The floods of Hurricane Ian completely washed away many homes on Fort Myers Beach. Many buildings were damaged. A lot of the homes are just completely gone. And now a lot of them are for sale – in the MILLIONS!
I did a search on Realtor.com for high end homes on Fort Myers Beach. I expected to see a lot of damaged properties, and I did. But what I didn’t expect was the prices on them. Vacant lots where homes used to be being listed for 1,2,3, nearly 4 million dollars. And this just isn’t people looking to maybe get the price, I’m seeing “sold” and “contingent” on some. Nearly 4 million dollars for a vacant lot in an area that was just completely destroyed. I mean, good on the sellers if you can get that money, but if we thought people were going to be scared of moving to the beach because of what just happened – they aren’t.
There was a fresh study from Redfin that included the month of October (after Ian), and the amount of people moving to our area has not slowed down.
So, if you’re waiting for the SWFL housing market to crash, it may not happen. Yes, plenty of people are leaving the beach because the thought of going through anything like Ian again is just too much. In a scarier thought, some of these homes had people in them when the floods washed them away. In any case, buyers are moving in to take the chance that it’s not going to happen again. My real question is, even after you buy, then build, is it going to be insurable? For all the struggles of property and flood insurance in our area, could you even insure something new being built on the beach?
Let’s take a look at some of the higher priced strips of sand and damaged homes on Fort Myers Beach.
