Realty Check

"Students are seeking rentals in many of the communities that now surround the university," he says. "Although those communities have varying rules concerning leases in regard to permissible time and number of occupants, many association documents are flexible enough to accommodate students."

Marotta also points out that the families of some students are beginning to do what some parents did back before the boom, in 2002 and 2003.

"Rather than pay for campus housing, these folks bought their students a condo or maybe even a house to live in while they studied," he says. "By the time those students graduated, the market was at its peak, and the parents made a lot of money, in some cases, as much as $100,000 or $200,000."

Marotta reports that now, with home prices still attractively low, he is again getting requests from some parents who are considering a home purchase for their collegian.

According to FGCU’s office of community relations and marketing, for the spring term of 2008, there were 1,945 students living on campus while there were 9,388 students enrolled. Although about 60 percent commute, that still leaves a considerable gap.

The university’s 2005-2006 impact study on the local economy projects 17,000 students by 2012. Currently there are six buildings under construction, but only one dedicated as a dormitory. With campus housing headaches sure to continue, off-campus sales and rentals should ease the pain for some nearby property owners.

Models We Love

The soothing sight and sound of water and the shimmery look of metallics are intrinsic to the design of Grande Tuscano, Harbourside Custom Homes’ new model in the Serata neighborhood of Mediterra. Priced at $3.3 million, furnished, the five-bedroom, two-story home accents the outdoors.

Iron and glass doors open to the foyer, where the view is directed through the living room to the rockscaped, lagoon-style pool. Stone steps lead to the stacked-stone raised spa and its rock slab spillway flush with the pool surface.

The master suite’s glass doors open to an inviting lanai. Flanking the bed, smoked glass wall panels are framed in millwork and overlaid with scrollwork. Dual maple vanities with a burnished-maize painted finish and polished travertine countertops enhance the master bath.

The kitchen nook’s mitered glass and the zero-corner sliding glass doors in the leisure room further expose the outdoor area, where the summer kitchen offers a U-shaped work surface, and the fireplace has a TV niche above.

Designed by Vogue Interiors, the home gets inner luster from bronze-glazed crown molding, a coppery kitchen backsplash and gold-toned mother-of-pearl niche treatments. The blend of transitional, tropical and Old World elements creates a striking look.

Cottage charm on a grand scale has been lavished on Corsenza II, a four-bedroom villa by R&D Companies in the Itala neighborhood of Treviso Bay.

Faith Fix, of Freestyle Interiors, establishes the theme at the get-go with a beadboard ceiling in the two-story foyer and accentuates it with a bench in turquoise, salmon and green, a red chest and driftwood and shell accents.

The great room’s dramatic honey-comb ceiling crowns a conversation area with cream linen sofas and woven-back occasional chairs.

On the lanai, coastal personality is expressed in a fireplace with driftwood accents and a boat-like backdrop on the mantel. The outdoor kitchen area has a shell stone deck, and the pool tiles are an aquatic blend of blues and turquoise. The dining room is upbeat from top to bottom, with an aqua ceiling and a chandelier with blown glass ornaments above, and a washed maple floor below.

Beadboard of brown-glazed cream makes a splash in the kitchen, while the study’s themed elements include an unfinished pine floor and grass cloth walls.

The bedrooms have wicker, louvered and washed wood furnishings that keep the seashore cottage mood intact. The 3,515 air-conditioned square-foot model is $2,306,162 furnished and $1,875,000 unfurnished.

In the Trenches

While area real estate markets are making modest improvements throughout the region, Marco Island seems to be enjoying a vigorous comeback. Bradley Tenney of the Tenney Team at Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate Inc. says the numbers tell the story. Looking at the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) totals for all properties pending in the month of April, he cites 101 this year, 73 last year and 68 in 2006.

Tenney says the Marco market peaked and declined earlier than the Naples market, and that’s because of the differing nature of the communities. "There are more full-time residential properties in the Naples area, and more second home and investor units here. When the bubble burst, those on Marco were the first to go."

Involved in local real estate since 1990, Tenney says the rebound on the island is partly based on quicker action by sellers to reduce prices, and to reduce them more steeply than sellers did elsewhere.

"Vacant lots are a good example," he explains. "Selling prices now are slightly below what they were in 2003, or 60 percent below the peak. And look at condo prices. An entry level condo on the island, with two bedrooms and two baths away from the beach, is now $169,000. When the market was peaking, it would have been priced at $295,000."

A renovated two-two at the South Seas, a high-rise complex built on the Gulf in 1981, recently went for $525,000, but Tenney says at the peak of the market, it would have fetched $875,000.

"We are experiencing renewed interest from investors, who realize there’s only so much land on Marco. There’s no new construction currently going on, with the exception of the conversion of the old Radisson to a time-share resort. Investors are also saying that they sense that if the bottom isn’t already here, they can see it."