The City of Fort Myers hired nationally known urban planner Andres Duany to redesign its sagging downtown. (Photo: John Curry for Cyberhomes)
As a teen, I thought my hometown of Fort Myers, Fla., was the most boring place on the planet. I honestly could not get out of there fast enough. I left at 18 to go to college at the University of Florida in Gainesville and haven’t lived in Ft. Myers since. But we have family in the area, so we’ve made quasi-regular trips back home, including a visit the last week of August. On most occasions, I’ve looked around and found little that would make me want to live there again. This time, I was more intrigued.
During the real estate boom, I was frankly stunned when Ft. Myers/Cape Coral was named one of the hottest growing markets in the country. I remembered Cape Coral as a place in the middle of nowhere, with dredged canals, backfilled mangroves, and no trees. We did occasionally trek out that way to Waltzing Waters, a lighted water show choreographed to music. (Yes, it was that boring.)
When the boom started to heat up, $1,500 lots in Cape Coral shot up to $15,000. When it was in full steam, those same lots went for $85,000. It was insane. My parents, who had lived there since the early 1960s, wondered if they should take advantage of the dizzying increase in property values and sell their house, which some of their friends had done. They opted to stay put, in large part because there was nowhere else in the county that they could afford to buy anything even remotely comparable.
Then the housing market tanked, and Ft. Myers/Cape Coral got its clock cleaned. Values plummeted. People who bought the $85,000 lots and started building $200,000 houses on them with a $1,000 deposit realized that by the time the house was finished, they’d be in upside down on the mortgage. So they walked away, abandoning thousands of houses in various stages of construction. Thousands more who bought at the height of the boom, using adjustable rate mortgages because they thought values would continue to climb, handed the keys back to their lenders. When I was there in January 2008 to write about builder bankruptcies, there was more than a two-year supply of houses for sale on the market. That’s come down significantly since the beginning of the year, but as noted in this real estate agent’s blog, most of the buyers are snapping up distressed properties.
This is a good thing. It's taking those properties, which have been dragging down prices and creating eyesores across the county, off the market and putting them on the tax rolls. Homeowners are moving in, mowing the yards and maintaining the properties.
I think the thing that impressed me most in Ft. Myers is the downtown. When I was there in 2008, it seemed pretty sad – lots of vacant storefronts and no one on the sidewalks, even at the height of the tourist season. Now, the area is referred to as the River District (downtown fronts the Caloosahatchee River), and last week, it felt energized – and it was August, when nobody comes to visit and everyone who lives there leaves town. There are still plenty of streets closed with construction, but there’s a wealth of new, interesting local businesses and numerous housing options available. There’s a lot to be optimistic about.
The recent surge of real estate activity in Ft. Myers is a great example of why I’m so hopeful that Congress extends and expands the home buyer tax credit. It’s working. It just needs some more time to help get things really turned around.—Pat Curry