing traffic stops. They are very strict with law enforcement there. They have very strange laws pertaining to how and what you can do with your house and vehicles parked around it. It's a boating community and you are not allowed to park your boat on a trailer anywhere insight from the road. Not even on the sides of your home. Pickup trucks were not even allowed to be parked in the driveway of your home. Cape Coral was developed as a retirement community so they made up rules that would accommodate the older folks.
The secret is that no matter where you choose to live, buy a house, you must ask for a copy of the deed restrictions and read them. The real estate agents are required at settlement to give you a copy of all covenants and restrictions for the neighborhood that you are buying in. To cover their a$$e$ they will give you a sheet that you must sign saying (slipped in with all of the other pages to be signed) that you received said doc's, but they rarely give you a the required doc's. There are lots of restrictions in 99% of the neighborhoods here. Even the non-gated ones.

Another area to be careful in is Lehigh Acres. There like Cape Coral is full of an abundant number empty building lots. While the builders are building the homes, the thieves are breaking in and stealing anything that the can get. Contractors of every trade will try and *********. If they don't take your money and then go out of business. Everyone with a tool belt down here thinks their a contractor. I've got over 20 years in the building trade so I know a tad about what I'm talking about.
One community that has no, NO, restrictions is " San Carlos Park". So there is a mix of houses and people living in there. You can have a really nice house right next to a semi-slum. There's a lot of rentals in there so the incomes vary. There are some nice and not so nice sections. We actually rented a home there for a year in a nice section before finding our present house.

tjstrain, Cape Coma, I mean Coral has it's bad areas, yes. But, SOUTHEAST Cape Coral is not one of them. If you want to live in the Cape, choose your area WISELY. The ordinances are for peoples safety. I admit, some of them are stupid, but not all of them.

[parrotnoise]

My Fort Myers Story (good And Bad)

I am currently in the midwest due to my career, but spent 2 years in Ft. Myers, Florida. Due to the nature of my job I saw almost every part of the area. For those interested in moving there, I will attempt to give you ALL of my experiences in a nutshell----both good and bad.

We moved in early April which is nearing the end of "SEASON." After Memorial Day weekend, the traffic and "snowbirds" tend to die down quickly. By then you are looking at 90 plus temperatures almost everyday anyhow.

WHAT I LIKED:

I greatly enjoyed all the restaurants. In the phone book, there are PAGES of every kind of food imaginable. If you love GREEK or ITALIAN cooking for instance, you will find many choices in various price ranges. Sanibel and the Beaches offered plenty of fancy and button down places to check out as well. Many were half inside (in AC) and half "open air" so you could choose. I enjoyed the fact that almost everybody was from someplace else, so there was little of that "outsider" feeling that you get in many other states. The shopping was decent with hundreds of specialty store. For example, if you liked collecting "salt water aquarium fish," there were many stores that specialized ONLY in that. There were pet stores that leaned toward dogs or ones that leaned only toward exotic birds. You could find it all there. The drives along the beaches and down McGregor with the palm trees were hypnotic in the off season when traffic was lighter, and I used to purposely get up early on my days off to enjoy this or to walk the beach. Collecting shells on Sanibel was fun and we had every imaginable bird wandering through our apartment complex. My parrot used to talk to them. As far as general quality of life and making friends, it was a very fun time. We lived within 15 minutes (off-season) of either Bowman's Beach (where we got engaged) or Ft Myers Beach.

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE.

Housing is expensive and I would imagine has gotten WORSE since the hurricane a couple years ago. Our rent for an apartment was almost $800 a month plus another $150 or more in utilities way back in 1999. We were in one of the "better" complexes in Ft. Myers, but we still had trouble. My wife's car was broken into twice and outright STOLEN right from the carport TWICE. The second time we never got it back!! (They sawed through the club on it) Mind you, this is in one of the "BETTER" neighborhoods. We both had excellent driving records and both cars were PAID FOR, yet insurance with ALLSTATE was HORRENDOUS!!!! Security on most apartment complex grounds is a joke. Don't be too easily swayed by the manicured lawns and multiple pools. The "trash" will come through at night in some of these complexes and take what they want. Use a club even in daylight around Ft. Myers or you may come back to broken glass where your car should be.

I never saw as many 13 and 14 year old girls pushing baby carriages around any mall as I did at Edison Mall. That doesn't say much for family upbringing to me. I never was witness to a violent crime, but the area certainly had it's fair share of them. Plus you should ALWAYS carry some cash, in case you need to hit a toll bridge across to "Cape Coma" as it is called.

Driving deserves a seperate section but briefly:
It was not that bad in the summer and early fall. However in "SEASON" the same 15 minute drives I mentioned earlier became tedious creeping HOUR to HOUR AND A HALF crawls across the Sanibel or Ft Myers Beach causeways. Once you are on the islands, it is always a challenge to PARK. Many times you will pay $5-$10 to be crammed into a private lot if you are in a hurry. During season, there are so many old people who are (Sorry, but TRUE) TOO SENILE to be NEAR a car, let alone DRIVING. I have seen more crazy accidents and "near-misses" caused by the "cotton-tops" of the world here than anyplace in the country. But, DON'T EVER get started on the subject of "re-testing" them down here. You'll start a war of words that you'll never win.



The women are gorgeous, but if you are single and drive anything less than the latest sports car or a luxury car, you won't stand a chance. Money and status talk, and this is not an area to be "poor" in. A lot of people get in trouble with PAYDAY loans and EZ finance companies when they are short on cash, and this is as bad as borrowing from a loan shark. For the most part, most jobs down here pay in "sunshine." That is to say, if you are used to making $50K a year elsewhere and living nicely, it will be tougher to find that kind of job and the money will not go as far here if you do.

[LeavingFlorida05]

You have children? Don't move down here. Fort Myers (and Southwest Florida, in general) is a terrible place to raise a family. Crime is high. The schools are bad. There is a large disparity between the rich and the poor. If you want your kids to grow up with an accurate view of society, in the US, Fort Myers is not the place to raise them. If you want your children sitting next to the child of a drug dealer or illegal immigrant, in class, then by all means, come on down.

[bitburgsarah]

My husband and I and our 5 yr old son moved here from New york in December...since we have moved here every expierance has been a nightmare. Driving here is the most scariest place to be on the road and again we are from New york and the fatalities of accidents that we see everyday is horrible. The first month I was here I was hit by a drunk driver at 8 am on Daniels parkway by the airport at a stoplight while she was driving 80 mph then after her car was stuck to my jeep somehow drove off and at the next light hit another new yorker. Hoe no one was hurt still astonishes me then a couple days ago i had to jump out my car to help aftal accident on sunshine blvd where a woman had died and her 3 kids were stuck in the back as helped the little boy out i was in complete shock as to what i witnessing and realised this place is not safe for my child. The bus drivers talk on their cell phones, this area is way overpopulated!!!! Yes the sunsets are nice, yeas it is cheaper too live except you will notice at least we did... In ny our elctric bill for a 3drm home was $65 a month give or take here our bill is almost $300 a month and we dont use the ac or the heat and we dont even dry our clothes. We ar planning to get the hell out og here and have realised this area is just going keep getting worse. Its dirty no one recycles the only people that i notice cleaning garbage off of the rds here are inmates which makes me feel real safe seeing that in my neighborhood, the list just keeps getting worse..oh yeah and they have the school of choice program down here where they may be achool right by your house perfect for your children but it doesnt matter your child like mine will be at a school an hour away from home because the county decides where your child goes. This place is a joke. They still ride around and put confedrate flags up im assuming they didnt take history and just dont realise they didnt win the war... If your not getting what im saying people down here are LOOPY ..WHACKOS ...STUPID... SLOW....

[missnmass]

here in cape coral florida schools are good daughter is in middle school trying to move back to mass taxacusettes i miss the season real bad.