Why million-dollar homes are appearing in Lehigh Acres

Joining us to discuss the current trends in our market. Danni Grimes, a 40 year veteran of real estate. His team has sold more than $1 billion worth of homes. Danny, thank you for joining us today. Sure. My pleasure. Now, for 25 years, you have been the keynote speaker of MarketWatch. Now it's called Market Trends. It's the largest real estate forecasting event of its kind in the entire country. It's coming up next week in Fort Myers. First can you help us understand how will lower mortgage rates impact our market, our buyers and our sellers? Well, for those that are finance, I mean, obviously paying cash is not that big a deal. But for those that are finance, that makes the home more affordable. Everything revolves around affordability. You know, our market has done really well up until the time, of course, it exploded during the Covid years. And we there's been a lot of talk about not only the higher interest rates but then higher home prices. And and then we had Hurricane Ian or Ian that led to higher insurance prices, which led to higher homeowner's association prices and taxes. And so what happened is the affordability of Southwest Florida fell off a lot of people's radar because of all of those things combined. Now, the falling interest rates, which are hovered about 6%, was supposed to be the magic number. And it has increased by our interest in buyer activity. And there are still some buyers out there waiting for something that probably will never happen. And that's at 3 or 4% interest rate that we had a few years ago. Can you tell us what's going on in Lehigh? It's normally viewed as a pretty affordable area for people living and working east of 75, but I understand at least three homes have hit the market recently, priced at over $1 million. Unheard of. What's going on with this? Well, there's a saying in real estate that time solves all problems. And I remember, I don't know if it was 2020 or not. I've been selling homes in Southwest Florida for 40 years, but there was a day when Cape Coral had its first million dollars sale and everybody was celebrating. Well, last year, about 250 homes sold in Cape Coral, over $1 million. So it's not kind of old hat. Now, the new kid in town when we're talking about those seven figure homes is in the lead. The very first sale of a seven figure home, just over $1 million, took place last year. Jennifer. And this year, there are three homes on the market, currently over $1 million, one as much as 1.5 million. What is driving this? What's your perspective on that? Well, like I said, you know, time solves all problems. And so what I think is going on there at Lehigh is still affordable and it will probably remain affordable. It's probably one of the most affordable areas in the county. Now, you mentioned the Market Trend program, which is coming up next week. We're going to be talking about a lot of new new developments that are heading out on State Route 82 all the way out towards 29. And so where Lehigh used to up here are kind of like way out, it's going to become more central. And what what's happening there in Lehigh and as the demographics is that roughly 60% or maybe just over 60% of the demographics, there are Latin or Latino or Hispanic. And so what happens is that's very they're family oriented. So people like to live next to their families. And so what's happening is you're starting to see the price, price range spread a little bit, and you are finding pockets of homes that are much larger and more expensive than the median, probably because they want to be around their family. Very interesting. I I'm so excited to look forward and see what is going to be happening in the future, out in that corridor, especially out in Lehigh. Now, Cape Coral, as we know, has been the focus of multiple national articles, with Dismal News calling it the worst housing market in the entire country. Can you share your expertise on the Cape Coral housing market? As a local realtor for 40 years, you've been in the area. What is your perspective? Well, that all stemmed this past summer. Wall Street, Journal wrote an article on called Cape All the Worst Market in the country, and it gave an example of why. Now you're in journalism. So, you know, there's always a story, but then there's the story. That whole article is based on a story. They talked about somebody who bought after the Covid years, after the peak of the market, and they had their home on the market, and basically because they paid more for it and they and they wanted to get a certain price at the price, the market did accept the price. So they had to lower the price quite a bit in order for it to sell. And so they're taking that as a story, saying that all these sellers in Cape Coral have to lower their price considerably in order to sell. Well, that's not the story. The story is that home prices are up and I have the data. Home prices are up double digits from 2019 was which just before Covid. So in reality, homeowners in in Cape Coral and all of Southwest Florida have plenty of equity if they've owned prior to 2022. People who bought after 2022 because the market's starting to correct right now, they're what we call an upside down. So that's what The Wall Street Journal focused on. And when I saw that I happened to get on Facebook and I don't get on that that often. And I gave then the rebuttal and that my rebuttal kind of went viral because a lot of people needed to hear the story of Southwest Florida. The story in the real estate market in Southwest Florida when it comes to residential, is our market is healing because it exploded during Covid. We had two years or actually 15 months of irrational growth that could not be sustained. Now our market is coming back down to earth. Yes, that means lowering prices, but there's still well above rational values. Danny, our area is also, as you know, very appealing to international buyers. We have all been watching the news with a war with Iran, and it has impacted the stock market, gas prices, travel and so many other aspects that we aren't even sure of yet. Do you foresee the war in Iran impacting our Southwest Florida real estate market at all? Well, like these, you know, it's like a couple of days old and I know the stock market or, you know, responds by the nanosecond oil prices the same way the real estate market doesn't quite move like that. It's not as volatile. And again, at its current level. And if it doesn't escalate and become something bigger than that, we don't have a lot of issues here. I don't think it's going to have any effect whatsoever on the real estate market. And you would expect a real estate agent to say that, but I've got the reputation of playing it down the middle. I'll tell you what, I think that even if it's contrary to what the typical realtor speak is, I don't think it's going to be an issue. You also told me you're working on a book that's going to be published, hopefully by the end of the year. Can you tell me more about the book, the title, what's what is it about? Well, I have over my career, probably somewhere between 6 and 7000 sales. However, I have probably, 20 some or 30 some thousand transactions that, I wasn't successful at. And so what I've done is taken all those learning lessons. Jennifer put it into a book that basically will help somebody else that's maybe struggling in a real estate, or maybe somebody who wants to start out with maybe, reading some mastery level concepts so they don't have to go through the, the messes and the transactions and the failures that I went through. So that's that's my goal technically, or at least initially. It's called the mastery of real estate, but I'm sure it will have a much more sexy title when it comes out. Well, we look forward to having you back on the show soon, and hopefully we can also talk more about your book in the future. Thank you so much for your expertise and your time today, Danny. My pleasure.