Home (and hope) floats

At the $10 million range, it's usually not hard for a real estate agent to talk up one-of-a-kind features that will appeal to the rare buyer who can afford that kind of purchase. Homes at that price are stocked with those features.

But James Bates, a residential broker with Premier Sotheby's International Realty in Naples, can lay claim to something truly unique with one of his latest listings: a modern-designed contemporary home, built on top of more than 280 pilings, that appears to be floating. The 10,300-square-foot home, in the Naples neighborhood of Aqualane Shores, is poised on a double-sized lot, and cantilevered to float on its own private, spring-fed lake that covers some 200 feet. A home Bates calls an “architectural anomaly,” it's listed for $9,975,000.

“The home truly feels like it floats with water views glistening from every room,” Bates says in a statement. “An incredible feat of engineering and precise, painstaking design, the home encompasses the latest styles in modern international products.”