09/08/2026
🌴 MEET THE OWNERS… BUT NOT AS YOU’D EXPECT! 🏡🇺🇸
We’re Nicole & Steve from Hertfordshire, UK — and this is the story behind Calabay Palms Villa.
Because owning a villa in Florida wasn’t something that just happened for us.
It was a dream… a very expensive dream… and one that nearly disappeared more than once! 😳
Our love affair with Florida started way back in 1989, when we first visited — and I was pregnant with our eldest. ❤️
By 2002, we were dreaming about owning our own little piece of Florida.
Then reality hit.
In 2004, we were buying a brand-new home when the builder pulled out. Thankfully, we got our deposit back.
So we tried again.
This time, the builder disappeared with a very large deposit and our lifetime savings. 💔
That knocked us for six.
And as if that wasn’t enough, around the same time we lost my second parent. Life became about much more than Florida, and it took years to grieve, recover and find our feet again.
But somehow… the dream never went away.
So in 2009, we took the biggest leap of all.
This time, we bought a bigger home — but crucially, not a brand-new build.
And that’s when Calabay Palms Villa was born. 🌴🏡
October 2009.
And the crazy part?
We bought it without even seeing it only by video (after all by this time we had seen a fair few)😱😂
But even then, it certainly wasn’t straightforward.
Getting the mortgage sorted seemed to take forever and there were plenty of moments when we wondered whether the whole thing would actually happen. After everything we’d already been through, we were holding our breath right until the very end!
But eventually… it happened.
We had our Florida home. ❤️🇺🇸
It definitely wasn’t plain sailing from there either.
We went through two management companies before finally finding someone we trusted. In January 2012, we found our amazing management team — and we’ve been together ever since. ❤️
We’ve also lost a LOT of money along the way through a British travel money company… another story we’ll probably tell you about! 🤦♀️
Not to mention the Pandemic 😨
So yes, owning a Florida villa can look glamorous from the outside.
☀️ Sunshine
🏊♀️ Pool days
🌴 Florida sunsets
🏡 Your own home in the sunshine
But behind the photos are huge expenses, maintenance, repairs, utilities, HOA, management, upgrades, towels, bedding , furniture, insurance, taxes, regulations, cancellations, difficult decisions — and sometimes things going wrong that you simply cannot control from the other side of the Atlantic.
And we want to be honest about all of it.
Because after 17 years of ownership, we’ve learned a LOT!
We’ve made mistakes.
We’ve lost money.
We’ve had setbacks.
We’ve had incredible guests.
We’ve had stressful moments.
And we’ve also created something we are incredibly proud of.
We have four wonderful children, and Calabay Palms has become part of our family story.
So this page isn’t just about selling holidays.
It’s about our Florida journey — the reality of owning a villa, the things nobody tells you, the costs, the highs, the lows, the funny stories, the mistakes we’ve made and the things we’d do differently.
And, of course…
🌴 A LOT of Florida! 🇺🇸☀️
