Snowbirds flock to bargains

The combination of rock-bottom prices and the lure of the annual Red Sox training camp brought Nancy and Wayne Killam, both 57, from Silver Lake, N.H., earlier this month to house hunt.

"If you buy in a good area, in two years' time, I think it'll come up $100,000," said Wayne, a life-long Red Sox fan who was born in Beverly and lived in Middleton until two years ago.

Besides, he added, "You've got the Sox right there around the corner."

While no one tracks where Fort Myers buyers are from, interviews with real estate agents at companies in the region indicate they are hearing a lot of New England accents.

"People from New England are buying like crazy here," said Kirsten Prizzi, a broker with AC Global Realty in Fort Myers. In the past few weeks, Prizzi said, she has worked with 10 to 20 prospective buyers from New England, a significant increase.

Fred Elliott, of Lehigh Acres, 15 miles inland from Fort Myers, said he sold eight homes to New Englanders in March alone. The volume of inquiries from New England buyers keeps rising, he said, and they frequently mention the Red Sox as a reason for their interest. "They come here and they love to catch the games and get away from the cold weather," Elliott said. "So it's a double win."

Lee County, which includes the Fort Myers area, was particularly hard hit by the nationwide wave of foreclosures that began in 2007. In the metro area - including the city itself, as well as nearby Cape Coral and Lehigh Acres - thousands of mostly bank-owned properties sit vacant. Last year, 12 percent of all Lee County properties went into foreclosure, and according to the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach, foreclosed properties represent 65 percent of home sales in Lee County since October.

The inventory glut has dramatically lowered prices. At the height of the region's boom in 2005, the median price of a single-family home was $322,000; today it's $99,000. At the same time, mortgage rates have dropped to historic lows. As a result, some see the start of a turnaround. The Realtor association said 830 single-family homes were sold in Lee County in January, followed by 936 in February, and 1,326 last month. If the trend holds, the county may top sales figures for 2005. In March of that year, 971 homes were sold.

"We're on track for something crazy out here," said Marc Joseph, a Fort Myers real estate agent. "Everybody wants a piece of this, right now." Joseph operates Foreclosure Tours R Us, which offers bus and boat tours to view foreclosed properties, and has received press coverage as far away as Germany and Japan.

Lee Lanktree, a real estate agent with Home Hunters USA in Fort Myers, cited another draw - the recently approved construction of a new $100 million spring training stadium for the Red Sox, scheduled to open in 2012. "It's going to be an absolute replica of Fenway," he said.

Gene Richards, a Sox fan and real estate investor from Burlington, Vt., is already hooked. When Richards scouted properties around Fort Myers two months ago, he and his business partners unexpectedly found themselves face to face with team members.

"I stayed at the Holiday Inn, and all the Red Sox were there," said Richards. "It was just about as good as it gets. I talked to the players, a couple of [coaches] - they're just like real people."

He recently bought a $150,000 single-family home in North Fort Myers; it had previously sold for $450,000. He also has a $10 million bid out on a 150-unit rental apartment complex. Richards said he plans to keep buying.

Woolcott "Blu" Kenyon, 60, a carpet and fabric cleaner from Waterbury, Conn., relocated to Cape Coral, the town across the Caloosahatchee River from Fort Myers, in November. If he didn't have to work, Kenyon said, he would have been at the Red Sox training camp "all the time."

Kenyon and his wife Janet, 48, bought a bank-owned four-bedroom house for $96,000. The former owner, who lost it to foreclosure, paid $285,000. "It was a good deal," Kenyon said. "All I had to do was paint and install appliances."

But he warned buyers not to fixate on low prices - there are homes to be found for as low as $20,000, he said, but they require major renovations to make them habitable.

That doesn't worry Guy Hart, a contractor from Poland, Maine. Hart, 60, who was in Fort Myers earlier this month, said he is prepared to buy a dirt-cheap property. "We'll go down there and spend time fixing it. I'll most likely do that myself," he said.

Some may liken droves of Northerners looking for inexpensive foreclosures to vultures preying on others' misery. But many local residents welcome their new neighbors, said Joseph, the foreclosure-tour operator. "When I drive down the street in the green bus, 80 to 90 percent of the time the neighbors are happy to see that bus," he said, "because they're tired of seeing the eyesores."