Since we made a feeble attempt at flipping houses back about 5 or 6  years ago it intrigues me to just peruse through the Brevard MLS and see what prices are doing. It certainly is interesting to see where things have gone from the heydays of 2002 to 2005 to now. Prices have dropped considerably and many homes are selling for less than half of what they were just 7 years ago. Below are a couple of examples:

We sold a 3 bedroom 2 bath, 1,704 square foot home in Riviera Key in October of 2007 for $180,000 in a short sale. We purchased that home in October of 2005 for $242,000 and that exact model of home in the Rivera Key subdivision in Palm Bay, is now listed for $95,500. That’s a huge total reduction of 61% off of the original price and a 12% reduction off of the price since my last report on Palm Bay real estate.

The second example is a Florida home we sold in April 2005 for $345,000 that now has an exact model listed in the Brevard MLS for $205,000 six years later, a 40% reduction in the price. Other examples are a couple of homes in our neighborhood, one that was listed for $199,000 a year ago, then dropped to $149,000 and is now priced at $74,900 and is still sitting. The other has been priced at $65,000 and is a nice house that the previous owners put some nice upgrades in and it has been sitting at that price for more than a year.

While Jean and I go out to eat quite a bit and see lots of people in local restaurants and around town and at times wonder where the recession is, it is right here in real estate. Something is not correlating between what’s happening to real estate prices, how long homes are on the market and how much money people seem to have that they can spend on discretionary items such as dinner out.

All this is happening in our local economy while the Brevard County unemployment rate has gone from 2.8% in April of 2006 to 11.4% in February this year (the most current stats as of this post). Unfortunately, this information doesn’t make our local economy look all that great and it may even spell for much harder times ahead.

If you have a job and or a good source of income right now, be thankful and count your blessings and maybe put a little or a lot back, as the case may be, for when things get tougher because we still don’t know where the bottom of the Palm Bay real estate market is. It is still really anyone’s guess.

Honestly, I’d rather spend a little more money for groceries in a place that has the good sense to keep their establishment clean instead of shopping at a grocery store that for some reason doesn’t seem to think those things are important. I’m guessing that if the part of the store that I can see is clean, there’s a better chance the part of the store that I can’t see that handles and moves the food is clean as well. We stopped going to Winn Dixie on Malabar Road a long time ago because the part of the store we could see smelled and wasn’t clean. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what the hidden part of the store looked like.

While other stores like Walmart, also on the border of West Melbourne and Palm Bay, are fairly clean, Walmart is just too big to really enjoy shopping there. We do go to Walmart occasionally, but it is like shopping in an airplane hangar and really more of a chore than a pleasure. If you forget something, it always seems to be on the other side of the store and you have to hike a ways to retrieve it. My wife and I now bring our phones if we go to Walmart just so we can find each other if we need to.

We only go to Walmart occasionally, but do the majority of our grocery shopping at Publix except for the bi-weekly produce box we get from the Happy Healthy Human in Indian Harbour Beach. Another reason I like Publix is that they frequently have food tasting at various stations around the store and I do like to sample the goodies once in a while. Of course, Publix is extremely convenient to shop at as their location is just right across Palm bay Road from us. We could almost walk, but it might be a little bit of a hassle carrying the groceries home.

I do appreciate Publix’ cleanliness, that’s probably the biggest reason I shop there. They’ve figured out the obvious and they obviously make sure someone sweeps the front of the store and keeps everything in the store orderly. It doesn’t take much, but sometimes businesses ignore the obvious to their peril. Publix West Melbourne on Palm Bay Road has my business for a long time.

This is a guest post from Jean LeStourgeon. It’s true, the best things in life are free. The best things in life are the things money can’t buy – things like a cool breeze, sunshine sparkling on the ocean, time spent with bosom buddies, deep blue skies, powder puff clouds, stars twinkling on a backdrop of velvet night, rainbows gracing the sky after a late afternoon rain shower, the glory of God displayed in the rising sun, a harvest moon hanging over the tree tops, warm hugs from dear old souls, and sweet luscious mulberry’s hanging heavy on the branch, ripe for the picking.

Today was one of those days in Palm Bay Florida. The kind that just makes you feel rich and totally content…like you can forget for a moment all that’s going on in the world that you would just as soon forget anyway. I was already walking down my driveway, about to take a walk, in the cool, sunshiny spring afternoon and suddenly remembered my neighbor Janet’s invitation. “Feel free to pick mulberries from my tree on the side of the house…it’s loaded.” Quickly, I ran inside, grabbed me a metal bowl, and jogged over  to her house.

Turning the corner to her side yard, I saw it. The mulberry tree stood broad and tall. Its branches were hanging over the street, bending close to the ground. Each willowy limb was laden with berries, tucked under graceful green leaves, just asking to be found and picked. Moving easily from one branch to the next, plucking the lowest hanging fruit first – plump, juicy, black and most of all sugary sweet – I happily filled my bowl. After about 15 minutes of picking – fingers dyed with the violet-red juices, sneaker treads filled with reminders of where I had been, quart size bowl filled to the brim with picture perfect sweetness wrapped up in black jeweled delights – I was in heaven.

The blessing of a mere 15 minute harvest brought me back to blissful summer days growing up in Maine. The anticipation of waiting on the variety of fruit to come in – each had its own short season. Heading up the summer parade of nature’s delights was the wild alpine strawberries that signaled in June “summer is finally here”. Marching 6 weeks or so behind the tiny sweet strawberries were the delicate and soft red raspberries I loved so much. They came into their own in the mid summer month of July. Every summer my mum would tell me the story of how she went into labor with me a few days after picking raspberries on our new property in Bangor in the heat of the summer. I do believe her story encouraged my love for these precious berries. Finally the prized blueberry would bring up the rear ready to be raked or picked in late August. This grand summer finale was worth the wait.

Oh, it is true, the best things in life cannot be purchase, but they can be shared by generous neighbors out of the abundance of their blessings.

We can’t tell you exactly where these beautiful Palm Bay Florida mulberries are because our neighbor’s yard might be overrun, but look around, there may be some in your neighborhood.

According to the study, survey, high school science project, whatever you want to call it (how about complete rubbish), 9.1% of you reading this post claim you drink heavily in some mysterious survey. Anyone reading this take a drinking survey lately?

I call it a mysterious survey because Business Week fails, quite miserably, to give even the slightest insight as to how the survey was taken, what the questions were, who was asked such questions and who administered said survey. I mean really, were the participants offered free booze for life? Did the researchers do an exit poll with customers leaving AB Sleaze on Babcock St in Palm Bay? Come on Business Week, a little more criteria spilled out to to the masses might give your survey a slight bit of credibility.

You can view the top 10 booziest cities here and see that there is no more data than 10 pictures, the names of the cities winning the dubious honor and the percentage of “heavy drinkers” in each city. It is interesting to note that no college towns, no national sports team cities and not even Daytona Beach for crying out loud ended up in the top 10. Shouldn’t Daytona at least get an honorable mention for the solid month of spring break, bike week booze-flowing-in-the-streets revelry? There’s probably more fire water consumed in Daytona Beach that month than in all top 10 cities combined for the year.

Oh, maybe the survey was actually taken in Daytona during Margarita Month and participants were asked where they were from. Now the picture is getting clearer, apparently Palm Bay and Melbourne residents are sneaking off to spring break late in March to party.

The irony in all this is that located in the panel right next to the pictures of the top 10 cities is this bit of self promotion: “U.S. News’s “Best” delivers recognized, authoritative information and clear, objective rankings that help readers plan for their life and ultimately, make the most of it.” Really? Ten stock photos with the names of 10 cities equates to “authoritative information and clear, objective rankings” that will help us pickled citizens of Palm Bay make the most of our lives?

Business Week just probably wanted to stir up things a bit and Melbourne Palm Bay was randomly selected and pulled out of the hat second. Honestly, the whole thing sounds like pure baloney to me.

Apparently some of us got more of the new Palm Bay trash cans than others, but the real story is how much the city paid for them and why. While the city of Melbourne Florida let Waste Management pay for the trash cans at a cost of approximately $34.50 each, for some unknown reason, the city of Palm Bay Florida decided that they would pay for the trash cans out of borrowed and city money. The claim is that Palm Bay has a better credit rating and therefore can borrow money for less.

I can’t verify this, but supposedly Palm Bay purchased the 76,000 by spending money collected from sanitation fees and not from taxes. Any way you want to look at it, the money belongs to the citizens of Palm Bay because there would be no city services if we weren’t paying the taxes that created that mechanism. Some $2.6 million was spent on the trash cans and the amount that was borrowed will end up costing the city $480,000 in interest on top of the already $175,000,000 Palm Bay is in debt.

Another controversy surrounding the new trash cans is that they were purchased from Cascade Cart Solutions in Grand Rapids Michigan instead of a local Florida, Brevard County or Palm Bay business (both Lowes and Home Depot have them, though not 76,000. I’m sure something could have been worked out). With the local economy the way it is, it doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do for a municipality such as Palm Bay to spend $2.6 million to support a non local economy, but at least they kept it in the good old USA.

Beyond the controversy, the new Palm Bay trash cans are 64 gallons, made of commercial grade plastic (the same is available at Lowes and Home Depot…just sayin) and do hold quite a bit of garbage. I hope you read the rules that also came with your trash cans (recycling cans come later to take up space in your garage) because you are now supposed to bag all of your trash, not place anything outside of the can and all recyclables will now be placed in another container to follow. That means you will be breaking down boxes when you purchase your next 56″ mega flat screen TV.

When the final trash pick-up schedule goes into effect on Nov 15th, Palm Bay will then go to a one day per week pick-up vs 2 days per week. Don’t worry though, you will save a little money for less service, a whopping 75 or so cents per month.

I think the new cans are kinda cool despite the controversy, and as you can see from the top photo you can have a little fun with them.

The weather here in Palm Bay at the beginning of October 2010 has been fantastic and this Saturday was a great day to paint a rain barrel that had been already prepared with a coat of primer and 2 coats of paint nearly the color of our house. This particular rain barrel will be placed in the front of the house, being filled with runoff from the gutters, and we thought it best to tone down the bright blue color of the barrel we got from Shonk Enterprises located in Melbourne.

I decided to have a little fun and paint some grass and flowers on the barrel to make it blend in a bit with the plants we have at the front of our home. We wanted to somewhat camouflage the barrel so we decided on painting it as close to the color of our house as we could find in a spray and then put some kind of garden design on it.

What you need to get started is a food grade plastic barrel that has been cleaned from food residue and we found these at the previously mentioned Shonk Enterprises for, I believe the price was $35. If you want the top removed and a removable metal clasp to lock the top on, it’s another $10. After the initial primer coat for plastic and two coats of color, and that’s after removing the top with a jig saw and installing a 3/4 inch water spigot about 4 inches from the bottom a few weeks ago, the project this morning began with drilling 15/16 inch hole near the top and installing an overflow valve as seen below.

After the overflow valve was installed came the job of painting the design. If you Google “rain barrel art” and look at the images you will see some great designs. So I just picked one, printed it out and used it for reference as I painted away. I used cheap acrylic craft paint for indoor and outdoor use and a couple of craft brushes purchased at Michaels over at Hammock Landing to do the job.

The painting goes pretty quick once you get the hang of how to paint the flower petals and grass and you’ll be done before you know it. I decided to paint a little lizard crawling up the barrel (see the top photo) at the last minute and just found a pic of a lizard face painting and tried to approximate that. Below are a couple more pics of the first stages and the final product.

The complete list of materials you need to paint a plastic rain barrel is below:

55 gallon food grade poly barrel
Spray primer for plastic (light sand before applying and use 2 coats)
Any color of your choice spray paint that can be used on plastic
3/4 inch metal or plastic water spigot
3/4 inch metal or plastic overflow valve (can be larger, but I didn’t have larger drill bit)
Drill
15/16 inch drill bit
Silicone sealant to put on threads and around hole after installing spigot and valve
Short hose for overflow valve (optional)
Acrylic craft paint
Assorted craft brushes
Clear polyurethane spray for final 2 to 3 coats to protect finish
Oh yea, don’t forget your creative thinking cap!

You will also need a rain gutter diverter, some kind of screen (to keep bugs and leaves out) and bungee chords which you can find at Home Depot or Lowes. Have fun painting your own rain barrel and conserve a little water while your at it.

Yes, the huge real estate bubble burst in a big way quite a few years ago starting in late 2006 and Palm Bay real estate is still taking a big hit. As a perfect example, we purchased a Palm Bay home in Riveria Key in late 2005 for $242,000 and it sold in October 2007 for $180,000 and now almost 3 years after that, those same homes in the Rivera Key development have an asking price of $109,000.

Over a course of 5 years, that’s a 55% reduction in the price of new homes. While that is only a single example of one neighborhood, it serves as evidence of where we are in the real estate market in Palm Bay Florida and the nation as a whole. Back in the days when people were anticipating new developments to open to buyers, on two separate occasions my wife and I were each paid $300 to wait in line overnight for other property buyers to be put on a list.

Those were also the days when nearly anything that had a roof on it, would sell for above $200,000 in Palm Bay and if a home came on the market that was under that limit it would sell in a matter of days or even hours. In fact as another example, our first home in Florida that we flipped was on the market for only 22 hours when our first offer came in and we accepted. Contrast that to the home previously mentioned in Rivera Key that was on the market for 1 year.

And just this last month a home in our neighborhood of Oakview Estates that was listed for $199,000 (a completely ridiculous price), dropped the price to $149,000, a 25% reduction in asking price almost overnight. I assume the real estate agent for this particular home might have looked at the MLS listings for Brevard County and noticed just down the street there is a home with about 100 less square feet listed for only $65,000. Somebody didn’t do their research on this one.

Whatever the case, it appears that real estate in Palm Bay FL is still taking a beating and may not recover for a long time. Are we finally looking at the bottom end of a real estate market that has been on the decline for nearly 4 years now, or is there still some room to go?

I don’t think we are yet at the bottom simply because when you see a nice house in a neighborhood like ours that is only selling for $65,000 and has been on the market for about 3 months without a buyer that spells trouble. What do you think?

While the new Panera on Palm Bay Road is actually in West Melbourne, it will always be know to me and my wife as the Palm Bay Panera Bread. After months of the anticipation of anxiously waiting for a decent fast food restaurant in our neck of the woods to open, Panera opened about 3 weeks ago.

You can get all kinds of great food in this deli style restaurant including pastries (I’m not too much into the sugar thing), sandwiches, soups, salads, coffee, smoothies and of course as the name of this joint implies, there is all kinds of bread available here from bagels, to baguettes, to loaves of a multitude of different kinds of bread.

I mentioned earlier that Panera is a fast food restaurant, but that’s just because there isn’t a better name for a restaurant such as this. You do get food fast there but, that’s where the comparison to restaurants such as McDonalds (which is right next door) end. To start with as I am writing this page sitting here in Panera, there is classical music playing on the sound system, there is a conference table right in the middle of the restaurant for large groups and the atmosphere is just completely different that one would find at any traditional greasy burger joint.

Then certainty the food separates Panera from all other fast food restaurants. The salads and sandwiches are individually made to order and can be customized without having to wait for your order any longer than normal. Everything is fresh, delicious and served on real plates with real utensils, something you don’t find at most other fast food restaurants.

If you want to enjoy a great meal when you are in a rush then stop by Panera Bread located at 245 Palm Bay Road. You can call them at 321-215-2500 for large take out orders or to arrange catering for your special events.

What’s the Palm Bay Weather like today? All you have to do is check the statistics below. Included is the current temperature, the weekend forecast for Palm Bay so you can plan your outdoor activities, the 10 day Palm Bay forecast and more. The weather information is direct from the Weather.com so you know it’s accurate.

You know how the weather here in Florida can get. We have pretty mild winters and very nice fall and spring weather, but it gets miserable here in the summer. The humidity is stifling and it’s sometimes more than I can take. I’ve been living here in Florida for 43 years and I’m still not used to the humidity here in the summer.

Anyway, check the weather links below for your Palm Bay weather and tgry to stay cool in the summer Florida sun.

Home For Sale In Palm Bay Florida
Check out this beautiful new home for sale in Palm Bay Florida. It is convenient to shopping, I-95 and has some great amenities.

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Did you know that building sand castles is a highly skilled art form and a serious hobby. Did you know we have a Masters level sand castler right here in the Melbourne Palm Bay area.

If you didn’t know, I thought you should.

Ron Masters from Palm Bay, Florida has been creating sand sculptures and entering sand castling competitions since 1999. What started out as a hobby, soon turned quickly into a more serious endeavour. You can see Ron (on the left) and his sand sculpting buddy, Wally Frederick, in the picture to the right.

Ron is serious about his sand castling. Unfortunately the sand on our local beaches is not of the quality needed to build great castles, so Ron travels the beaches of the world (well, at least the beaches of Florida) looking for good sand.

Although Ron is a Masters level competitor and does compete on a semi-regular basis, most of his sand castles are built for the pure enjoyment of it. Even though the sand is not of the best quality on the beaches of the Melbourne Palm Bay area, Ron has built a few castles here.

One of the sand castles he built locally was for Covenant Presbyterian’s Lighthouse Ministry. It is the first one pictured below.

Okay, who doesn’t love to play in the sand when they go to the beach?

As children building our sand castles higher and higher with our plastic shovels and buckets was a thrill for most of us here along Florida’s Space Coast. Large plastic forms along with 5-gallon buckets, shovels, tampers and steel carving tools are now the equipment of Ron the Master sandcastler. Quite a departure from the simple sand castles of days gone by.

Hey, why don’t we have a look at some of Ron’s work, after all that’s what it’s all about, right!

Feast your eyes ladies and gentlemen…

Lighthouse Ministry	Inn On The Beach	Anchored Firm

Finding Captain Nemo’s Guitar Studio A first place finisher	Carrying A Tune

Thomas Pointe Shoals, MD Lighthouse	Zandcastle	Flag Day Castle

As you can see, Ron loves his work, at the beach that is. Well, I think he also likes his work as a Systems Administrator at Wuesthoff Health System, but sand castling is a bit more relaxing.

Many People ask Ron how they can create great sand castles too. In fact, Ron has been asked so many times about this that he is working on a video that will be a step by step process by which he creates his master works. The video is still in production at this time.

Keep on the lookout, you just might see Ron working on a sand castle somewhere on one of our local beaches or another beach around Florida. Ron’s not hard to spot, he’s the one that’s always smilin’.

To learn more about Ron Masters and his wonderful sand castles and to see more and larger pictures of his work, you can go to his web site.