It was the night of August 16th, 2024, while my wife & I sat on the couch at our home in Central Naples, that I brought to her attention the imminent and permanent closing of the long time Naples establishment; Bowland Beacon. We had tried setting up a double-date bowl night with another couple some years back at Bowland, but our planning was dashed by not calling ahead of time to learn about league night that occurred that particular night. Boo! Due to my wife’s less than enthusiastic desire to throw heavy marbles down at fancy looking sticks while eating bar food, we shelved the idea of a bowling date night until the very last minute… the final days of Bowland Beacon.

Sitting on the couch two days before Bowland is set to close forever, I was able to book a lane online for 90 minutes along with 2 pairs of clown shoes for the following day.

Click, click, transaction complete.

I was so excited to go bowling! My Mom used to take me on Mom/Son dates when I was a young teenager back in the 90’s to our local bowling alley and I remember having the best time ever. I was never that good, but spending time with my Mom, just the two of us, is something I have cherished for the last 30ish years. Time well spent is joy well earned. However, my wife isn’t a taker on bowling being time well spent, nor has she recovered from the absolute pummeling she endured on the 2nd to last day of Bowland Beacon’s existence. It was probably the best game I have ever played.

Farewell to Bowland Beacon

I didn’t grow up in Naples. I wish I did, but I am here now and do my best to honor this wonderful town and its conservative values. I read that Bowland Beacon operated in North Naples for 65 years, but maybe not fully at the last location at 5400 Tamiami Trail N. Anyone know? What a fun place to spend time. It’s really sad to see it go to make way for a hotel and restaurant. Such is life. Change & adaptation are things we can either look forward to or avoid. Avoiding doesn’t make things go away though, so we might as well either embrace change or initiate it ourselves. Unless it is change that backslides us into depravity.

A big part in embracing change in my life and business has been to write about changes in both my world perspective and the current Naples real estate market. People with degrees in psychology, no doubt, champion the use of journals. Writing down our thoughts to make sense of things in life, and even to set goals, is very powerful. I write a lot, and a bulk of that writing is the Naples Housing Market Updates I release every month. I even started releasing an infographic about a week after the update is published so the public can see the changes in sales stats and how the market is constantly evolving. The sales stats for the previous month change throughout the following month due to agents closing out transactions too late or having to go back and make corrections to closed out transactions. It is really strange, but this is basically what I understood from NABOR’s explanation. Call them yourselves, if you feel so inclined; 239.597.1666

Bitter Competitor

I want to share with you all an interesting conversation I had over DM (Direct Message) with a fellow agent last week after posting my Naples July 2024 Housing Market Update. This person did not reply to the post, but rather wrote me privately, which I will copy and paste right from the DM. I was passive-aggressively pressed by the agent to give them thanks for not publicly posting this lecture on the post for all to see. However, I wished they did. Maybe next time.

“Please tell the entire truth. How many Expireds and Terminateds? How long average DOM? How many price reductions? Why intentionally mislead the public?”

Now, I publish these articles with lots of numbers every month and present the report in a way that 1. Doesn’t bore people to death and 2. Gives people a firm grasp on where the market is at. Any parent or educator can attest to this balancing act; Teach while keeping everyone’s attention. My first thought was that I should respond to this person with patience and kindness. Afterall, this couldn’t possibly be a REALTOR® asking for average DOM (Days on Market) when I clearly included the more widely used Median DOM. It was most likely a citizen of Naples who needed to know additional, specific information for themselves and maybe they just have an aggressive way about them. Nope, upon clicking on their profile, I see a link to the agent’s website where they also have a blog. Did I just stumble upon a bitter competitor? Have my articles been showing stronger in Google searches than theirs?

The categories that people have consistently asked for over the last 10 years of writing these market updates are:

Median Sales Price
Total Sales
Days on Market
Total Inventory

Investors like to see Months of Supply as well, but it’s still a bit of a moving target, because I often get someone who asks why I didn’t include specific charts. Oy… So I started putting in the articles a sentence that encourages people to call, email, text or send by carrier-pigeon a message to me asking for more data on whatever specific area, or even specific address, they are wanting to learn more about. I always show the basic categories for:

Overall Naples
ZIP 34102
ZIP 34103
Golden Gate Estates

The stats program won’t allow me to add anymore areas. I would if I could. If the goal of these housing updates are to enlighten people with current and accurate information, filling the article up with copious amounts of numbers and industry speak would detract from that goal. So I always let people know that if they need more information about specific neighborhoods or categories (New Listings, Pendings etc) to simply contact me. We can talk about anything you want for as long as you want! In contrast to some of the more pushy and unethical agents, I actually care about people and choose to serve them despite any losses I may incur personally.

Back to the person with a chip on their shoulder. After explaining all of this to them, the attacks kept coming. Apparently I “mislead the public”, am “unprofessional” and “clueless”. By this point, I had figured out that this was a fellow agent, and an apparent bitter competitor. So I looked them up. Maybe this agent was indeed far superior than me with more experience & sales. Turns out that this person has less sales than I, with less time licensed. So I just ended the conversation repeating; God Bless You!

We don’t have to try to create enemies to earn them. Conversely, loving our neighbors, extending mercy when we have been wronged, volunteering and thanking God for everything we have can certainly stack up mountains of bitterness against us. It doesn’t seem to make any sense. But in the economy of the Lord, everything is backwards from a worldly perspective.

If God be for us, who can be against us? – Romans 8:31