Living Well in SWFL

Living Well in SWFL She works with buyers, sellers, investors and new constructions. Carleen is with Integrity 1st Group Southwest Florida, brokered by eXp Realty, LLC.

🌴 Luxury REALTOR® | GRI | SWFL expert with eXp Realty (SL3531764) & Wellness/Lifestyle Advocate | Helping you buy, sell & live well in paradise | Wellness & lifestyle products, curated referrals, and beautiful homes for vibrant living. Carleen Murone is an accomplished and dedicated Realtor® who has built a successful career by putting her clients' needs first and going above and beyond to make their dreams of homeownership a reality. With her exceptional market knowledge, strong negotiation skills, and unwavering commitment to customer service, Carleen has earned the GRI Designation (Graduate Realtor®’s Institute), is a Certified Luxury Agent, Certified Listing Agent, and a Certified Mentor, along with a stellar reputation in the real estate industry.

Sometimes life changes before your address does.It rarely starts with a decision. It starts with a feeling: a quiet nudg...
09/25/2026

Sometimes life changes before your address does.

It rarely starts with a decision. It starts with a feeling: a quiet nudge that the home you're in may not fit the life you're living now, or the one you're being led toward. For many of us, that nudge feels like God gently opening a door before we're ready to walk through it.

Maybe the house feels bigger than it used to. Maybe you're longing for more time with family, less upkeep, or a fresh start. Maybe you want to stay right where you are, with a plan that makes that possible. Or maybe you've been dreaming about a slower, sunnier rhythm and wondering if Southwest Florida could be home.

You don't need to have it figured out to start the conversation. That's where I come in.

09/24/2026

You've been trying to fix how you feel from memory. That's the part nobody realizes, and it's why so many well-intentioned attempts go nowhere.

Quick, honest question: if I asked how you felt three Tuesdays ago — your energy, your sleep, your mood after lunch — could you tell me? Almost nobody can. I couldn't either, before I started paying attention on purpose.

And yet that's the evidence we're all working from. We decide something isn't working based on a foggy impression of the last few weeks — about the least reliable narrator there is. Then we reach for something bigger and stricter — the full overhaul, the rules, the plan that requires becoming a different person by Monday. And it collapses, not because you lacked discipline, but because you were troubleshooting without information.

Everything I do starts in the opposite place, and I'll say plainly this is lifestyle awareness, not medical advice. Before you change anything, notice something. One week. What you actually ate. How you actually slept. What your energy did at three in the afternoon, and what was happening right before it did. No restriction, no rules, nothing to be good at.

What happens is quietly useful. Patterns turn up you'd never catch from memory — the afternoon that always follows a certain kind of morning, the nights that go badly for reasons that have nothing to do with bedtime. You stop guessing. And you make a smaller, smarter change instead of a dramatic one you won't keep.

That's the entire spirit of my Living Well Reset and the Body Insight System behind it — a supportive first step back to baseline, nothing clinical or restrictive.

Reply RESET and I'll point you to where to start. And tell me — do you track anything at all, or are you running on memory too? No judgment here. Most of us are.



Carleen Murone, Realtor®, GRI | eXp Realty, LLC SL3531764
Real Estate Advisor and Lifestyle and Wellness Advocate - Living Well in SWFL

09/23/2026

October is the month Southwest Florida stops being something you get through and starts being the place you'd brag about to anyone who'd listen.

First, tell me honestly: are you an October-is-finally-here person, or are you one of the quiet few who actually misses summer? I ask because I'm genuinely split on it, and the answers are always more interesting than I expect.

Here's what I love about this particular turn in the year. It doesn't ease in. One week you're planning your entire day around the heat, and the next you're eating dinner on the lanai without thinking twice, the boats are back out, and the whole place seems to exhale at once. If you're newer here, that's the part nobody warns you about — the season doesn't arrive gently. It just shows up.

And the calendar wakes up with it. Cape Coral Bike Night takes over SE 47th Terrace on Saturday, October 10th — slow bike races, the whole street, the kind of evening that reminds you this is still a town and not just a destination. Then Oktoberfest runs two weekends later in the month out at the German American Social Club on Pine Island Road, which after all these years is still one of my favorite things about living here. There's more than that — pumpkin patch season, a few things worth the drive over to Fort Myers — but I don't put dates in your hands until I've checked them myself.

That's actually why I started sending a monthly list. Not forty things you'll never do — ten real ones, five here in the Cape and five elsewhere in Southwest Florida, that I'd actually tell a friend about.

Reply OCTOBER and I'll add you to it. And if you've got a favorite October tradition here, drop it below — I'm always looking for the ones the guidebooks miss.



Carleen Murone, Realtor®, GRI | eXp Realty, LLC SL3531764
Real Estate Advisor and Lifestyle and Wellness Advocate - Living Well in SWFL

09/22/2026

Cape Coral homes sold in a median of 46 days last month. I keep reading that this market is sitting at 85. Which number do you think sellers are hearing?

Quick — guess what the median Cape Coral single-family home sold for in August. Hold your number.

Here's the real board, straight from our MLS. Median sale price: $390,000, up 6.1% from last August. Median days on market: 46 — down 25.4% year over year, from closer to 62. Sellers received 97.2% of list price. Median sold price per square foot: $225. And active inventory sits at 2,148 homes, down 21.1% — roughly 570 fewer homes competing for the same buyers.

That is not the market most Cape Coral homeowners think they're in. If you've been telling yourself you missed your window, the data doesn't back that up.

Now the honest other half, because a market update that only shows the flattering columns isn't worth reading. The median price came down 2.3% from July. Months of supply ticked up almost 13% from July to 5.0. And the number I'd watch hardest if I owned a home here: new listings came in at 672, up 22.4% over last August and up 10% from July.

That's the whole story in one line. Inventory is low right now because a slow year drained it — but sellers are coming back, faster than last year. Every one of those new listings is a competitor, and season is when that stack gets tallest.

Which means the advantage of fewer homes to compete with is something you have today and may not have in January. That's not a prediction — it's where the two lines are pointing.

Reply NUMBERS and I'll send what your corner of the Cape is actually doing — the citywide median is close to useless for pricing a real house. And tell me: how close was your guess?

(Source: Domus Analytics / SWFL MLS, Cape Coral single-family, August 2026.)



Carleen Murone, Realtor®, GRI | eXp Realty, LLC SL3531764
Real Estate Advisor and Lifestyle and Wellness Advocate - Living Well in SWFL

09/22/2026

Almost every family we work with starts with the same question: “What do we do now?”
Here’s what the path from there usually looks like:
→ Start with your family’s story, not a list of communities
→ Tour only the places that genuinely match
→ Plan the home sale so it lines up with the move
→ Downsize and set up the new space with care
Somewhere along the way, the question changes. That’s the moment we work toward with every family.
If your family is at the “what do we do now” stage, send us the word PLAN.
Carleen Murone, REALTOR® (GRI, SRES®) | eXp Realty · Dina | Senior Navigator, Ultimate Resource Healthcare Navigators
More at livingwellinswfl.com.

09/21/2026

Nobody chooses their next home from a hospital hallway. But that is exactly where a lot of these decisions get made — a week after a fall, with a discharge planner asking what the plan is, and nobody in the family having an answer.

So let me ask the question I wish more families asked each other early: has anyone in your family actually talked about the house? Not the money, not the will. The house itself — where you'll live, and whether it will still fit the life you want when your needs change.

Here's the part I want you to hear, because it's the whole reason I do this work: there is real work you can do right now, while every choice is still yours. Some of it is small. Start in the bathroom — it's where the majority of falls at home actually happen. A curbless walk-in shower instead of a step-over tub. Grab bars that look built-in rather than hospital. Better lighting, a bench to sit on, lever handles, flooring that isn't slick. Unglamorous changes that buy you years in a home you love.

Some of it is bigger. Whether this house — its upkeep, its stairs, its distance from your people — is one you want to grow older in. Aging in place and rightsizing are both good plans. The costly thing is having no plan and letting an emergency choose for you, because a decision made that week is almost never the one you'd make with time on your side.

This is the heart of what I call Living Well Forward: helping Southwest Florida homeowners think through home, equity, and lifestyle for the years ahead, before anything forces it. I built a simple aging-in-place checklist so families can start this at the kitchen table, not in a waiting room.

Reply CHECKLIST and I'll send it over — no pressure, no pitch. And tell me honestly: has your family had this conversation, or is it the one everyone keeps meaning to have?



Carleen Murone, Realtor®, GRI | eXp Realty, LLC SL3531764
Real Estate Advisor and Lifestyle and Wellness Advocate - Living Well in SWFL

09/19/2026

You've got a financial advisor for your 401(k). Who's advising you on the biggest asset you actually own — the house you're sitting in?

Let me ask it plainly, because I'd love your honest answer below: if your home is a real part of your retirement, has anyone ever helped you plan around it on purpose? For most people I talk to, the answer is no — and that surprises me every time. For many SWFL homeowners the house is the single largest number on the balance sheet, often paid off. That's not just where you live. That's real money for the next chapter.

Here's the pattern I keep seeing, and it's the reason I built this part of my work. People think carefully about every other asset — the retirement accounts, the pensions, the investments — and then leave the biggest one to chance. The home only gets thought about when something forces it: a health event, a loss, a stair that got too steep. A decision made under that pressure is almost never the one you'd make with time on your side.

There's a calmer way, and it doesn't mean selling anything. It means understanding what your home is worth today, what it truly costs to keep, and how it fits the life you want ten and fifteen years out. Whether staying and modifying it is the smart play, or whether a well-timed move on your terms would protect your equity and independence better. I'm the real estate and lifestyle half of that picture; your financial and tax advisors handle theirs — together it becomes an actual plan, not a someday-worry.

That's exactly what my Home Transition & Equity Planning Conversation is for — an honest, no-cost, no-pressure sit-down about your home, your equity, and the years ahead. It's not a listing appointment. Reply PLAN and I'll tell you how it works.

And tell me — is your home part of your retirement plan, or is it the piece that's never come up?



Carleen Murone, Realtor®, GRI | eXp Realty, LLC SL3531764
Real Estate Advisor and Lifestyle and Wellness Advocate - Living Well in SWFL

09/19/2026

The high-octane event known as Cape Coral Bike Night returns to Southeast 47th Terrace on Oct. 10 with live music from the likes of headliner Hairdaze. See link in comments ⬇

09/18/2026

Behind on payments is not the same as out of options. I need more people to hear that, because the not-knowing is what does the most damage.

Let me ask first, because I'd like your honest answer below: if someone owed more on their home than it would sell for, do you think most people would know they had a real choice besides foreclosure? Most don't. And that gap — between the options that exist and the ones people believe they have — is where good families lose ground they didn't need to lose.

Here's the plain-English version. When you owe more than your home can sell for, there's a path called a short sale. The lender agrees to accept less than the full loan balance so the home can be sold and you can move forward. Done right, it's often far less damaging than a foreclosure — to your credit, your record, and honestly your peace of mind — and in many cases there are even relocation funds built in to help you land somewhere stable. I've walked sellers through this more than once, and while it's never the chapter anyone planned for, I've watched it give people their footing back.

I'll be straight with you: a short sale isn't simple, isn't quick, and isn't right for everyone. It takes an agent who's actually navigated the process, plus your own tax and legal advisors for those pieces — I stay in my lane. But it's a real, dignified way through a hard situation, and the biggest mistake I see is people waiting until the options have narrowed, because they were too afraid or ashamed to ask one question early.

So if this is you, or someone you love who's too proud to say it out loud, reply OPTIONS or send me a private message. No judgment, no sales pitch — just an honest conversation about what's actually possible. And tell me — did you even know this was a path? It should be talked about far more than it is.



Carleen Murone, Realtor®, GRI | eXp Realty, LLC SL3531764
Real Estate Advisor and Lifestyle and Wellness Advocate - Living Well in SWFL

09/17/2026

Most families don't plan for this conversation. It tends to arrive all at once — and it brings a hundred decisions with it.

Dina is a Senior Navigator with Ultimate Resource Healthcare Navigators. She starts with a family's story, then builds the plan and tours the communities that genuinely match. I handle the home: timing the sale, preparing it well, and protecting the equity your parents spent decades building.

Two roles. One coordinated plan. Over the next few weeks, we're sharing what we've learned walking families through this — so you know what to expect before you need to.

Thinking about what's next for a parent, or for yourself? Send us the word PLAN. Just a conversation — no pressure.

Carleen Murone, REALTOR® (GRI, SRES®) | eXp Realty · Dina | Senior Navigator, Ultimate Resource Healthcare Navigators

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