Briny Breeze.

What a nice name for a nice community filled with nice people.

Several weeks ago, while driving along South Florida's A1A, I happened upon a 43 acre, 488 unit, community, where the residents greeted me with waves and smiles as they sat on their front porches or sauntered the area.

It seems that everyone I encountered was smiling.  No, they looked elated.

Why?

Was it the prime location, with access both to the Atlantic Ocean and South Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway?

Maybe.

Was it that some of these people paid as little as $15,000 for these homes?

Maybe.

Or, is it because these folks have sold their trailer homes to Ocean Land Investments -- a developer -- for an average price of over one million dollars?

While the trailer park was aesthetically questionable, it was clean, quiet, and had reported no crime.  It generated little traffic on the road which bisected the town, was low density, and, of course, low rise.  (After all, how high can a trailer be?)

But, unfortunately, that is all going to change.

Ocean Land paid well over 500 million dollars for the town’s acquisition. And with this huge payout, the purchasing consortium is going to expect and demand significant changes to this humble town.

They are proposing 900 condos, a 300 room hotel, retail space, and, of course, time shares.

These new buildings, which are expected to be too tall and much too dense for the existing space, are going to place a huge burden on the neighboring infrastructure (roadways, sewers and drain systems), will increase traffic congestion, and will negatively impact the beach and already fragile ecosystem.

Working with unscrupulous public officials -- such as Palm Beach County Commissioner Bert Abramson, who has reportedly received significant “donations” from developers -- and local politicians who seems clueless or indifferent to environmental issues, this development will set a dangerous precedent for Palm Beach County Real Estate Hell.

COME ON IN! 

We welcome your comments and encourage you to share your experiences.  [Not everyone need spend their life in (real estate) hell.]

There is a community in Boca Raton called, “The Preserve.”

This particular group of homes, named after the tree-filled wildlife oasis it single-handedly destroyed, is located between two noisy intersections -- Yamato Road and Military Trail -- and many of those homes are priced at over 1.5 million dollars.

There you will find a guard-gated community with typical faux Mediterranean homes, featuring over 4000 square feet of open and uninspired floor plans, crowded onto small lots.

While The Preserve destroyed flora and fauna and thus decimated the area’s natural beauty, there is now new activity adjacent to this exclusive enclave. Recently, another new upscale and rather lavish community opened on The Preserve’s southern side. And now some of Boca Raton’s richest and swellest are moving in right next door.

These new neighbors reside mainly in two large buildings adorned with typical South Florida  fauxness. Columns, medallions, garlands, porticos, and all the excesses these residents have come to expect.

The buildings are even segregated, with Jewish folks on one side, Christians on the other. But there is no disharmony between the two groups. No fights, harsh words, or anti-neighborly incidents have been reported.

You see, these residents on the southern side are all – how should I put it – dead.  Yes, Boca Raton’s newest community of celebrated decadence and “excessive excess” is a cemetery and a mausoleum or, as the sales representatives like to call it, a “Memorial Park.”

So, the living residents of the The Preserve’s gated community, with their expensive homes that resulted in the needless death of South Florida’s indigenous wildlife, are living next to non-indigenous, lifeless Floridians, that might bring about the demise of the area’s property values.

Talk about real estate hell!

Homes over one million dollars with unobstructed views of a cemetery.

Should the possible devaluation of the area’s property values trigger eternal gloom, well, have no fear, you can always be interred feet from your dream home.

Somewhere, egrets, falcons, cranes and ibises are smiling.