Marcophile: Realty reality, Marco style

He must not have read the prices in Naples.

We've dabbled in Marco real estate since 1973. Unfortunately, we always had to sell one property to buy another. Had we held on to them all -- well, let's put it this way:

The only three-word slogan more important in real estate than "location, location, location," might be "coulda, woulda, shoulda."

If we could have bought and held, we would have and should have. OK, spilt milk.

In the meantime, real estate values here have risen to nosebleed levels.

One Marco broker/agent calls buyer interest during the past few weeks "a feeding frenzy."

Real estate agents often must deal with sticker shock suffered by buyers unfamiliar with the history of price increases here.

It brings to life the old real estate joke: "First, you folks tell me what you can afford, then we'll have a good laugh, and go on from there."

A little pricing history puts housing appreciation here in context, courtesy of Wendy Happney of RE/MAX Realty:

In 1997, a 500-square-foot, one-bedroom condo in the Apollo beachfront building sold for $189,000. A year later, an identical unit two floors below sold for $212,000.

That same unit sold in 1999 for $259,900. A year after that it went for $280,000.

This past April, it sold for $373,000.

Another example -- this from Tim H. Sykes, of Anchor Real Estate:

A tip lot on beautiful Landmark Bay sold for about $25,000 to $30,000 in the early 1970s. The owners put a small, 2-bedroom house on it.

Fast forward to 1995. A couple bought the place for $263,000. They sold it five years later for $575,000. The new owners sold it two years later, as a tear-down, for $850,000.

With the new, luxurious house on that lot, it must be worth at least $1.5 million.

Makes the brow sweat and the nerves flutter, eh?

"Property shoppers are here and active, especially those in the market for home sites on water," Sykes says. "The season is getting an early start, it seems."

Sykes notes that inventory of home sites is low right now -- 186 lots for sale as of Nov. 12 -- 119 of them on water. That indicates demand is up. Prices too.

Wendy Happney says tear-downs are so prevalent now that there's even a "tear-down" category in the multiple listings.

She said the cheapest lot for sale on Marco as of Nov. 12 was $125,000. It was purchased in 1991 for $28,000. The cheapest waterfront lot for sale last week was $267,000.

Still, Realtors are right when they maintain that Marco is a bargain, compared with comparable digs in Naples' nicer neighborhoods.

Nationally, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, David Lereah, says the median price for existing homes this year should turn out to be $168,600, up about 6.6 percent. He predicts a slightly lower increase -- 4.5 percent -- next year. So the message here is clear. Anyone who wants to live here, ever, might want to get something here, now.

Those folks also should keep in mind a wise old saying:

"A man's home is his castle; at least that's how it seems when he pays the taxes on it."