Storm surge

It’s all connected.  The plummeting real estate prices, the rising interest rates and now the upward-spiralling cost of vacation rentals.  While sitting in the car at the grocery store earlier today I recevied an unexpected telephone call from our estate agent on Key Largo, Florida.  The place we’ve contracted to rent this coming season is going to be listed for sale by the owner; and as a result our impending dalliance there is exposed to rebuttal. We risk being thrown onto a sandy beach and left to our own devices, an extremely unsolicitous alternative.

When, by way of immediate address of this wrenching issue, I was subsequently speaking with an estate agent on Longboat Key (our erstwhile Floridian residence) he explained that the recent hurricanes which have beleaguered various and random locations in the Florida Keys and along the Gulf of Mexico have precipitated an astronomic acceleration of insurance rates (and related monthly condominium fees) which the owners are naturally hopeful to diminish or recoup. So far it appears that the only insight into the alleviation of these uncommon expenses is to pass them along to the public; that is, the vacationers who historically have regularly subscribed on average to between one and six-month rentals.

A brief but broad overview of the vacation rental market throughout Florida and as far north as Hilton Head Island, South Carolina has disclosed a series of mouth-drying options which for example routinely predict minimum rates from US$400 – 500 per diem in addition to many others at even more impressive daily rates. Gone are the former “reduced” monthly rental options. True, there lingers a shred of accommodation for those who do not insist upon waterfront access but very often those properties are not marketed through estate agents but rather such apocryphal internet devices as VRBO.

The VRBO website was created by David Clouse, a retired teacher, in 1995 in Aurora, Colorado with the goal of renting his Breckenridge Ski Resort condo. The website soon became popular with homeowners that wanted to list their properties for short term rental.

The company has been accused of not complying with its “book with confidence” guarantee. In one case, a customer claims to have lost £6,000 after the property owner of a rental property in Ibiza booked on Vrbo “disappeared”.

Meanwhile we’ve pulled out all the throttles to investigate what if anything may be the reasonable alternatives to a complete roadblock in these trying circumstances.  So far we’ve only discovered a “studio” apartment available for US$175 per diem (though the unit had a cautionary hint of being subterranean). It naturally seems a pity to enlarge one’s scope to include in-land property when so much of the elemental attraction of southern vacation is the sea. And as for the perceivable threat of over-heating which is currently threading through the popular news channels, the estate agent with whom I spoke would only respond that it is a subtropcial climate and one must adjust accordingly.  It helped to know that the agent had previously worked in Montréal (though of course I have no other reason to promote or reject his particular intelligence in these matters).

I preserve my lucidity in these unsettling situations by reminding myself that apart from debating whether I shall butter my toast, the assessment of my current obstructions is a meagre challenge. Certainly the existing perils of old age and burgeoning immobility continue to be unprepossessing. Yet I nonetheless stimulated myself sufficiently late this afternoon (following our very agreeable BBQ sausage lunchtime detour at Almonte Butcher for al fresco dining on a ceramic picnic table) to pedal my tricycle up and down Spring Street for a portion at least of my customary 4 Kms.