If you’re shopping for a home in an upscale neighborhood like Valencia at Abacoa (Jupiter, FL), you’ll find a number of sophisticated architectural details are part of the package. You don’t have to know their names to appreciate their charm … but it doesn’t hurt. So here are a couple of terms it pays to be familiar with…because you’ll be probably be paying for them!

Porte-cochere … a protective porch

If you drive up to a house and find yourself parked under an overhang or archway in front of the garage, you are passing through the porte-cochere. This French term translates as coach gate or carriage porch. It is always a porch at a main or secondary entrance to a building, through which a car can pass, so the occupants can get out under cover, protected from the weather, before the car pulls into the garage. While it is not to be confused with a carport, it can function as one, providing additional parking under cover.

Coffered ceiling… added dimensionality

In architecture a coffer is a panel in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling. The stone coffers of the ancient Greek and Romans are the earliest surviving examples, but a seventh-century BCE Etruscan chamber tomb reproduces a ceiling with beams and cross-beams lying on them, with flat panels. Old idea…great look!

Cupola …tower of light

This is a small, dome-like structure on top of the roof, like a crown. The word comes from Italian, indicating a vault that resembles an upside down cup. Cupolas in more modern houses can appear in the center of the house above a large staircase, where they add elegance, light and air.

Butler’s pantry … charming convenience

The traditional location for a butler’s pantry is in a short hallway between the kitchen and the dining room. Its purpose is to allow easy access to glassware and silver … and to provide a surface to set out appetizers, drinks, or dessert. Butler’s pantries, or china pantries, were built in English or American homes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Delightfully convenient, they are making a big comeback.

One sure sign that the snowbirds are landing is the arrival of those massive auto carriers, unloading a Bentley here, a Mercedes there. And you have to wonder, why go to so much trouble every year.

A second home makes for a far smoother landing.

You can have a car garaged and ready when you get to town. Have all your own furniture and dishes, your Florida clothes, everything that makes for comfortable living in place and ready for your return.

No more renting a place or trucking a car. No packing for the season. Have all the creature comforts, a smart tax shelter, a terrific winter shelter all in one. 

What better time to buy!

N. Palm Beach County  Real Estate prices are finally bottoming out. There are lots of great homes for sale, deeply discounted … while there are actually very few rentals.  Mortgage rates are down. And the start of an upward trend is probably just another year or two away.

Your second home may very well begin to appreciate not long after you buy. But you need to catch the bottom of this bell curve before it starts to cycle back up. So why wait. Turn this economic downturn to a real advantage.

Invest in your life in South Florida.

Enjoy Florida on your own terms, your own turf. You’ll have the weather you want, the proximity you need. With direct flights to the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. Short hops to anywhere on the East Coast. And the luxury of Palm Beach, the action of Miami, the ease of the Keys all so close by. Land in Jupiter. Buy it now!