Cape Marco, Marco Island

A guard-gated, high-rise condominium community at the southwestern tip of Marco Island, on Cape Marco Drive off South Collier Boulevard. It is the island run out to its last corner: the Gulf on one side, Caxambas Bay on the other, and the Ten Thousand Islands beyond.

Six residential towers make up the community: Belize, Cozumel, Merida, Monterrey, Tampico and Veracruz, with Veracruz the newest and cited for its extensive amenities. That position at the island's point is the organising fact about Cape Marco. Water wraps it on multiple sides, so units carry views the mid-island beachfront cannot offer: Gulf sunsets one way, Caxambas Pass and the Ten Thousand Islands the other.

I am Kris Asquith, Broker Associate at Premiere Plus Realty, and Marco Island is one of the nine Southwest Florida markets I work.

The beach, first. Residents have private, direct access to an uncrowded stretch of South Beach, which is the quiet advantage of the island's far corner: the sand without the crowd that gathers in front of the resort district.

And, unusually for a beachfront tower community, there is a boat answer too, with strict limits worth knowing before you count on it. Cape Marco has a community fishing and boating dock on Caxambas Pass, and under the association's rules it is day use only: short-term loading, unloading and day-docking, up to nine vessels at a time, no overnight mooring, and no live-aboards.

So the honest reading is this: you can run the boat out for the day from home, and you cannot keep it here. Owners with a boat in the long-term plan hold wet slips, dry storage or launch arrangements elsewhere on the island. If the boat is the centre of the purchase rather than an accessory to it, Estates or the island's canal-front homes answer that better, and I will tell you which for the unit you are considering.

Cape Marco is the tower answer to a question the island's other communities answer differently. Estates is the large-lot, big-boat subdivision with deep bridge-free Gulf access. Hideaway Beach Club is the private-beach-and-golf club on the opposite tip, where membership comes with the deed. Key Marco is a gated island of just over 130 single-family homesites across Barfield Bay. Goodland is the waterfront fishing village nearby.

Within that line-up Cape Marco is where beachfront living, building security and lock-and-leave convenience meet, which is why it suits seasonal owners in a way the single-family communities cannot. For the market as a whole, see Marco Island real estate and Marco Island condos.