Collier County, Florida: A Local Guide for Home Buyers and Homeowners

Naples

Naples was settled in 1886, opened its pier in 1888, became a town on December 1, 1923 and a city on May 25, 1949. The historic downtown runs along Fifth Avenue South and Third Street South, palm-lined streets of galleries, cafes and boutiques.

Port Royal, on the water south of downtown, was dredged in the 1950s and is known for its pirate-themed street names. Up in North Naples, Waterside Shops is an open-air shopping center built around waterfalls and fountains.

Marco Island

Marco Island is the largest of the Ten Thousand Islands, south of Naples, with 6 miles of beaches. A lot of its homes sit on the water. Tigertail Beach gives you a choice between open Gulf beach and a wild lagoon edged with undeveloped mangroves.

Everglades City

Everglades City was the county seat until 1962, still bills itself as “the town that cost eight hundred dollars in 1889,” and is the birthplace of the stone crab industry. It’s the western way into the Everglades, and stone crab season runs October 15 to May 1. Across the causeway, Chokoloskee sits at the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands.

Immokalee

Immokalee is the largest inland community in the county, near the Big Cypress Swamp, and agriculture is its core industry. Downtown has First Street Zocalo, a half-acre shaded park, and the Immokalee Pioneer Museum is a 13-acre site showing an early-1900s pioneer homestead.

Ave Maria

Ave Maria is a master-planned community with its own restaurants, shops and services, and it’s home to Ave Maria University.

Golden Gate and Golden Gate Estates

The Gulf American Land Corporation created Golden Gate Estates as a large subdivision, selling lots, often from aerial views, and digging an extensive canal system. Those canals drained the wetlands, and about 78,000 acres of the original tract are now Picayune Strand State Forest, under restoration through the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.

East Naples and Ochopee

East Naples is the county seat area, with the Government Center and the Tax Collector’s main office on Tamiami Trail East, and East Naples Community Park bills itself as the “Pickleball Capital of the World.” Follow the Trail far enough east and you reach Ochopee, where Big Cypress National Preserve keeps its headquarters and two visitor centers.

Collier County SHIP Purchase Assistance

Collier’s SHIP program puts money toward the down payment and closing costs as a 0% deferred second mortgage with no monthly payment. It comes due if you sell, transfer or refinance the home or stop using it as your homestead, and it’s never repaid if you keep it as your primary residence for the full term. It’s for income-qualified first-time buyers who haven’t owned a home in the past 3 years, the price has to fall under the program’s cap, and you’ll need a HUD-certified homebuyer class and a first-mortgage pre-qualification.

SHIP here runs first come, first qualified, and the award size, income limits and price cap are reset as Collier’s housing plan and funding change. Before you write on a house in Naples or Immokalee, we check with Community and Human Services on what SHIP is paying and whether files are moving. Call 888-601-8344, or reach the county SHIP line yourself at 239-252-5229.

Collier SHIP homebuyer page

Collier County HOME Purchasing Assistance

The federally funded HOME program makes a 0% deferred loan for down payment and closing costs, with no monthly payments, due when you sell or transfer the home. The amount depends on your income and how much help the purchase needs. It’s for first-time buyers under a set price cap, and a HUD-certified homebuyer workshop is required.

HOME dollars reach Collier through a yearly federal allocation, so the price cap and the money on hand both move. We confirm with the county housing office on Airport Road that HOME can fund your purchase before you sign a contract. Call 888-601-8344 and we’ll ask.

Collier County Housing: buying a home

Housing Finance Authority of Lee County (covers Collier)

Lee County’s HFA lends across the line into Collier through its Own a Home Opportunity Program. It pairs a 30-year fixed FHA, VA, USDA-RD or Freddie Mac HFA Advantage first mortgage with a 0% down payment second that has nothing due for 30 years unless you sell, refinance or rent the house out. First-time buyers qualify, with exceptions for veterans and targeted areas, and the program also covers Charlotte, DeSoto, Lee, Palm Beach and Sarasota counties. eHousingPlus administers it, and you apply through a participating lender.

The Lee HFA sets separate Collier price limits for regular and targeted areas and reissues its program guide when they change. We pull the guide in force on the day you’re ready and check your Collier address against it before you make an offer. Call 888-601-8344 to get that started.

Lee HFA program guide (PDF)

Florida Hometown Heroes (statewide)

Hometown Heroes helps buyers who work full time for a Florida-based employer in health care, K-12 schools, first response, public safety, the courts or licensed child care. In Collier that can mean a nurse at NCH, a teacher with Collier County Public Schools or a deputy. Active-duty service members qualify whoever they work for, while veterans and Reserve and Guard members need full-time work with a Florida-based employer, in Naples or anywhere else in the state.

It pairs a 30-year fixed first mortgage with a 0% second for down payment and closing costs. That second has no monthly payment and is repaid when you sell, refinance or pay off the home, or stop living in it; it isn’t forgiven. You’ll take a homebuyer education course (online works), and you apply through a participating lender or broker, not Florida Housing.

Florida Housing assistance can be used once in a lifetime, so put it on the right Collier home with the right loan under it. Income and purchase limits vary by county and the money is reserved loan by loan, so call 888-601-8344 first and we’ll check what Hometown Heroes allows for a Collier purchase that week.

Official program page

FL Assist, FL HLP and HFA Preferred (statewide)

These Florida Housing seconds sit behind a Florida Housing first mortgage. FL Assist is 0% and deferred with no monthly payment, repaid on sale, refinance, transfer or when you move out, and it works with FHA, VA, USDA or the Conventional HFA Preferred and HFA Advantage firsts. The HLP second is the exception with a payment: a small fixed amount each month for 30 years. HFA Advantage PLUS puts a forgivable second behind a Freddie Mac Conventional first, and it’s wiped out over 5 years as long as the Collier house stays your home.

Some of these can stack with Collier’s SHIP or HOME help and some can’t, and Florida Housing changes its menu during the year. Call 888-601-8344 and we’ll tell you which Florida Housing second lines up best with the county money on your Naples or Golden Gate purchase.

Official program page

Schools and colleges

Public schools are run by Collier County Public Schools.

Florida SouthWestern State College has its Collier Campus in Naples, and Ave Maria University is in Ave Maria.

Getting around

Tamiami Trail East is the address of the Government Center in East Naples, the Tax Collector’s main office and the Big Cypress visitor centers out in Ochopee, so most county business happens along it.

Naples Municipal Airport began as a World War II Army Air Forces training field and is one of the busiest municipal airports in the country. The county also has Everglades Airpark, Immokalee Airport and Marco Island Airport, plus the mostly unused Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport out in the Big Cypress.

Naples beaches

The tourism bureau counts 30 miles of wide white-sand beaches in the area, including Naples Beach, Vanderbilt Beach and Clam Pass Park. Down the coast, Marco Island is known for shelling.

Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park

Delnor-Wiggins Pass is a mile of relatively undisturbed barrier island at 11135 Gulfshore Drive, home to loggerhead sea turtles. It has a boat ramp to the Cocohatchee River estuary.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary protects the world’s largest remaining stand of old-growth bald cypress, and its 2.25-mile boardwalk is open year-round.

Fakahatchee Strand

Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park covers about 70,000 acres of the western Everglades from 137 Coast Line Dr in Copeland. It has 44 native orchids, the ghost orchid among them.

Big Cypress and the Everglades

Big Cypress was the first national preserve in the National Park Service, with visitor centers at 33000 and 52105 Tamiami Trail East. From Everglades City, less than an hour from Naples, you reach Everglades National Park and the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, with dolphins, manatees, alligators, crocodiles and panthers.

Swamp buggies and the old pier

The swamp buggy was invented in Naples, and the races run three times a year at the Florida Sports Park. The Naples Pier goes back to 1888, when the town had about 80 residents.

Lake Trafford

Lake Trafford in Immokalee is known for largemouth bass, black crappie and bluegill, and airboat tours run from sunrise to sunset.

Naples Zoo and Artis-Naples

Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens began as a garden in 1919 and became a zoo in 1969. Artis-Naples is home to the Naples Philharmonic and The Baker Museum, which holds the Naples Invitational, a survey of local contemporary art, every other year.

Picayune Strand and the python hunt

Picayune Strand State Forest covers about 78,000 acres of the old Golden Gate Estates tract, where the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan is putting the drained wetlands back. Collier is also at the center of Florida’s Burmese python problem; a 2016 removal effort here caught what was then a state-record 16-foot, 140-pound snake.

Buying a home

FHA is the loan most of our Collier buyers use: 3.5% down, flexible credit guidelines, a county limit set for the Naples-Marco Island metro, and it pairs with SHIP and the other programs above. Veterans can use a VA loan with no down payment, and we also write Conventional loans, Hometown Heroes and FHA 100% financing.

We’ve been a licensed Florida mortgage broker since 1997, and we lend statewide in all 67 Florida counties, from Immokalee and Marco Island to the Panhandle. We shop your loan with multiple wholesale lenders, and we’ll get you pre-approved before you tour your first home in Naples or Golden Gate Estates.

Refinancing the home you have

A refinance can lower your monthly payment, pull cash out for a new roof or hurricane shutters, pay off higher-interest debt, or buy out a co-owner.

Call 888-601-8344 and we’ll show you the payment you have now, the payment you’d have after, the cash you’d walk away with and what it costs to close, all on one sheet.