Features

The House

Posted on: February 19, 2007

By Barbara Orr

The vacation housing that is available for rent in Florida is amazing. The prices range From $20,000 a week for Exclusive Island homes to $900 a week for more modest homes. Ours is a beautiful 3 bed room 3 and a half bath home with stone tile floors and a huge covered lanai area and a swimming pool and a great Jacuzzi, all covered over with an enormous screened in enclosure, a modest $1300 a week. There is a boat dock in the back, where an ocean going vessel could be docked. We, however do not have or rent a boat because of the ability of this crew to get lost, we’ve decided that Uncle Bob behind the wheel of a boat would have us illegally in Cuba in no time; it’s only 190 miles from here. In this area the development focused on Ocean access and all of the larger homes have boat docks with direct access to a bay, The Gulf, or the Calooshahatchee River, which flows into the ocean. The house we are in is for sale for a mere $1,200,000. One of the bedrooms, both living rooms, and the kitchen have sliding glass doors and the entire house can be opened to the pool area, which we did most of the time. The house is surrounded by wonderful Florida landscaping, cared for by gardeners, and beautiful palm trees. It is only 6 blocks to the Cape Coral beach and yacht club. The only thing I didn’t like about the house were the kitchen cabinets were too high for me to reach, so I had to let the others do the table setting…oh well.

Cape Coral is a planned community. It was built in the 1960’s when dredging became more possible the canals and inlets are all man made so nearly every neighborhood has many waterfront homes. Most of the homes here are $800,000 or more. You can buy a home for $250,000 if it is ten miles or more from the shore. Building lots go from $29,000 to $299,000. These are for lots which are sand, 5 feet above the water table, surrounded by alligator infested waters. (Go figure) Condos start at $99,000 for small ones further from the water.

The areas and buildings here have very pretentious names to go with their social status. “Navona at the Colony” “Turtle Point at West Bay Club” “Livingstone Woods” Cobblestone on the lake and many others. Ours was the “Cape Coral Yacht Club” However; you can still buy a single wide mobile home on leased land for $40,000 furnished – of course there’s no guarantee you can afford the lot rent, or that it might not blow or float away in the next hurricane. The newer houses are all built of concrete block and stucco, the frames for the Screened enclosures are high stress metal and hurricane “proof” concrete roofs and, driveways and pools are all over the area. Automatic shutters are available for windows and detachable pool screens are also available. The greatest danger in these areas though is not wind, but any storm surge higher than 15 feet would submerge all of these houses in fresh sea water and alligators. The last hurricane”Charlie” that hit here hit at Captiva Island and removed all of the non-native trees and damaged most of the homes, they are still recovering after 2 years.

I like living in the Intermountain West, high and dry, especially during hurricane season.

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