Lee County's neighborhoods: Alva to Cape Coral

The original heart of the city lies south of Cape Coral Parkway and even south of El Dorado Boulevard surrounding the Cape Coral Yacht Club at Redfish Point. Cape Coral founders Leonard and Julius Rosen and their Gulf American Corporation built the first eight houses on nearby Flamingo Drive, and all are still standing. The yacht club, with a senior center, public boat dock, a sandy beach on the Caloosahatchee and a variety of other public attractions, is now a city-owned public park in a proud, 45-year-old neighborhood of tidy streets, mature vegetation and homes on wide canals. Waterfront homes, circa 1960-1980, are now priced from the $800,000s, and are often considered teardown-worthy, says Maureen Gobbi, a member of the ReMax Realty team in Cape Coral. Wide canals also thread through the area, flowing into the river and raising property values. Choosing a waterfront home in Cape Coral depends on your preference of water travel, motorboat or sailboat, says Gobbi. The latter, she says, is more readily accommodated in the southwest Cape, where vacation homes have jumped from $300,000 to $370,000 in just a year. "The older areas of the city are doing extremely well because they have sailboat access, but there are more bulldozers and heavy remodeling," she says. "Homes on cul-de-sacs sell for $550,000 to $750,000. In comes the bulldozer and up goes a new $1.5 million home."

On the river, 30- to 40-year-old homes are often destined for the wrecking ball. Nothing, says Gobbi, sells for less than $900,000. Million-dollar price tags are becoming common in waterfront areas of Cape Coral, which just a few years ago took pride in its first million-dollar sale. Off the river but on the nearby canals, homes start close to $400,000. Their value is enhanced by their no-bridge or one-bridge access to the river, allowing sailboats to reach the open water without obstruction. Canal-front lots, just $15,000 in the late 1990s, are now priced from $40,000 to $100,000; and nearby dry lots that sold for just $6,500 two years ago are priced at $12,000 and up, says Gobbi.

Another neighborhood of mature landscaping and wide channels lies west of the yacht club, stretching from 49th to El Dorado and on the route of the city's annual holiday boat parade. Finger canals create cul-de-sac streets where homes run from $500,000 for a teardown to nearly $600,000, although some have even passed the $1.5 million mark. Unrestricted access also is available at homes along Orchid, Savona and Palaco, and in Gold Coast Estates. These are individual neighborhoods where active volunteer associations have created bike paths and installed street medians. Farther west, The Bonita Bay Group is developing its first Cape Coral community, Sandoval, which opened for sales in early 2005.

Central Cape Coral

Del Prado Boulevard, the Cape's commercial hub, runs south from North Fort Myers to the long-established neighborhoods at Cape Coral Parkway.

Small condominium communities and a warren of tightly packed streets with single-family homes run along each side of Del Prado. Many enjoy canal lots; those on the eastern side of the main drag tend to have direct river access. For miles on and off Del Prado, homes run the gamut from old to new, with prices nearing $200,000. To the far west along Chiquita Boulevard and Cape Coral Parkway, passersby will see as many as 50 model homes established by builders to show off their wares.

Northeast Cape Coral

Realtors once speculated that property in the northeast Cape, north of the Pine Island Road corridor that links the mainland to the barrier islands of Little Pine Island and Pine Island, was a decade away from development. "It was absolutely quiet for years," says Gobbi, a 20-year Cape Coral resident. Standard-sized lots that were claimed during the heydays of the Rosen Brothers were left undeveloped for decades; the only signs of growth were weeds poking up from the forgotten asphalt. Gobbi often advised heirs who suddenly owned a piece of the northeast Cape to donate it to their church. But new homes have now become more prolific than the weeds and start in the $180,000s-a factor that no doubt has swayed the city, at the urging of business leaders, to consider turning 3,412 acres along a nine-mile stretch of Pine Island Road into an urban village of mixed-use housing, retail, hotels and entertainment venues. "Investors are buying sight unseen," Gobbi says.

State-of-the-art bridges and roads, such as the neatly landscaped Del Prado Boulevard extension (where the Realmark Group is developing a 1,700-home community on 700 acres extending west from U.S. 41), make everything here quickly accessible from more populated parts of the county. Del Prado's eventual extension to I-75 later this decade will likely enhance the value of lots and homes, which now range from hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Pine Island Road corridor to about $45,000 for waterfront lots on the far northern end of the Cape. Homes under $150,000 are getting hard to come by, says Marshall, whose last sale in that range was $145,000 for an older three-bedroom, two-bath frame home of just 1,100 square feet. More hurricane-proof homes sell from $170,000 to $180,000, Marshall says, noting that higher prices are forcing many first-time homebuyers to look elsewhere in places like Lehigh Acres.

Burnt Store Road, on the western leg of Pine Island Road, extends north to the Charlotte County line. Model homes are popping up all along Burnt Store Road, joining no less than four new gated communities-West Cape Estates, the Estates of Old Burnt Store, La Vida and Blue Water. Even big-time builder/developer US Home has jumped on the Burnt Store bandwagon, building the first of its on-your-lot homes there.