Jacksonville | St Johns Co. Real Estate Blog

“Classic“, “Elegant“, “Cozy“.   These are just some of the words of praise being banded about concerning the new townhouses at Midtowne on Jacksonville’s Southside.

The brownstone residences are located along Gate Parkway West, north of Butler Boulevard, with some model homes now open for inspection and tours.  The houses are being marketed as ideal for people needing quick access to areas such as Butler Boulevard, Interstate-95 and shopping / entertainment centers such as the St Johns Town Center, San Marco and the Beaches.

Each townhouse is very spacious with four bedrooms, a large garage and 2,552 square-feet of space, spread over three floors.   Interested parties can also consider the Burberry floorplan which includes oakwood floors, a curving staircase and a gourmet kitchen.   Ideal for dinner parties or for having the family around.

Prices for Midtowne start in the high $300,000 price tag range and anyone interested in viewing a property can just turn up and join one of the tours.   Some of the homes are available to move in before the end of this year.

Are you looking to buy a property which will also give you the opportunity to do some sailing if you wanted to?   Then you might want to consider buying a property at Oyster Bay Harbour, near Fernandina Beach in Jacksonville.

Situated just four miles from the Atlantic coast, the 325-home community offers properties starting at the mid $500,000 range going up to more than $1 million.

An added bonus is that the developer of the community has just announced the beginning of construction of a luxury clubhouse at the Harbour’s Yacht Club.   Members of the Oyster Bay community will have the chance to purchase marina memberships which also entitles them to use of the yacht club and the clubhouse when it is completed.   The marina will have 5 floating docks with 76 individual boat slips so if the safety and care of your boat is important to you then there would be plenty of space at the marina to dock your vessel.   A full-time marina harbormaster will also be on hand to keep an eye on the boats and offer advice and assistance.

The 325 properties is surrounded by marshfront, lakefront and forested areas.   A quiet and pleasant place to live.

A new condo community has been set up inside Palencia, which can be found inside the 2,325 acre Hines community in St John’s County, Jacksonville.   The community currently consists of five new model homes called La Terraza Condominiums.

Prices start from the low $200,000’s and climb to the $300,000’s with five different floorplans to choose from.   Each home is part of a four-storey building with a covered walkway, an elevator and a covered terrace which has an amazing view of a forest or a lake.

Each residence also comes equipped with a private garage, big enough to fit two cars and plenty of storage space.

Described by the developer as a “prime location tucked away on Jacksonville’s Northside”, the community of Leslie’s Hideaway has begun pre-sales for its 70 spacious luxury townhouses.

Two floorplans are on offer - the 1,591 square-foot Alexia and the 1,615 square-foot Christopher with pricetags starting at a very reasonable $170,000.

You can choose from between two and three bedrooms and the interior of each house can be adapted to include extras such as an extra bedroom or extra bathroom amenities. A showcase kitchen is also included along with an attached garage, beautiful landscaping and nature views.

One big plus for living in Leslie’s Hideaway is that it is minutes away from Jacksonville’s International Airport so any regular commuters to and from the airport will find living in this community a bonus.

Plans are underway for a new 238-acre community called Willowcove in the town of Nocatee in Jacksonville.

172 single-family homes and a few townhomes will make up the new community which will have electricity and running water by early summer and model homes will be up and completed by August.   The living space in each home will be between 2,200 square feet right up to around 4000 square feet and most homes will apparently have woodland and lake views.

Willowcove residents will also have the benefit of natural landscape features including a park that will have things like ball fields and athletic facilities.

The promotional article doesn’t go into price ranges but considering the location and the extra amenities, you can be sure to expect something in the six-figure range.

Some home-buyers like to buy their homes completely finished and some like to buy a home with not much there, which gives them the chance to decorate and style according to their tastes.   Now a Jacksonville developer is offering customers the choice.

Hines is developing and building The St John, a 640,000-square-foot, 300-home luxury condo tower which will, when completed, sit on the south bank of downtown Jacksonville’s riverfront.   Construction is due to begin this year.

If you are interested in buying one of the homes, you will be given a choice between a designer-ready home and a fully-finished home.   As the name suggests, a fully-finished home is completed almost entirely by the developer and the customer that buys it need only make a few choices about the interior.

A designer-ready home on the other hand offers the buyer a big say in the interior design of the home and this option would be useful if you want to design the property to your specific tastes and standards.   You can choose the style of wall and floor and you can also choose the material for your kitchen work-tops.   In other words, you are being offered a giant slate in which to design your home the way you want it.

Ranging in size from 780 square feet to 3,800 square feet, the homes will start in price from $325,000 up to more than $2 million.

Imagine living in a community which comes complete with its own athletic center and tennis club for residents.  That’s what you can expect if you end up occupying one of the 1,800 homes in Eagle Landing, Jacksonville.
The tennis club has eight courts (with four more possibly on the way) and the athletic center includes a pro shop, fitness center and gymnasium.   Both the tennis club and the athletic center are state-of-the-art.

Also included in the 1,320 acre Eagle Landing community are pools, a kid’s club, a resident’s club and a 18-hole golf course.  So there is something for all the family.

The 1,800 homes start in the mid $300,000 price-range and can go as high as $900,000.

The construction company says it could be the best investment of your life and with prices being slashed by $50,000, they’re certainly keen to prove it.   Now priced in the mid-$200,000 price range, the town-houses at Georgetown in Jacksonville are proving to be a very attractive proposition, especially when it is within walking distance of the St Johns Town Center.

Each town-house comes with a multitude of free options such as Corian countertops, tile in the kitchen, bathroom, foyer and laundry room, a full security system for your security and peace of mind, 42-inch cabinets in the kitchen and much more.

Extra amenities are also thrown in including an electronic entrance gate, a fitness center and a pool.

You can choose from between two styles of housing - The Chesaspeake and The Delaware, both having their own distinctive features and each offering at least 2000 square feet of space.

The Georgetown community will have a total of 192 town-houses, each with either two or three bedrooms.   Plus when you look out of the window, you will be able to see three beautiful lakes and a canal running through the center of Georgetown with a bridge connecting both sides.

Doesn’t that sound a beautiful place to live?

If you have a home which has been on the market for some time, maybe you need to get a realtor to give the place a makeover?   Or before you even put your house on the market, have a good hard look at it and let a realtor make the place look inviting and a treat.  Welcome to the emerging world of “staging” a property.

With lots of homes on the market, prospective buyers can afford to be picky about what they want and if a room is say cluttered with junk, that can be enough to make them think “no, not this one.  Let’s move on”.   But if you get your home “staged” beforehand, you could find yourself with a contract to sell your house faster than you think.

“Staging” is basically strategically arranging the components in each room to make the room look asthetically pleasing to potential buyers.  This will make them enthusiastic about your home, making them seriously consider buying it.  “Staging” can be something as simple as moving the sofa to a different part of the room to make the floor-space look bigger.  Or acquiring a small coffee-table with a few small ornaments to give the room a cosy feeling.  But you can go much further than that, completely de-personalizing the room, cleaning each room thoroughly to make it sparkle & shine, replacing the furniture, polishing the glass surfaces, replacing the carpets and the curtains…the list can go on and on.    So when a potential buyer comes around, all they see are clean, sparkling spacious rooms which they would love to live their life in.  Not a dirty cluttered room where they trip over the lawnmower, stumble over the stack of Playboy magazines and smell the spilt beer on the rug from the week before.

Your realtor can help you to modify your home to make it look more attractive and pleasing to visiting viewers.  It doesn’t have to take much to change a non-selling home into a hot in-demand home.   Just talk to your realtor for ideas or tune into HGTV’s “Designed to Sell” for inspiration.

Plus you can reverse the situation and think to yourself “if I was the buyer looking at my home with a critical eye, what would I find appealing and not appealing?   What would turn me off from buying this home?”.   Be honest with yourself and you’ll find half the battle to sell your home already won.

A very interesting article, which appeared recently in the Jacksonville Times-Union, illustrates perfectly how homes have changed in the past 50 years - primarily the location of the kitchen - and where it stands in relation to the rest of the home. It’s something important to consider when thinking about buying a property (especially for the first time). Especially if one of you is a housewife and the kitchen would be the center of activity in the house. Where do you want to the kitchen to be and how functional do you need it to be? Kitchens vary greatly in size, shape and function so it helps to have a clear idea in your head before you start viewing homes.

The kitchen used to be a very labor-intensive undertaking with small working areas and everything needing to be done by manual labor but these days, with the advent of modern technology and changing designs & attitudes, kitchen tasks are now much easier than in the past. Machines such as the microwave oven and the dishwasher helps to take some of the load off your hands and house designers are now starting to design the kitchen in such a way as to make the whole room family-friendly and relaxing. It’s not unusual these days to have something like a breakfast bar in the middle of the kitchen to break things up and extra floor space and good lighting makes the kitchen a more pleasant room in which to get your household tasks completed.

Plus you may not immediately think this important but the actual physical location of the kitchen can make all the difference. If you regularly greet guests at the front door, you may want your kitchen at the front of the house, close to the front door so you don’t have to travel so far backwards and forwards all the time. However, if you have children playing regularly in the back-yard, you may prefer your kitchen at the back of the house with a view of the back-yard, so you can do your kitchen tasks and also keep an eye on your children at the same time.

So the important thing is to first assess your priorities and your needs and decide accordingly where you would prefer the kitchen to go. Then you can easily choose more suitable properties to visit which could meet your needs right away. The kitchen will end up being the hub of activity in your new house so it is wise to plan in advance.