Volume 6 Number 10                                           April 14, 2008

I Just Got Here...What Happened?

I think my father was a Henny Youngman understudy. By the time Dad was in his nineties, we weren't laughing at the jokes he was telling as much as we were laughing at how funny the jokes were when he first told them twenty years ago, and the fact that he was still telling them.

"A guy fell off the roof of a building and lands on the sidewalk after falling through an awning and hitting a fruit stand display and spewing apples and oranges all over the sidewalk.. A cop walks up to him and asks, "What happened?" 

"I don't know," came the reply, "I just got here myself."

I remembered this story Dad told when I was touring some properties with one of our buyers from New York. If you read the local papers, you would KNOW our market in a mess. Too much inventory, prices crashing, foreclosures, short sales, grow houses, no mortgage money, banks going under, bankruptcies on the rise, jobs lost, local government going broke.  If, on the other hand, you just arrived in town and over the past few years you were living YOUR life, in YOUR world and more concerned about YOUR local paper, then what you see here in Lee County when you arrive is something quite different.

First and foremost, what you see when you come here is the weather. We have forgotten how wonderful it is, how special it is, and how privileged we are to have the weather we have here in Lee County.  Those of you that are transplants form the north: remember how amazed you were to be able to sit outside in a T shirt in January?  How strange Christmas lights looked on a palm tree? How special it was to pick you own oranges or strawberries? How green everything was?

I have been talking to our buyers and relearning from them how special Lee County is.  Lest we forget here are some of the highlights we have habitualized to the point that we don't see them as special any more.

1. The Weather. 
2. The Beaches.
3. The Restaurants.
4. The Golf.
5. The Culture
6. The Shopping.
7. The Transportation
8. The Boating
9. The Schooling
10. The Gardening.
11. The Fishing
12. The Living Choices.
13. The Newness.
14. The Affordability.

The only one we lost over the last three years was number 14 - The affordability; and now we even have that again.  Take a look around and pretend you just got here. Enjoy.

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