(Editor's note: The following column was published previously in The Breeze.) Imagine a self-seeding bush that produces tiny, sweet tomatoes all year long. Now imagine this bush is disease and pest resistant, requires little care and thrives in our hot, humid climate. If this sounds too ...

The key takeaways in our local real estate market involve rising mortgage rates, now above 6 percent, a substantial drop in the number of closed home sales in August and a shift away from a wildly active seller’s market earlier this year to a much slower paced neutral market right now. ...

Dear Mr. Feichthaler: My mother held her house in a trust and recently passed. I am the successor trustee, and my sister and I are the beneficiaries. The trust provides that we each receive half of the assets of the trust. My sister wants to keep the house and move in, while I would be happy ...

Do you feel that we’ve had a lot of rain over the past several weeks? This is only my fourth summer in Cape Coral, but I don’t remember as many morning or evening storms as we have experienced lately. I recall instead the reliable 3 p.m. pop-up thunderstorms that seemed to form and erupt ...

Dear Mr. Feichthaler: I signed a contract to sell my home back in July, and last week was our closing date. The buyer had no contingencies in the contract, so it provides I get to keep the deposit if they don’t complete the purchase. The deposit was $2,000. The escrow agent is telling me ...

In trying to develop a theme for this week’s real estate column that deals with the economic realities facing most Americans on the ground, we were torn between two choices. One theme was based on the “stupid is as stupid does” line from the movie "Forest Gump." This famous line seems to ...

When it comes to the Cape Coral condominium market for the month of July, it can be best summed up by saying “what a difference a year makes!” First, as shown below, the number of closed condo sales have declined precipitously from both a year ago and from the single high peak month for ...

Dear Mr. Feichthaler: My neighbor has a giant Royal Palm that is on her property but many of the branches hang over my property, including my house. The falling branches have come very close to falling on my house, and one time almost fell on me! I have asked that they keep the tree trimmed ...

With so many options available, choosing the right plants for your landscape can be quite the challenge. However, the selection process becomes more manageable with proper planning. Once you have completed the preliminary work, including site analysis, design plan and site preparation, plant ...

We continue to see a lot of conflicting data and analysis about the real estate market, both locally and nationally, which is a very common problem in situations when market dynamics are in the process of shifting rapidly. Trying to make determinations about where the real estate market may be ...