Western Real Estate News

Marco Island is a very unique island in Southwest Florida. It is the largest of Florida’s renowned Ten Thousand Islands chain stretching from Everglades City to Flamingo, the island has an impressive collection of historically significant places to keep residents and tourists alike enamored with the community for a lifetime.

Part of the Wilderness Waterway, Marco Island’s varied plant life, animal life, and geography alone is astounding. There are sand hills, forests of pine trees, fields and pristine sandy beaches, and a swamp of mangrove trees. Burrowing owls inhabit the island–in fact, nature lovers report that the islet is the only island in the Ten Thousand Islands chain to be home to these birds.

The city provides a full range of services for residents, with an excellent school system and infrastructure. Visitors to the island can find numerous activities on Marco Island, including snorkeling, canoeing, boating, sport fishing, and much more. There are even archaeological excavations that are over 2000 years old from native American indian tribes, such as the Calusa Indian burial mound and the famous “Marco Cat” found at the Frank Cushing Archaeological Site.

The uniquely habitable island was home to nearly 15,000 residents in the 2000 census, but census data to be released on December 21, 2010 is expected to show significant growth from those figures. The boom in real estate in the new millennium led to economic and population growth from the Naples metropolitan area, with many exclusive homes commissioned during that period. With the housing price pullback that followed, bargain hunters have found exclusive Marco Island real estate parcels that are priced very attractively. In fact, Marco Island condos and bank owned properties represent some of the best bargains on the Multiple Listing Service.

Prices on Marco Island homes at the time of this writing range from about $70,000 for a 460 s.f. townhouse to $10.5 million for a 12,000 s.f. estate. There are plenty of choices in water front properties, many with private access to the pristine Gulf of Mexico waters.

While it can be hard to find the right family home for your lifestyle in the L.A. area, it’s not impossible – if you know where to look. A virtually undiscovered quite community is Oak Park. It is just a few minutes from Agoura Hills in the Conejo Valley. Oak Park homes are reasonably priced and are close to shopping, several parks, and Malibu State Beach.

Oak Park, California is just west of Woodland Hills in Ventura County. It’s a short half hour commute from downtown L.A. for those who need to work there. It is less than half an hour from Malibu State Beach, where you’ll have miles of fun along the California coastline. Want to take a road trip? Hope on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and take the scenic route up the coast.

Oak Park real estate specialist Carol Lee has lived in the area for many years and has the local knowledge and professional expertise to find the perfect Oak Park homes for your family to choose from. She will guide you through a smooth real estate transaction. Carol can assist you in finding some outstanding real estate deals in the Oak Park area in desirable neighborhoods. You can search for these deals easily on her real estate website specializing in Oak Park properties.

The entire MLS is available to search on Carol Lee’s site, so you won’t just find a select few Oak Park listings. A 3 bedroom 2 bath home in Oak Park starts at about $480,000, so you can find a family home in the neighborhood that fits your home price budget requirements. One incredibly easy-to-use feature of the site is the automated email alerts you can sign up for so you’ll get notified when there are new properties matching your search criteria.

You can find a great Oak Park map search tool for homes in Oak Park at www.carollee4homes.com in addition to a more advanced Oak Park real estate search tool with numerous MLS fields that can be searched. We recommend using the advanced search tool to find Oak Park short sales and foreclosures. Just enter “foreclosure,” “reo,” “bank owned,” or “short sale” in the remarks box and click “Search.”