Cape Coral was home to one of the largest real estate and construction booms in the country. I remember back in 2005, when you couldn’t visit a convenience store or barbershop and not hear stories about how the person who worked there had just bought another condo or was trying to remodel a house. I always think of the immortal words of Warren Buffet: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Everyone should have known that the market couldn’t sustain that amount of monumental growth, but a lot of people were stuck with their financial pants down.
In September, the Florida Association of Realtors released official home and condo sales figures for the month of August. Median sales prices are down 41% for single-family homes in the Fort Myers Cape Coral area from last year. Median home sales prices in Cape Coral and Fort Myers have fallen 30.84% in three short months, from a median price of $212,400 in May to a median price of $146,900 in August. Home sales are up 31% over last year with 684 sales this year vs. 520 last year, but home sales are down 11% from July 2008 numbers. Cape Coral is affordable again But with such a drop in taxable value that the city of 170,000 is laying off dozens of employees and cutting park programs and other services.
And with nearly 11,000 homes in foreclosure – 1 in 31 homes – it could be two years before all distressed properties find buyers.
Cape Coral is one of the youngest cities in Florida, the brainchild of brothers Jack and Leonard Rosen. In 1957, they paid $678,000 for Redfish Point, renamed it, and began building their “affordable waterfront wonderland” across the Caloosahatchee River from Fort Myers.
What Cape Coral may lack in historic charm, it makes up for in size and location. At 115 square miles, it is the third-largest city geographically in Florida, behind only Jacksonville and Tampa. Even today, 50 percent of the land is undeveloped, giving parts of Cape Coral the look of a windswept Kansas prairie.
Among the city’s outlets are 400 miles of canals, many with direct access to the Gulf of Mexico. That, along with cheaper home prices than those in the Tampa Bay area or South Florida, has drawn hordes of speculators as flexible lending standards and low interest rates fueled a nationwide housing boom. as of 2004.
If you’ve ever wanted a bargain on beachfront property, Cape Coral may be the place to shop in 2008-2009.