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If you were hoping to pick up some cheap land in Cape Coral
for that retirement or vacation home, you may be a little
late.
Vacant residential property in the ninth-fastest growing city
in the nation has nearly doubled in value in the past year.
And it’s not just prime waterfront land with direct
access to the Gulf of Mexico that’s getting expensive.
“The freshwater and off-water market is really strong,”
said Jonathan Blaze, a real estate agent with Villa Realty
Group in the Cape. “It was inexpensive before, but in
the past four to six months, we’ve seen a spike.”
Blaze said that homesites, generally in the northern part
of the city, that sold for about $6,000 then are now fetching
$10,000 to $12,000.
Overall, the Cape’s vacant residential land, about 78,000
parcels, jumped 94 percent in taxable value this year, according
to property records. That’s an increase of nearly $658
million.
It doesn’t surprise me,” Lee County Property Appraiser
Ken Wilkinson said. “What people like Will Stout and
other developers are doing in the Cape – we’ve
never seen that before.”
And those projects such as Stout’s Cape Harbour and
Entrada, Bonita Bay’s new 1,300-unit development and
Tarpon Point Marina are lifting all parts of the market.
David Abernathy, an agent with Century 21-Sunbelt Realty,
said that demand for expensive waterfront home-sites has cooled
somewhat but inland sites are taking off.
“The really hot stuff is dry lots in the $10,000 to
$20,000 range,” he said. “Even the northeast is
booming.”
Those homesites went for half that just months ago, Abernathy
said.
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Commercial property, while lagging
residential in terms of explosive growth, still held its own
with an 18 percent rise.
But the biggest gains in commercial land are happening in
the western, less developed end of the city.
Officials at Cape Coral Holdings, one of the city’s
largest commercial land owners, said that their property on
Pine Island Road, west of Skyline Boulevard, jumped about
42 percent in value while land near Del Prado Boulevard has
remained stagnant.
“The mature areas aren’t seeing as much growth,
Cape Holdings President Laura Holquist said. “The western
end is where the market area is growing.”
The Cape’s land-value boom appears to be a classic case
of supply and demand.
Waterfront property, the engine driving the Cape’s growth,
is in finite supply in Florida. And the Cape’s waterfront
still is considered affordable compared with other communities
such as Naples and Bonita Springs.
The 8.1 percent jump in population between April 1, 2002 and
April 1, 2003, didn’t hurt either. Now the city boasts
more than 122,000 residents.
Even the federal moratorium on building boat docks has not
held down values, but some real estate professionals say the
growth would be even greater if people could build a dock.
Yet, with all those vacant home-sites, 400 miles of canals,
3,236 miles of paved streets and one of the lowest crime rates
in the state, the Cape is poised for continued growth.
In fact, population expert Paul Van Buskirk likened Cape Coral’s
current growth stage to that of Miami’s in the 1960s.
He also estimated that the city will pass 200,000 in population
within the next 13 years
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