4 Places To Be A Snowbird In Style

Should that seem a bit too subdued for a snowbird with more extravagant tastes, a 42-year-old, 7,000-square-foot pseudo-plantation in Naples (in photo above) packs seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms into an estate replete with Georgian columns, a circular drive, separate guest house, four-car garage and a 60-foot enclosed boathouse. There's 150 square feet of palm-tree-lined private beach and a pool, hot tub and bright white interior that show their late-'60s age, but the library, gourmet kitchen, grand entrance and living rooms all have sweeping views of the Gulf framed by grand Old South detail. It's not a modern pleasure palace by any means, but its price dropped $2 million in the past month to $17.9 million for a Mad Men-era window on the way the Masters of the Universe once wintered.

Arizona
Love Florida but just wish it were hotter and drier? Arizona has all of the golf, shopping and spring-training baseball but none of the stifling humidity, salt and swamp water or scores of Disney-bound tourists.

It also has plenty of plush warm-winter living for those who spent their working years saving to come out of the cold in style. A 7,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bathroom home in Scottsdale, for example, comes in at half the price of a similarly sized waterfront place on the Gulf at $4.8 million while providing a great view of nearby Pinnacle Peak and the Estancia golf course. Though indoor details such as stone fireplaces and columns, recessed lighting, jetted pedestal tubs and floor-to-ceiling windows are wonderful, it's the always-accessible outdoor amenities that are the biggest sellers.

A full outdoor kitchen with stainless steel sink, grill and refrigerator serves directly into a sprawling, covered outdoor patio with views of the surrounding valleys and mountains. The patio's lower levels, meanwhile, hide infinity-edge pools and hot tubs for nights best spent gazing at the desert stars.