Sunshine State Is Losing Some Of Its Luster
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
CAPE CORAL, Fla. — When Eric Feichthaler became mayor three years ago, this town was booming. The city issued 800 permits that month to build single-family homes.
A number of factors explain the downturn, and many of them are not unique to Florida. But it is becoming clear the Sunshine State is losing some of its luster.
Census figures show that 2007 was just the second year since 1990, when the Census Bureau started keeping such records, that the state saw fewer than 50,000 net American arrivals.
Experts blame the recent slowdown on a combination of circumstances: The national mortgage crisis and the bursting of the real estate bubble, hurricanes, Florida’s steep insurance rates and property taxes, and rising unemployment.
The shift is felt most in places like Cape Coral, which went from barren southwestern Florida swampland to bustling bedroom community and one of the state’s centers of a building and buying boom.
