Jon Zolsky, your Daytona Beach, Florida connection

Towers Nine Condominiums in Ponce Inlet - Florida

Presenting you Towers Nine in beautiful and quaint Ponce Inlet. This direct oceanfront condominium building with 50 Two-bedroom / Two baths and Three-bedroom / Three baths condo units.

This is the last Towers condo in the series of 9 seven-story oceanfront buildings that were erected by DiMucci Companies in Ponce Inlet from 1991 (Towers One) and Towers Nine in 2000.

Currently there are 6 condo units for sale in Towers Nine. Lowest priced 2/2 is $499,900 and lowest 3/3 is $499,000. Paradoxes of the market where you can buy a 3 bdr/3 baths condo for $900 less than a 2 bdr/ 2 bath.

There are 42 condos currently for sale in all of Towers in Ponce Inlet starting from $219K in Towers Five for a 2/2, and a 3/3 in the same Towers Five for $369,900 and all the way to a 5 bdr/4 baths 4,009 SF penthouse for $1.8 Mil. The highest priced 2/2 is in Towers Nine and is priced at $597K, and the highest priced 3/3 is in Towers Eight and it is for sale at $824,900.

Below is the table showing you what units in Towers Nine were selling for. The last sales were in 2007, so they are not representative of the prices today, but I still thought you would be interested in seeing it.

If you are fond of Ponce Inlet as I am, please, give me a call at 386-405-4408 or drop me a line in the e-mail.

There are 65 listings of single family homes for sale in Ponce Inlet currently. Start from $179,900 for a 2 bdr/2 bath older (1968) 1,431 sf home and going all the way to a 4 bdr / 4 baths direct Intracoastal 1985 brick beauty with 3,500 sf under air.

Actually this 2 bdr/ 2 baths home for $179,900 is the only home for under $200,000 in Ponce Inlet. A couple of months ago there were 4 or more houses for under $200K, and there were over one hundred of them for sale.

The recession hit Ponce Inlet too. Just look at a 3 bdr/ 2.5 bath 2,711 sf home for only $256,500 and you can be assured that this is an REO, an abbreviation that nobody in Ponce Inlet knew just 3-4 years ago. But with only 5 homes for under $300,000, Ponce Inlet values still look good. There was hardly a home for less than $400,000 a few years back, and now there are 17 homes for less than that, and some are just exceptional values.

Good time to buy in Ponce Inlet, where geographical limitations make it an exclusive community, as with only just over 60 scattered vacant lots and very little acreage left, it is the closest to Key West, where the values are so high simply because there is no more land.

Can you buy now in Key West? Yeah, right... But you can still buy in Ponce Inlet. And trust me, the beaches here are gorgeous. No comparison to Key West. KeyWesters can attest to that.

Not that I am trying to persuade you to buy a home in Ponce Inlet, but if you are thinking of finding a quietest place for retirement, or a quality place to raise kids in Florida, Ponce Inlet can be just the place for you... as it became a place for me.

Call me at 386-405-4408 or drop me a line by e-mail.

Remember, I am only an e-mile away.

* Please, do not "steal" this photo without permission. It is mine and I am proud of it.

Condo-Hotel market in Daytona Beach area is slow, and it is not really surprising. Condo-hotel market goes hot after the residential condo market is on a rise for quite some time, which creates a serious gap between the prices, making condo-hotels the only option to be on the ocean for reasonable price. This is the last property type to appreciate and the first to start falling when the market winds change.

Overall market conditions have warmed up in the area, and it is reflected even in the Condo-hotel segment. From over 300 condo-hotels units for sale before January, we are to 242 units today. But this is still a lot, and the trigger for the price war starts when the number of available units falls under 100 units for sale in the whole area.

In 9 moths of this year there were 58 condo-hotel units sold starting from just $20K to $125K, a far cry from last year's 38 units sold in 9 months of 2008 from 39,000 to $235K.

Recession being so long has affected the financial stability of condo-hotel market in Daytona Beach area more than other types of properties. Some condo-hotels had to endure very costly concrete restoration, which could not come at worse time. Some owners have stopped paying their monthly Association dues... The improvement in the market that we see may not be enough to help the condo-hotels to get back into operating in the black, and the future of this segment is not clear at this moment.

For more information about Daytona Beach area condo-hotels or condos call me at 386-405-4408 or e-mail me.

What Would I Pay If I Buy A Condo in Daytona Beach Shores or in Ponce Inlet?

Simple answer: Maintenance (Association) Fee, Unit Owner Insurance, and Property Tax.

Maintenance fee does not depend on whether you are renting the unit out or not. It usually covers everything outside of the unit (upkeep of the grounds, common electric, elevators, pool, security systems, basic cable) and it includes water, so you pay separately your electric, telephone, and cable if you add some extra programming. For a modest 2 bdr/2 baths condo expect it to be in mid $300 to $400+ a month.

Insurance for the condo unit was not mandatory until just recently. Now you have to buy one, or the association will buy it and bill you for it. Because the major part is taken care by the association and the only goal is to protect the interior and content of theunit itself, it is not really too expensive. you can find a policy starting form under $200 to several humdred dollars a year. Read more here: Buying Condos In Daytona Beach Shores or in Ponce Inlet. Insurance

Property taxes in Florida are not included in the Maintenance Fee. Property tax is about 2%-2.2% of the value, but this is not the exact number, which will be calculated by the County Property Appraiser.

If you live in this unit 6 months plus one day, this is your primary residence, and you can get Homestead exemption, which will significnatly reduce your taxes and, what is even more important, lock the increase in taxes to no more than 3% a year. When the market heats up, the values go up double digits, so this becomes extremely important.

In some of the condo buildings in Daytona Beach Shores the manager would do rentals for the owners, but even if they offer that, you are not obligated to use them and you can use anyone, any agent, or do it yourself.

If you enter a rental management agreement, it will spell out the details how they operate, and what they charge. It usually depends on whether it is short term or long term rental. If you have questions about rentals, Vadim in our office can be a better source of information, as he is handling rentals of couple of dozen of condos, and knows it better than me. His phone #386-405-2156. E-mail: zolavadim@msn.com .

So, does it make sense to buy a condo in Daytona Beach Shores or in Ponce Inletnow? You bet. It makes sense not because of the maintenance fee, which is pretty much the same in buyers' and Sellers' market, but because of the price, a very low price of the units today. For more information on buying condos on the beachside, call me at 386-405-4408.

Here are a few links to a more recent information about Ponce Inlet: http://activerain.com/blogsview/1234881/evening-in-ponce-inlet-fl

Here's another very recent one: http://activerain.com/blogsview/1228638/early-september-sunday-on-the-beach-in-ponce-inlet-fl

And here is one from August: http://activerain.com/blogsview/1219029/magic-of-the-atlantic-sunday-in-ponce-inlet-

Everyone has to take care of someone. People have children, people have pets. Our children are already middle aged, and we do not have pets. So we are taking care of our guest from Moscow. She is a granddaughter of our friend back from the time in the Russian Arctic. It is not that we have to take care of our guest. At 20 she can handle it without us, but having a guest is is a perfect reason for us to go places.

There are places that we like, but rarely or never go to by ourselves. It is always when someone pays us a visit. Same this time. We are off to St. Augustine Alligator Farm, which is about 50 miles north of us. In Florida with its over 1 million alligators driving 50 miles and paying $20+ for an adult ticket sounds crazy, but in reality to see an alligator in the wild is not an everyday occurrence. It is not that there are not in the rivers, lakes and ponds, it is that they are masters of hiding from our eyes.

You can takeI-95, and it would be faster, but we prefer taking a scenic State Road A1A, which goes mostly along the ocean. St. Augustine Alligator Farm is right at the intersection of Anastasia Blvd and A1A. We first went to the Alligator Farm on our second visit to Florida. It was a surprise to me that there were plenty of other species besides alligators. They have 23 species of crocodillians, and this is the only place in the world that has all crocodillians in one place.

The farm is heresince 1893 and is one of the oldest zoos in the nation. When we came here first time, Gomek, the biggest crocodile on that farm, was still alive. Gomek was an 18' nearly 2,000 lbs. Now Gomek, or better say what the skilled hands have made from his skin, is on display at the farm, and in a pool that was his, there is another Australian saltwater crocodile, a 15' Maximo.

We came lateand missed the feeding frenzy. A 4 PM "show" was uneventful. A small young lady with a stick in her hands was walking between alligators, who paid no attention to her, and forcing them to move was not easy. The sure way to make them do anything were pellets that they feed to them. We could see the power of those jaws, - in reality the most powerful jaws in terms of pounds psf, comparable with a small truck.

With that power you can easily break the teeth if you get some wrong stuff in. And they do break teeth. But they have a terrific dental plan from the nature. They grow new teeth at any age. Their resource is about 2,000 teeth through their life. Pretty good allowance, I would say.

The culminationof our visit were not the crocodillians, and not the snakes, and not the birds, which are abundant there. It was watching the sex of Galapagos Tortoise. At 4' and over 600 lb, males take their sex duties seriously and do not rush. Actually it takes hours, so their stamina is enviable. What was funny is that males were moaning. I checked Wikipedia to make sure I am not making it up and taking something different for the sex game, but it only confirmed that I was right.

And yo can see it here: Sex In The City... In The Oldest City That Is

For Real Estate south of St.Augustine and in Daytona Beach area call me at 386-405-4408