Today I'm going to tell you the five things I love and the five things I don’t love so much about living in Cape Coral, Florida
Hey everyone, I'm Sherry Puchacz with REMAX Realty Team here in Cape Coral Florida. Please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel because I make videos and talk about a lot of really cool stuff related to Cape Coral and if you're gonna be living here, I'm sure you want to know about it. You may have seen a previous video I did called "Moving to Cape Coral – 10 Reasons Why You Should."
So I love the fact that so many people are interested in moving to my slice of Paradise. Well today I'm gonna talk about five reasons I love living here... and five things I'm not so excited about by living here. So let's get started.
Let's start with the bad ones first.
#1 Con – the heat. There's no way to tap dance around this issue. July and August are insanely hot, that's just how it is. Luckily there's this beautiful invention called air conditioning! So everyone spends the time in their air-conditioned house, they get in their air-conditioned car, they go to their air-conditioned office, and the minute they get home from work they go in the pool or to the beach. So if it's only for two months of the year it's tolerable.
#2 Con – the humidity. Again it's only during the real heat of the summer. I figure if it's glorious the rest of the year I could tolerate it for a couple of months.
#3 Con - the bugs. We are in a subtropical climate which means we get some pretty scary-looking bugs here. We have no seeums which are like Gnats... they are the tiniest little flies. They're barely visible to the naked eye but they can bite you like mosquitoes. They're not fun. Depending on what area you live in- if you are closer to the water you're gonna have a lot more noseeums so you're gonna have to load up on bug spray. If we are going to be out on the lanai for a while we light up some citronella oil burners and also turn on a fan cause those little no seeums can’t fly against a breeze!! We also have these things called palmetto bugs. Essentially they look like giant cockroaches, but they don't come into your house because it is dirty, they just make a wrong turn at the doorway on their way to the palmetto or palm trees. So if you live in southwest Florida, most people realize the need to have a pest control service. We have somebody come once every couple months, spray the outside of the house, and that does the trick. We don't end up having palmetto bugs or spiders so yeah...just something you got to deal with living in the south.
#4 Con - the almost daily afternoon thunderstorms…on one hand I love them because that is what makes this a lush, green Paradise….but on the other hand you absolutely HAVE to bring or have an umbrella close by…I mean I have four of them in my car two by the front door and one in my purse!! Because the minute you just run into the grocery store….yup….you will be running to your car in a downpour….also in addition to the rain the thunder will scare the you know what out of the four legged members of your family and sometimes knock out the power for just long enough to make ALL the clocks in your house be flashing when you get home.
#5 Con - of the things that I don't love about living in Cape Coral is the need for flood insurance. We live in a hurricane prone area. Not a lot, it's not like living in New Orleans or Texas, but in Cape Coral we do get some hurricanes. We've only had a couple in the last 15 years. So anybody who lives close to a body of water may need to have additional flood insurance on their home. If you're going to be moving to Cape Coral and you're buying a house you should probably go to the City of Cape Coral’s website and go to the page called My Flood Zone… you put in the street address of the house that you are considering and it will tell you which flood zone it is in. If it is in an X zone it's very, very low risk. It usually does not require flood insurance. And if you're buying a house in an A or an AE or VE zone your lender is going to require that you get flood insurance. So just something to keep in mind if you're gonna be buying a house and it's in a flood zone. That flood insurance premium is going to be added on to the cost of your monthly mortgage payments so you may have to adjust your budget accordingly.
So now let's move on to the five things that I love about living in Cape Coral.
#1 Pro - has to be the weather…on average there are 265 sunny days per year in Cape Coral and the US average is 205…so we have 60 more days of sunshine than the rest of the country…now that’s Paradise!! So I have already mentioned the heat in July and August, BUT for the other 10 months…yes I said 10 months….it is awesome…having grown up in upper Michigan I never thought I would say that I need a pool heater in the winter because I like the water temperature at 86….but I do!!
#2 Pro – is that there are plenty of things to do here….Besides boating and golfing the Cape has 39 parks, monthly festivals, boat parades, motorcycle bike night, farmers markets, and lots of cultural opportunities.
#3 Pro - I bet you thought this was gonna be number one … The beach! I love the beach. I'm not gonna lie – Ft Myers Beach is about 30 minutes away, Sanibel and Captiva to the west, Naples to the south and Venice to the north…all under an hour away.It's really easy to just say, "Hey let's go to the beach for the day," hit the road and spend the day either soaking up the sun or collecting tons of shells, hit one of the restaurants to go get some lunch or go in all the shops and buy the touristy stuff.
#4 Pro - is seafood! I am a lover of grouper tacos, blackened snapper and fresh peel and eat gulf shrimp! So we've got a million restaurants around that have killer seafood. So if you like fresh seafood you need to get to Cape Coral RIGHT NOW.
#5 Pro - reason that living in Cape Coral is awesome is the fishing and boating…we have 400 miles of canals here in Cape Coral…WHAT???? Yup this is a water wonderland…100 miles of those canals lead out to the Gulf of Mexico…cruising the canals, anchoring on a sandbar or up on a beautiful white sand beach for the day, deep sea fishing or watching the manatee and dolphins. I just love to enjoy a cold dock-tail sitting under a tiki hut and enjoying the ocean breeze.
So now you know all the reasons that I love Cape Coral and a few things that are not perfect about Cape Coral but come on - every place has its pros and cons. Are you thinking of moving to Cape Coral? If you are, give me a call or shoot me an email, my information is down below…I would love to chat with you about what your thoughts are and what the market is like here….I can set you up on a search for properties in your price range so you can get an idea of what is available. You just let me know if there's anything that I can assist you with. Thank you so much for reading my blog ...I’m Sunshine Sherry...and I am always here to help!
