March 2, 2006

The Real Estate Adviser: Snowbirds discover Florida's west side

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Have you ever headed south to the Seattle Mariners' spring training in Arizona and wondered how that many people from the Puget Sound area could possibly be in Phoenix at the same time?

("There's Gary the mailman... I saw the school principal at the store... Is the ENTIRE Murphy family by the pool?")

Take that thought and multiply it by months of frozen temperatures, countless days of shoveling snow, bone-chilling winds and most of the population east of the Mississippi River and you begin to get an idea of how popular the state of Florida can be five months of the year.

There are few Northwesterners here because folks from Ohio drove their cars and claimed all the available parking spaces. You begin to wonder if there are any native Floridians.

For the past 25 years, many of the visitors to Southwest Florida from the eastern seaboard were Boston baseball fans who flooded into this once-quiet community every spring to get an early look at their beloved Red Sox. A Midwest flavor was added with the arrival of the Minnesota Twins in 1991.

Now, relocating baby boomers and other second-home buyers looking for more affordable property and a laid-back atmosphere have targeted the Gulf of Mexico side of Florida, turning the five-county area between Sarasota and Naples into one of the fastest growing areas of the country. Three of those counties — Charlotte, Lee and Collier — are projected to lead the state in percentage of population growth over the next 15 years, growing by more than 70 percent, with a regional employment rate more than double the state's average.

"You still have the east coast people tending to follow Interstate 95 down to the east coast of Florida,'' said Brian Lucas, regional vice president for the Bonita Bay Group, one of the largest residential developers in the region. "But Southwest Florida is drawing those folks from the mid and upper Midwest — Illinois, Michigan, Indiana — who follow Interstate 75 straight south to the sunshine.''

Home prices are showing the signs of that popularity. Older homes that five years ago went for around $80,000 are now selling for a minimum of $200,000. Builders and developers can't put up $300,000 homes fast enough to satisfy demand. Most of the new product averages more than $400,000 and is at least a 10-minute drive to a sandy beach. Rising home prices are causing the typical concerns — public employees and others in the service industry can't afford to live close to work.

While the bulk of The Greatest Generation chose to retire on the east side of the state, boomers will not necessarily follow in their parents' footsteps, which comes as no great surprise. The tug to Florida will continue as an estimated 4 million boomers are expected to relocate to the Sunshine State when they retire, double the number of their parents' generation. And, a greater percentage will "audition" retirement homes as second residences before they make the permanent move.

Perhaps they first came to comb the shell beaches of Captiva and Sanibel islands, bask in the curious cosmopolitan oasis that is Naples or avoid the monumental crush of spring break in Fort Lauderdale, less than two hours away on the east coast. However, regional analysts point to three prime reasons why Southwest Florida is the lure it is today: