Bert Caldwell: It’s time to appreciate our housing ‘boom’

Fiddler’s Creek. Entrada. Venetian Pines. Verandah.

The names go on and on. The television commercials go on and on. Watching the evening news from Fort Myers, Fla., becomes a mini-travelogue of developments touting a lifestyle heavy on beach strolls and golf, champagne nights and trendy shopping.

In the local newspaper, Olympus Realty promises the “Open House of the Gods,” complete with limousine service and finger sandwiches, to pre-qualified homebuyers.

It’s another beautiful day in sunny southwest Florida, just the kind for showcasing real estate to the thousands moving into the region. By comparison, the resurgent Spokane housing market seems downright glacial.

Driving around in northern Lee County on Florida’s west coast, or walking an established development, anyone acquainted with the scale of residential development in the Inland Northwest would be stunned. Tracts that will eventually hold hundreds of homes are swept clean of the native pine and palm vegetation. An attractive gateway completed with imported landscaping is constructed. And somewhere out in the middle of these moonscapes the cinderblock walls characteristic of hurricane-resistant construction rise into the blue sky.

City and county officials review 500-home subdivisions, a few of which might be extensions of existing 1,000-home developments. These officials might also, to their credit, reject designs for big-box retailers. (You would not want the Super Target store to clash with the BJ’s Wholesale Club or the Wal-Mart Supercenter just down the road, would you?) And beneath it all are local water tables suffering from drought, with the possibility for short-term construction moratoriums.

Yet homes in existing developments go begging. On one short street in a nicely landscaped and maintained enclave called Herons Glen, for-sale signs hang from five mailboxes. Connected loops hold another six signs. Prices start at $269,000 for a little more than 1,000 square feet on a lot of one-seventh of an acre.

Meanwhile, two miles deeper into that same development, contractors continue to throw up new homes that will compete for the same oh-so-discerning buyers.

Or plain crazy buyers.

Sales in a region where almost hourly price appreciation was the norm have hit one of those cinderblock walls. Fort Myers-area sales in January were off 15 percent from last February. Prices have started to fall, although they remain ahead of year-ago levels. Building permit applications in February were off 27 percent compared with last March.

Most astounding of all is the sheer number of properties of all types on the market. In Lee County alone, there are more than 42,000 homes, condos, lots — whatever — listed with local real estate companies. That’s in a county with a population of 545,000, as of 2005.

By comparison, there are a mere 2,747 listings in Spokane County, population 440,000 in 2005. Through the first three months of 2006, unit sales in our region continued to increase, if only by 4 percent, and median prices climbed 27.8 percent.

Granted, these are very different markets. Spokane County has its snowbirds, but this is overwhelmingly a population that sits out the winters and revels in the summers. Total housing stock is about 180,000 units.

Lee County is a snowbird haven. With a population just 18 percent more than that of Spokane County, it boasts 266,000 housing units — 48 percent more than in Spokane. Many of those units are seasonally occupied by retirees and others headed north. This is a time of year many reassess their plans for the next winter. Some will not be back, and so will list their homes. Others bewitched by appreciation that exceeded 40 percent in some areas will list their homes at a big markup just to see if they get a bite.

And some were bought on speculation by investors increasingly nervous about their gamble.

How do you sustain 22 percent year-over-year appreciation in Fort Myers when unit sales were down 9 percent in February? Or 24 percent price increases for all of Florida when unit sales tumbled 20 percent? It takes more than adding an “h” to Verandah. It takes more than snowbirds. It takes dodos.