The News-Press Business
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Market pulse checked in Bonita, Estero OK, expert says
by Christina Cepero
ccepero@news-press.com
Housing economist Brad Hunter started his presentation at Tuesday’s fourth annual Bonita/Estero Market Pulse with a parental warning. Because of the market conditions, Hunter alerted the 190 in attendance about F-words in his presentation: fear, financing and falling home prices. Those things are the barriers to selling empty homes and lots, he told the group, which included developers, mortgage brokers and real estate agents. Hunter, director of housing database Metrostudy’s South Florida division; Michael Timmerman, an economic consultant with Fishkind & Associates; and Jim Garinger, a principal and managing director at Colliers Arnold commercial real estate firm, made presentations with one overarching theme — Bonita Springs and Estero are not as bad off as the rest of Lee County.
Joe Pavich, owner of Realty World in Estero and president of the Bonita Springs-Estero Association of Realtors, which organized the event with the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, left with a renewed confidence. “We’ve been in this area for 20 years,” Pavich said. “We’re happy to be here. We’re not going anywhere. We’re just going to wait it out.” Timmerman said Bonita Springs/Estero was not as overbuilt as Lehigh Acres, Cape Coral and the State Road 80 corridor. He expects the worldwide recession, which he said started in December 2005, is the worst since 1975 and the largest since the end of World War II, to bottom out in 2010. “The bottom is not like a martini glass where it’s down and back up again. The bottom is like a dinner plate,” Timmerman said. He said between 2001 and 2006 the Bonita/Estero area was driven by Florida Gulf Coast University on Ben Hill Griffin Parkway, industrial development on Alico Road and the opening of Southwest Florida International Airport’s larger terminal off Treeline Avenue in fall 2005. Timmerman added that the area will benefit economically from the Boston Red Sox new spring training complex to be built in south Lee County. “We’re suffering like everyone else, but we’re in a better portion of the marketplace,” Timmerman said.
Commercial real estate expert Garinger said retail has remained strong at Coconut Point, Gulf Coast Town Center and Miromar Outlets. “There’s some work to do in the office market here. I think there’s some office space that needs to absorb,” Garinger said. He described the commercial real estate cycle as one of recovery in 2001-02 with low vacancy rates and little construction, expansion after mid-2003 with very low vacancies, national retailers coming in and job growth, hypersupply around 2005 and 2006 where supply exceeded demand and today’s recession.
Hunter predicts another wave of foreclosures and that housing prices will continue to decline into the first half of 2010. Nevertheless, he said the price of a house a consumer wants to buy may not be down 10-15 percent like the average. “If somebody is actually buying a house to live in it instead of flip it, it’s actually a good time to buy,” Hunter said. “I always say only monkeys pick their bottoms. It really is an outstanding time to buy a house.” Marian Rosencrans, an employee at Stewart Title in Bonita Springs, left the event at Three Oaks Banquet & Conference Center in Estero with a positive feeling about the Bonita-Estero market. “We have so much to offer here. The word needs to get up North,” she said about attracting retirees from states such as New York and Ohio.
