Naples is the 9th slowest selling market in the nation. (Everglades: house, live)

[Corrie22]

I honestly don't know...
I figured Naples as having about the same real estate market we have here....luxury second homes
..I know our market here is tied into the stock market
When the stock market is not doing good...it's hard to even give a house away here
..but when the market is up, houses are selling....but they are selling as second, third, etc homes

[ron e wheels]

This area is a tourist/retirement area and not the area you are eluding to. I would also start to think with the change in the tax deduction being capped, only those who have their estates in trusts would be buying multiple homes unless they are foreign buyers which you'll see in greater abundance there than in swfl. I have always considered Miami as the Latin money capital for some time. It's demographics again. Birds of a feather....

[Corrie22]

Our buyers are mostly from south Florida....a family that owns a big restaurant sports bar in Naples, just bought a house two doors over from us....super nice family
...the traffic in Naples doubles or more in the winter...I would think that's the same as here...winter vacation homes

[Sandsam]

Originally Posted by Corrie22

Our buyers are mostly from south Florida....a family that owns a big restaurant sports bar in Naples, just bought a house two doors over from us....super nice family
...the traffic in Naples doubles or more in the winter...I would think that's the same as here...winter vacation homes

Naples is a mix of high end luxury homes (check Port Royal), vacation property (often investors), retirement homes, snowbird property and increasingly - year around residents. Golden Gate Estates, the area you seem to think moves slowly, is predominately year-around residents.

[Naplesfan]

Here's a little history of Golden Gate.



Lost City Of The Everglades Golden Gate Estates Was Going To Be The ``city Of The Future.`` Too Bad The Land-scam Artists Didn`t Make Good On Their Promise. - tribunedigital-sunsentinel


This article was written in 1992. It paints a bleak picture of Golden Gates history. At that time you could go to the tax auction and buy lot after lot.


Naplesfan

[Corrie22]

Originally Posted by Sandsam

Golden Gate Estates, the area you seem to think moves slowly, is predominately year-around residents.

well yeah...that's why we're looking to buy there

[Tripower455]

Originally Posted by Naplesfan

Here's a little history of Golden Gate.



Lost City Of The Everglades Golden Gate Estates Was Going To Be The ``city Of The Future.`` Too Bad The Land-scam Artists Didn`t Make Good On Their Promise. - tribunedigital-sunsentinel


This article was written in 1992. It paints a bleak picture of Golden Gates history. At that time you could go to the tax auction and buy lot after lot.


Naplesfan

That article is, for the most part, about the south blocks, which is now Picayune Strand.

Between 1985 and 2005, the state bought between 17,000 and 19,000 lots in southern GGE from private owners and the county via tax auctions. The stragglers were taken via eminent domain. It took them over 20 years to get them all!

The property appraiser's site has GIS maps where you can zoom in and see every lot in the county, including the tens of thousands in the south blocks. It really is mind boggling just how many lots they sold out there. You can also see the history back to '81 on most of them. Lots of tax repossessions, but far more of them were bought from individual owners from all over the country, which were often heirs.

There was a lot of speculation going on during the 20 years that the state was acquiring the land back. Lots of the land changed hands several times during the acquisition period. Some folks seemed to do OK, others, not so much. It is a mystery to me how they determined the value of each lot, because some of them, the state paid a few hundred bucks, and other sellers made out like bandits.

It's interesting to check out a bunch of lots in certain areas on the GIS maps. You can see that many of the original owners were from the same geographical area, which jives with the way they sold them, starting with mailings and cold calls (like a boiler room), then "dinner parties" in various cities for folks still interested, where they'd get the soft sell, like a time share deal. If they were still interested, they'd fly them down to the sales center in GGC, and press them hard. Gulf American even owned it's own airline for a while, and would fly jets full of prospects down for the hard sell.

Gulf American were MASTERS at the land scam sales game, which they honed selling Cape Coral. The numbers speak for themselves.

This is a 1963 article where a reporter posed as a potential customer at Golden Gate Estates:

In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard | Robert Caro

This was pretty early in the GGC/GGE saga, and there really wasn't much there yet. GGC was the sales center for the whole of GGE. The first houses were built in GGC 1965.

Units 1 and 2 in GGE (the area between Logan and 951, from the north edge of GGC up to VBR) were drained and graded by around 1967, as was the Weber (named after the Chief Engineer at Gulf American) area. The western blocks along the Blvd out to 8th NE and SE were there by '68 or so. The rest came later.

FWIW, Gulf American owned and had also planned on dredging and platting all of the current Fakahatchee Strand, as an extension of GGE, but the state wouldn't give them the permits. They sold thousands of lots in there too, as well as in the Badluck Prairie area, and the area just east of Port of the Islands (north of 41), all originally called Remuda Ranch Grants. There are still lots of privately owned lots in the Fak, but the owners can't really do anything with them, so the state pretty much leaves them alone AFAIK.

I remember the trailers at the end of 104th SE that are mentioned in the article. They had quite the spread, IIRC.

We'd explore random roads out there all the time in the late '80's and early to mid '90s, and they were one of dozens of little camps we'd come across out there. If we saw anyone, which was rare, we just waved and went about our business. We saw a fair amount of fresh "for sale" signs out there. It was kind of weird bouncing down some random dead end road and see one. They almost always had 305 numbers.

[Corrie22]

I wish I had known about the southern blocks when I was younger.....there's nothing I enjoyed doing more than exploring back roads and just going until the road ends.
I do remember one time finding a road going in there from the south...the trail....but I didn't go in very far and turned around

[Tripower455]

Originally Posted by Corrie22

I wish I had known about the southern blocks when I was younger.....there's nothing I enjoyed doing more than exploring back roads and just going until the road ends.

It was very cool and eerie at the same time. Like a ghost town without the town.

You can still explore them, as the road beds are all still there. The roads are REALLY rough now, and most of them are underwater in the rainy season. Much more so than before they degraded most of it. The Prairie and Merritt canals are almost completely filled in down to the "T", as is the little one that fed Miller. It doesn't appear that they've even started filling in Miller or the Faka Union canals, but it is definitely gonna happen.

I do remember one time finding a road going in there from the south...the trail....but I didn't go in very far and turned around

That was probably Miller Rd. Extension. That was the way in from the trail. It was pretty rough, and had deep ruts. Supposedly, it was graded by a private party every so often. It's been closed with a locked gate for many years now.

[Naplesfan]

Janes Scenic Drive

I was over that a couple years ago in my Jeep. From Copeland to Everglades Blvd it hadn't been maintained. Potholes big enough for a gator. It took several hours to traverse it. The bridge was still there to get over to 29. I saw a couple people turn around rather than go all the way.

Naplesfan