$1,260,000

Picture yourself enjoying a South Florida sunset in January from your heated spa, overlooking the lake, while your neighbors up north shovel their driveways. This is the true South Florida lifestyle. This is Monterey Estates — a boutique gated community of only 48 homes in Delray Beach, where life moves at the pace you always said you wanted. Five bedrooms, four baths, 3,376 SF with a brand-new standing seam metal roof and a first-floor guest suite for parents who stay the winter. Warren American Whiskey Kitchen is five minutes up Lyons Road. Atlantic Avenue is twelve minutes east. Toes in the sand at Delray Beach under twenty. Zoned for Spanish River High. American Heritage School eight minutes away. Let me tell you about Monterey Estates on the lake. Let me tell you about Monterey Estates, because most people drive right past it and never know it exists. That is by design. Tucked just south of Lake Ida Road, one block east of Hagen Ranch, this boutique gated community of Mediterranean-style estate homes was built in the early 2000s and has quietly become one of the best-kept residential secrets in all of Delray Beach. There are no billboards. No model homes. No banner ads pushing you toward it. In the last two years, only three homes in the entire community have changed hands. That is not a coincidence people who live in Monterey Estates do not leave. The community wraps around a lake that catches the last light of the day in a way that makes your evening walk feel like it belongs in a different time zone. The streets inside the gate are exactly the kind of place where everyone cruise on golf carts after dinner because in Delray Beach, street-legal golf carts are a way of life, and these roads were made for it. This home has been owner-occupied and cared for not rented, not flipped, not staged to hide problems. The kind of home where the owners invested in a brand-new metal roof because they planned to stay. Life had other plans, and now it is available. 7299 Serrano Terrace sits on a quarter-acre estate lot with direct lake views. Five bedrooms, four full bathrooms, 3,376 square feet of open-concept living and five real bedrooms, not an office someone relabeled to boost the listing. The five bedrooms work the way your life actually works: a guest wing for anyone who visits every winter, an office with a real door, an upstairs living area the grandkids take over on holidays or bedrooms for teenagers who need their own space and a media room for movie nights. This home fits however your is shaped right now. The main floor flows from the gourmet kitchen through the family room and out to the lanai in one unbroken sightline the kind of layout where you are prepping dinner at the island, watching the pool through the sliders, and carrying on a conversation with guests in the living room all at the same time. Volume ceilings give the main floor a sense of scale that photos do not capture you feel it when you walk in. A first-floor guest suite with a full bathroom gives visiting guest their own wing their own space, their own privacy, no one stepping over anyone. A three-car garage tiled and fitted with built-in cabinets handles the golf cart, the bikes, and the storage that South Florida homes never seem to have enough of. The sellers also installed a brand-new standing seam metal roof, which means decades of hurricane-rated protection already paid for and an insurance quote that reflects it. THE BACKYARD THAT BECOMES YOUR SOCIAL LIFE The private backyard faces the community lake, and because of the home's west-facing orientation, you are watching sunsets from your heated spa while the water turns orange and pink in front of you. That is what a Tuesday evening looks like at this address. The outdoor space is where this home separates itself from everything else at this price point. The paver deck runs wide and deep enough room to install an outdoor kitchen with a built-in grill and bar top where you flip steaks while your guest