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Light at the end of the tunnel?

5 min read

There’s good news and bad on the home front.

The good?

Housing sales are up from last year — way up — and are remaining steady as buyers recognize that Cape Coral is again a bargain market.

Sales of resale homes in the Cape Coral/Fort Myers area rose for the eighth consecutive month in August, with a total of 729 properties sold, according to a statement issued by the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach this week. Sales are up 79 percent versus this time last year.

“Inventory,” — the number of homes on the market — also has reached reasonable levels as compared to last year. There were 11,097 single-family homes for sale in August in the area, an approximate 9-1/2 month supply, according to the association, which added these numbers include short sale and bank-owned properties that are listed in the MLS.

More than 1,150 sales are pending areawide, which industry leaders say is on par with the prior month and ahead of last year by 86 percent.

Meanwhile, foreclosure numbers have dropped.

Some say this news means the market may have bottomed out, that there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

We hope so.

The bad news?  

Values dropped again in August. The median price of an existing single-family home sold was $134,900.

While homes in Cape Coral and much of Lee County are affordable again, low resale prices, coupled with the number of foreclosures and bank-owned properties, means that prices are unlikely to appreciate and new construction — the Cape’s economic driver — will continue to stagnate.

That affects us all.

As Bob Koenig, president of the Cape Coral Construction Industry Association, told a panel of his peers Thursday night at a meeting to discuss the challenges of the current market, unfortunately, the housing market drives everything else — it flows through the whole economy.

The city of Cape Coral has yet to grasp this reality: That while diversification of the employment base is a worthy long-term goal, a goal that absolutely should be pursued, our present, and our economic recovery, very much rely on the industries we have. And those industries are housing and construction.

It would seem to be an easy fiscal concept, but it apparently is not. Even the most-vocal “economic development” proponents shy away from any policy or plan that could be perceived as aiding “Realtors,” “builders” or -gasp — “developers.”

Consider:

Despite the million-plus per year the city has thrown at “economic development” with little to show in return; despite comparable amounts spent or placed in reserve for the grandiose re-development of the Cape’s downtown, the city has done little to foster its existing economic base. Instead, the industries that have historically provided the best-paying jobs, that have fueled desirable peripheral industries such as banking and lending while providing the base for retail and service businesses alike, have been sorely overtaxed through the guise of tax-and-spend rhetoric cloaked in let-growth-pay-for-growth hyperbole.

And there’s more on the horizon despite the reality of these tough economic times.

On the state level, there is a ground-swell for a tax on home sales.

Locally — with the glut of below-cost resales still on the market -Cape Coral is looking to increase fees charged to new construction. Meanwhile, direct and indirect governmental costs already add an estimated $35,000 to $40,000 to every new home built where the city would like them built, the so-called “urban infill areas.”

Impact fees alone, for such things as roads, parks and public safety, and schools, add about $15,000 to the cost of every new home. Permit fees add another $1,000 to the tally. Add in the moving target of utility assessments — up to $17,000 including $6,000 in impact fees, excuse us, utility capacity reservation charges, and the total tab can be pretty hefty. Especially if you can buy a never lived in, existing home for less than $135,000.

Still, the city continues to look at more than doubling permit fees and possibly doubling some impact fees. One study, for example, suggests increasing the road impact fee from around $6,000 per home to $12,000.

The pop of the real estate bubble threw our housing and new home markets into shock. Proposals at the state and local level threaten to yank these industries off life support.

That doesn’t make sense to us.

Now is not the time for new or increased taxes.

Now is not the time for new or increased fees.

Now is the time for bureaucrats and officials to join the rest of us and realize the days of limitless increases are over.

Every one of us unemployed, under-employed, and still-struggling taxpayers and business owners simply have nothing more to give.

Pull the increases off the table, give us more news that is good. The last thing our economy needs right now is to find out that glimmer of light is another train.

— Breeze editorial