Greg Snow - Southwest Florida Real Estate Expert provides real estate services to Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva Islands

I am now another year older, deeper in debt and continue to monitor what could be one of the worst disasters ever in our Gulf of Mexico. BP has caused a doomsday scenario with it's pursuit of profits in lieu of safety precautions that surely will keep many lawyers quite busy for the next ten or more years. Just having glanced at our local News-Press this morning after turning 62 yesterday (whew), and some conservative estimates of a $2.2 Billion loss if we even have a 10% reduction in tourism makes for gloom here in Lee County. Perusing the USA Today and reading best and worst case scenarios is sure to start thinking it is going to be a long, hot summer. With alot the global and national news directing toward death , destruction, anger, poverty, terrorism, and distrust, I think we may need a visit from an extraterrestial savior to buoy our spirits or at least take the oil in the Gulf to the galaxy dump out there.

"It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times", is the opening in Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities" and for the past five or six or seven or eight years in Lee County, Florida, we have lived both ends of the statement. Our local industry base is made up of agriculture, tourism, and construction, and for a time in the early parts of the 21st century, we were rolling on all cylinders. Watch out for cold weather that occasionaly meanders down, and the hurricanes that pop up between June and late November, and it is a perfect equaliateral triangle with the building boom that happened. Now local unemployment sits at about 14%, and many of seasonal and census jobs have disappeared and may amke that number "soft". Some startlying statistics recently provided by the reliable Lee County Development Council show in 2005, 8550 Lee County residents were unemployed (3.25%) and in April of 2010 35,398 of working residents (13%) were unemployed in a growing workforce. Diversify into other fields would help, however time and money do not seem to be available for any immediate relief.

All the attention our Southwest Florida real estate market has created with a rocketesque rise in values to pretty much a fire sale has drawn attention from all over the globe. In late 2006, the median value of homes sold (half sold for more, half for less) was $326,000. Today we are rising in values again from median prices in low $80,000 range to a bit over $90,000 today. Our local Multiple Listing Service, www.swflrealtors.com, has been busy so far with over 11,000 closings in the first five months. With the affordability of buy versus rent now leaning heavily toward buyers, we are seeing people fly in from all over to buy property here in Lee County. Individuals that wanted to buy five years ago and were unable to because of costs, now find better deals with low and friendly interet rates, and along with some government icentives , have swung a depressing marketplace, in a recovering and soon viable investment. Lee County was once ranked less affordable than half of 225 metropolitan areas in 2005. Lee County has some of the best value in Florida with great beaches, boating, golf courses, 2 Major League Spring baseball teams, an international airport, and friendly people.

Welcome to early June in Lee County, Florida. The heat is on both outside and in our local Lee County housing market. Closed residential single family homes to date read: 3883 under $100k, 2904 from $100k to one million dollars and 40 sold above 1 milllion with top sale being a 5 bedroom, 8 bath on 7.5 acres of riverfront proerty in January for $3.7 million. Zip code of 33908 if one is tracking those particulars. Closed condo sales of 1280 up to $100k, 1322 between $100k and 1 million$ and even five sold for over $one million dollars. Our multi-family sales read:360 sold less than $100k, and 45 sold for more. Raw or undeveloped land closed sales of 1191 for under $100k and 132 over $100k (also boat sips and/or docks included here. That total of 11,217 closed sales in our www.swflrealtors.com,  is impressive versus same time period last year here and rivals same period in booming 2005. In order to comprehend where we are at and where we may be going this June 7th, 2010, one needs to review prices, loans, employment, and government assistance. Follow next few articles to follow us.

As the magic number for the return of the National Football League, possibly for a while, falls to below 100 days, our local residents in Lee County, Florida have many concerns. Our local unemployment is near 14%, the merry-go-round of foreclosures and short sales continues, weather is warming up for a really HOT summer and hurricane season, and the BP oil spill sure seems to be getting larger and closer. Toss in the failure of many banks here, the most recent being the Bank of Florida, and one begins to imagine this could spiral in either an up or down direction. Resiliency appears to our best asset to once again begin dealing with trials and tribulations that our Lee County rsidents and visitors encounter by living here in paradise. We be keeping our fingers and other appendages crossed that the projections for a Super active hurricane season are inaccurate.

Our local lending industry is often more difficult to solve than many of the challenging games, puzzles or riddles one has encountered. My father use to almost finish the Sunday N.Y Times crossword puzzle in about 45 minutes. Today, in southwest Florida's mortgage market, closing a real estate deal with a mortgage normally takes more than 45 days. The Obama's administration's main mortgage assistance plan has as many people who have achieved permanent assistance as those who have tried and dropped out. The number of people who attend the foreclosure sales daily in Lee County has risen from 3-4 to over 100. Our local Multiple Listing Service has almost 1200 closed residental sales under $100k since 2010 with over 30% being REO's of foreclosures. Many of these sales are without loans when closed. Lee County is essentially pulling itself away from the "maddening crowd" of the opti-arm no documents loans that Wall Street helped fuel our place as a leader in foreclosures. Hopefully we are postioning ourselves to be the place to be in this decade.

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As we head toward what may be a dozzie of Hurricane season (June1-Nov.30), one can hope, pray, and beg for our southwest Florida housing market to continue to buld in strength. Our local Multiple Listing Service has figures that show prices stabilizing, even moving up in some areas, and some movement in the upper end price range.

Okay campers, rise and shine :).  April home sales here in Lee County were up almost 3% from last year according to the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beaches. Our median price moved up to $96,000 from $80,000 in April 2009. Our pending sales, those that are under contract but have not closed yet increased to 2193 in April, up over 6% from March. Another very interesting statistic is closed sales for homes under $100k dropped about 10%. Homes in the next tiered ranges actually increased about 5%. Reviewing these numbers usggest our local real estate market is moving forward from the really unhealthy recession we went through in southwest Florida.

Our local paper the News-Press carried a front page story Sunday on North Fort Myers and how they have Never really busted, because they Never really Boomed. This mostly quiet community north of the Caloosahatchee River in Lee County, Florida has little ingredients to make it a haven for speculators and flippers. Mostly older, retired, frugal and Midwesterners, the income and inclination don't add up to roller coaster rides in real estate. The median family income of around $40,000 per year, lack of many commerical opportunties, median age of over 60 years old, and until 2007 13 story Yacht Club opening, no real "skyscrapers". They are actually building again in Del Tura Country Club with 50 lots still available for manufactured homes. Our Lee County, Florida with Cape Coral and Lehigh Acres leading the way, has been continuously near the top on lists for worst hit areas for real estate foreclosures. It is always nice to see a small amount of our population not have to ride the zoomer to the top and then fall off the mountain topinto the sea with the oysters and their eyes.

We are "back in the saddle again" with the F-word, foreclosures in our lovely county of Lee, off Florida's vibrant West Coast. Instead of moving AWAY from the top spot in foreclosures, we moved back into the top five in metro areas in the U.S. at number four. Our area of Cape Coral-Fort Myers had almost 3500 foreclosure-related filings, or one in every 105 local households last month. On the flip side, the filings are down over 44% from jsut one year ago. Our urbane sister neighbors of Naples-Marco Island had a filing for one in every 172 households (17th in nation), and for perspective, Florida had one in every 182 households. Foreclosure filings actually DROPPED 2% nationwide in April for a first in last Five years, and that is certainly welcome to the hotel news :).

As our April, 2010, begins to ebb into mornings in May, and our infamous HOT summers are getting nearer, I am cautiously confident that the "eyes of the oysters" are getting smaller, as we ascend to the surface of normalcy in Lee County real estate investments.  While our U.S. Congress takes their shots at members of Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, Lehman Bros., Citigroup, and the rest of the Wall Street crowd that engineered our rise and fall in Southwest Florida real estate (along with Las Vegas, California, Arizona, et al.), we have survived, and a new order of real estate investments have occured. Many real estate investments in southwest Florida are cash sales or short sales, or REO sales, along with about 15-20% the good old fashioned way (the banks are really loaning money to credit worthy people??). Prices are still very favorable, as are current interst rates, and alot of inventory (going down as we read), provide smart investment choices for full time, part time, or vacation properties in the Fort Myers area.