Real Estate in Cape Coral Is Far From a Recovery
January 4th, 2010Via: New York Times:
FELLOW adventurers, refugees from winter and armchair archaeologists, we are here on this shiny green tour bus to embark on a safari of sorts. We’ll be exploring the local habitat, as upended and reconfigured by an epochal real estate fiasco.
Our guide, Marc Joseph, stalks wildlife of the white-elephant variety. A real estate agent, he specializes in houses that proved financially disastrous for someone — the banker, the homeowner, the American taxpayer, often all three. Mr. Joseph’s bus is emblazoned with red letters spelling the name of this thrill ride: ForeclosureToursRUs.com.
As we navigate this speculator’s paradise turned financial wasteland, Mr. Joseph stands at the front of the bus in a green polo shirt, highlighting specimens like this one: a white stucco house fronted by palm trees and topped by a Spanish tile roof on a canal emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. It last sold in 2005 for $850,000. Yours today for $273,000.
“How much cheaper does it have to go before you say, ‘Well, that’s just craziness,’ ” Mr. Joseph beseeches as our tour group — mostly retirees from up North, basking in Bermuda shorts on another December day stolen from winter — examines the swimming pool and the Jacuzzi. “I’m telling you now, your opportunity is banging at your door.”
Yes, it has come to this in Cape Coral, a reluctant symbol for the excesses of the great American real estate bubble: foreclosed homes served up as tourist attraction. The struggles and pain that produced this ecosystem are neatly masked by the newly installed granite countertops, pristine carpets and fresh coats of paint that now ornament many properties on the tour.
