Cape Coral: Sell your houses and leave (West Palm Beach, Fort Myers: real estate, rentals)

[yoko]

Originally Posted by yoko

While Cape Coral has not been successful in generating a profit through its water park, now with almost $1 billion debt, Cape Coral wants to sport another useless project.

“The plan would allow Cape Coral to borrow money for the project and in turn be guaranteed a certain amount of state sales tax dollars every year to pay the debt. The amount of the sales taxes refund would be based on how much business the swim center would bring the city. "

By whom?
Current residents, who have their own caged swimming pool?
By tourists who come to see the ocean and nature?

Rep. Gary Aubuchon looking for funds for Cape Coral swim center | news-press.com | The News-Press


"Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. is projected to reach positive equity by 2020."

Recovering lost home equity will take years

Realty Q&A - MarketWatch

Cape Coral wants to sink down even further in debt by wasting borrowed money to build new commercial units right in the middle of residential neighborhoods. For whom? Strip mall after strip mall is abandoned and businesses are closing for good. People are leaving in record numbers.

No wonder residents do not like this useless plan. The value of their houses will drop even further and we will have an increase of abandoned commercial units where weeds can be grown!

Too much dope is not good!




http://www.abc-7.com/Global/story.asp?S=12306518

[rikoshaprl]

It appears that these commercial enterprises will be private ventures. They will not be built if there is no demand for them. Supply and demand. Just because the federal government doesn't work that way anymore doesn't mean we are not capitalist locally. It will be good for the tax base and could eventually lower property taxes for residents.

[yoko]

[quote=yoko;13775411]Cape Coral wants to sink down even further in debt by wasting borrowed money to build new commercial units right in the middle of residential neighborhoods. For whom? Strip mall after strip mall is abandoned and businesses are closing for good. People are leaving in record numbers.

No wonder residents do not like this useless plan. The value of their houses will drop even further and we will have an increase of abandoned commercial units where weeds can be grown!

Too much dope is not good!




"Cape Coral needs some type of a boost, a kick" says Cape Coal Council member.

The real kick for Cape Coral is its cheap housing with falling prices till 2020 !

" Edmon Mamane, the company's owner, said he pays $48,000 to $60,000 for homes, some of which were never lived in, and sells them to Israelis for about $80,000."

Whoever bought last year is sitting now on a painful loss this year. This loss of equity will continue for 10 more years.
And how is the City helping its residents? Borrowing more to add cement and other useless housing/commecial units to its 24000 available foreclosed residential units.

The very least residents were enjoying was the quietness. Now with commercial units smacked right into residential areas that is gone too.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20100401/bs_bw/1015b4173024165587 (broken link)

[sheldoncreek]

Be carefull of the doom and gloom.

[yoko]

Cape Coral wants to sink down even further in debt by wasting borrowed money to build new commercial units right in the middle of residential neighborhoods.
For whom? Strip mall after strip mall is abandoned and businesses are closing for good. People are leaving in record numbers.

No wonder residents do not like this useless plan. The value of their houses will drop even further and we will have an increase of abandoned commercial units where weeds can be grown!
Too much dope is not good!

"Cape Coral needs some type of a boost, a kick" says Cape Coal Council member.

The real kick for Cape Coral is its cheap housing with falling prices till 2020 !

" Edmon Mamane, the company's owner, said he pays $48,000 to $60,000 for homes, some of which were never lived in, and sells them to Israelis for about $80,000."

Whoever bought last year is sitting now on a painful loss this year. This loss of equity will continue for 10 more years.

And how is the City helping its residents? Borrowing more to add cement and other useless housing/commecial units to its 24000 available foreclosed residential units.

The very least residents were enjoying was the quietness. Now with commercial units smacked right into residential areas that is gone too.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20100401/...b4173024165587 (broken link)

[hiknapster]

Yoko:

One of your links comes back to an expired news article, so I couldn't read about the commercial building.

I did check out the one above that. It talks about flippers all across the country and says that it just may be a good thing at this point. We need something to start the engine.

This may look like another case of "here we go again" (like Wall Street pay), but flipping 2.0 has some important differences from the previous version. In fact, flipping may now serve a constructive purpose, helping to clear out backlogs of foreclosed homes and stabilize distressed neighborhoods. "We're the good guys because the government doesn't have enough money to fix these homes up," says 42-year-old Phoenix investor Harry D'Elia.

Something has to be done, and this is serving its purpose. It's a quick Band-Aid, but even foreign investors are a good thing. If we can get some of this cleared out, it will quick start the economy down there, and JC Penney, Target, etc., your local restaurant, the boat seller, the nurse, the EMT won't go away.

You can't be against everything all of the time. That's just a prescription for death.

[hiknapster]

Every bit of that post is true. It is nirvana living in Knoxville. It was the best decision of our lives. We are about to open up a business here.

But I can come up with positives for Fort Myers and Cape Coral, too.

Good grief. In 2006 it was a HORRIBLE idea to buy in Lee County. A few other years, too, but there is no point in rubbing it in.

But that post is in the Knoxville forum and is a addressed to a person in Orlando that is interested in Knoxville. I told him the truth about my area (and gee, thanks for the free advertising )

But what I write about Lee County is equally true. AT THIS TIME, Lee County MAY be a good investment. Investors may be a kick start to the economy. Sweetpea, I don't make a penny by saying that, but it is the TRUTH.

You get very, very angry when someone doesn't agree with you, but Lee County won't be a disaster forever and right now there ARE good deals out there, for the right person.

The person I was addressing is young, with children. Knoxville is a very good idea for him. Once again, thanks. Sheesh.






[mod[ orphaned quote [/mod]

[yoko]

Why the utility expansion was so costly:

Sullivan wants to bring back auditor Michael Kessler, one of three people to audit the 1999 contract, which ended in 2004. Kessler claimed when he left that he could not see all of the payroll information he needed to determine whether MWH had overcharged the city.

MWH produced the payroll records Kessler asked for when he audited the program in 2006. But the company blacked out much of the information. Company officials say they had redacted Social Security numbers, bank account numbers and information from jobs not related to Cape Coral.

"The last council didn't do their job," Sullivan said. "They should have forced MWH to come up with those records. They had the leverage. They had the ongoing contracts. Instead they just dropped it."

The council voted to spend up to $60,000 to bring back Kessler.

Cape Coral mayor will try to make MWH release records | news-press.com | The News-Press

[Compression]

Originally Posted by hiknapster

AT THIS TIME, Lee County MAY be a good investment. Investors may be a kick start to the economy.

Lee County won't be a disaster forever and right now there ARE good deals out there, for the right person.

I tend to agree with this, with the emphasis on that which I put in bold.

Cape Coral, and Lee county on the whole has it's problems, just like other places do. Some of the articles linked in this thread show rather succinctly some of those more "scandalous" issues that plague the area. People thinking of moving here should know about them.

The April 16 edition of Agora's five minute forecast has some interesting things to speak of, regarding the "foreclosure rates" and the "shadow inventory" (what I believe I had referred to as "ghost inventory" here in the past). And a good laymen's explanation of what HAMP ( the loan modification program) really accomplished

Of course this again addresses things on a nation wide basis, but Cape Coral is still part and parcel of that as well, and still within the top ten areas hurting as far as the subject matter is concerned.

I personally still see values taking a further beat down in the near future, some others may not. For the "right person" these factors may not matter one way or the other.

At the end of the day, after engaging in, and reading the re hash of these arguments over and over again, in which many are firmly entrenched in their beliefs, AFTER doing one's due diligence the best place to leave it all is..............

CAVEAT EMPTOR

I'll let it lie there.

Agora Financial


YC.......

[yoko]

Originally Posted by yachtcare

I personally still see values taking a further beat down in the near future, some others may not. For the "right person" these factors may not matter one way or the other.

YC.......

Excellent post. Thank you!

The purpose of my writing is not to warn the very few "right person, right time" persons who might not even exist.

It is not right to blame AMERICA for Cape Coral's problems. Again, and again, I have read and written how poorly Cape Coral has been managed. This area has become a haven for flippers and speculators. And no policy in place to make Cape Coral a livable place for NORMAL families.
As the result, more and more residents are leaving.

While in this forum realtors are hard at work persuading people to buy, I just read last night in a European weekly magazine that buyers should wait as Cape Coral market is still in the process of correcting itself with at least an additional 10% fall. And this is a very optimistic view!

I remember when you, Yachtcare, started the thread on the Chinese dry wall catastrophe in Cape Coral, how often realtors tried to down play it. But you and Homestager helped so many people with a simple thread on warning buyers and most importantly residents.

The same thing, in this thread. To close eyes and blame America for current economic gloom in Cape Coral is just coping out!

So, now, what do you think of the company who overcharged Cape Coral for its utility expansion? Remember thousands of residents are drinking well water because they could not afford having the connection.

If you were in the countryside with few houses around, etc. drinking well water would not matter. But here in Cape Coral with its sandy ground and houses so close to each other and no proper landfills for dispose of Chinese dry wall garbage, tell me, why shouldn't I care that huge number of people are suffering while some company in New York is enjoying the overcharged money.

Your point about Buyer Beware is absolutely correct and there is a lot of misleading information from special interests!