Dreams for Sale: The Story of Lehigh Acres, Florida

you've seen a change in the economic conditions of your community entire neighborhoods are studded with foreclosure son you families across this sort of feel like they're losing their foothold on the American dream we talk about the plummeting home prices soaring foreclosure rates we're not just talking about faceless numbers we're talking about families welcome to Lehigh Acres one of the countless sprawling exurbs and the housing boom that has been drastically reshaped and now the bust is testing whether the experience of shared struggle will pull people together or tear them apart in Lehigh Acres homes are selling at 80% off their peak prices only two years after there were more jobs than people to work them fast food chains are laying off people or closing crime is up school enrollment is down and one of four residents receive food stamps in December nearly a four-fold increase since 2006 I lived in Lehi for 27 years so I'm I'm very familiar with the community my son grew up here it you know it was a wonderful community we never had this type of thing going on here but but you definitely see the changes you know you drive down any Street and you see rundown houses now because people you know I've just moved out grass is overgrown it's you know it's sad to see that so it's some sign of the times it was like Armageddon was going to happen it was just did you have a two-year balloon three four five because it's all going to get whacked instead of I'm going to buy this house and stay here for 40 years their perception changed a little bit I'm going to buy this house and stay here for a couple years and then I'll buy a bigger one and I'll stay there for a couple of years and I'll buy a bigger one and I'll stay there for a couple years people who wouldn't normally have any experience in real estate investing we're speculating on the fact that all they had to do was buy something hold it for a brief period of time and suddenly they would they would receive windfall profit yep everybody was going to make a fortune and when the music stopped a lot of people didn't nobody was predicting a crash I didn't see anybody say well this thing is overheated they didn't say that until the Dority burst and then they said well you know this is couldn't last forever it was just a feeding frenzy unbelievable and a very end the consequences have been very sad for a lot of people but as far as me but working it wait we'll just it was a boom out work and they can buy no no you our many years of expertise in the Florida market has led us to secure a limited inventory of the very finest properties available anywhere and best of all our staff has been able to secure these properties at a fraction of the current market value now we have concentrated our efforts in only those areas that have shown phenomenal growth in the past and still offer tremendous opportunities for the future now one such area is Florida's lower west coast and specifically lee county recognizes the fastest growing County in the United States of America today on the eastern border of Lee County sits a section of select prime residential property known as Lehigh Acres let's take a closer look at this unique area my whole life with the Lehigh Acres actually began by meeting Jerry Gould and the Ronnie plays the swimming pool Miami Beach years ago I just moved to Florida I was looking for a date and Myra was in the swimming pool she was very cute and so I jumped in the pool and swam over to and got the conversations and what are you doing for dinner and she said I'm sorry I'm going with somebody Jerry became friends with Lea Ratner and Lea Ratner had on the land here in Lehi he have a company called deaqon which was a rodenticide and he had taken a a product that was being sold for 79 cents for a box of his product advertised it and changed the name solar for buck 69 had captured 85% of the rodenticide market in the United States so he was a brilliant marketer he and I had become so fond of years ago horseback riding together at his ranch which was the luckily ranch over in Lee County we'd fly over in his plane land on the property there was a s trip which he had built and we chase cows all day having fun the late Lear at there was a fantastic man and Gerry actually came up with the idea of saying you know you got a lot of land here this would be a great place for a development one day he said to me know I'm going to have to sell the ranch and I said why he said well because they've changed the tax law and you can't deduct it from your taxes and I have no reason to want to be a cowboy it's just that I was using it as a tax shelter and I said well we would divide it up in lots and sell it and lots so that's what we did we formed a company and that's how Lehigh Acres got started I started working in the advertising and sales promotion department writing letters the client to customers in those early days there were maybe 2,500 people here there was one road to lanes that was it not a whole lot of anything else and so when they were searching for what are we going to name this place acres was always kind of a lovely thing to talk about you know so Lehigh Acres the highest point in Lee County and yet our advertisements in the early days showed me standing in Lehigh and waving to my wife who was in the Gulf of Mexico boating just right over there in for $10 down and $10 a month you could be that close to in those early days did all sorts of ludicrous things to get people interested in spending their money buying a lot in beautiful downtown sunshiny Lehigh Acres took a couple of good-looking women with bikinis in the middle of the snowstorms in shopping centers up north and invited people to come and look at the traveling house we'd get an elephant the elephant would walk around the shopping center had two great big signs on it you could fly to Florida for peanuts and that's the early days they were fun working for them was great I mean what they would do they would solicit vacationers from all over the state of Florida and they would bring bus loads of people they would solicit them and say we're going to take you over to a new community that's being built I was not going to cost you no money there's no charge for the tour we're going to give a nice tour sharing his community give you a free breakfast and a free lunch and a bag of tomatoes oranges and if you like what you see you might participate if you don't know obligation so they would bring in maybe 1520 bus loads a day at 10 12 couples per bus so that would mean maybe 150 to 180 customers a day the ones that bought went home and one bus the ones that didn't buy went back to Miami in another so we didn't want anyone to discourage the other group from not buying I'm sure their whole motive was cutting up all this land into the smallest tiny pieces they could and selling it to as many people for ten dollars down in ten dollars a month I remember going to Wisconsin one time and doing a party up there and literally asking people to hold up a ten dollar bill over their head and I plucked the ten dollars from them and then congratulated them on buying land in Florida yeah and it was crazy in those days a lot of times you go to like a gas station or a hotel and said fill in this form and you can win a four-day three-night vacation in Florida well guess what everybody was a winner everybody was a winner because they fill in the form and guess what they get a call on the phone and said you're the lucky winner one would you like to come to Florida there was no governing body back in those days that controlled what land developers did so we did a lot of strange stuff in the early days as salesman would drive him out to the woods they'd stand on the top of the car and they would point and say your Lots just right over there well I guess if you could see seven or eight or nine or ten miles it would be just right over there it was kind of funny because I had these things in different offices to add credibility to the scam that we are not skiing that's not a scam so 12,000 that's the first year so when you ask is how quickly they'd become successful immediately people like Bill and Betty Lundqvist they're now proud to call Lehigh home they moved here about five years ago from up north after vacationing in Florida after our first vacation to Southwest Florida Betty and I just knew we had to live here someday the environment it's so healthy it's wholesome and we knew it reflected our values when we found Lehigh and saw all that it offered us we knew it was the right time and place so when they buy the lot I don't you know you could have I tell them up front you have no credit good credit bad credit unemployed bankrupt Social Security escaped from jail witness protection program you qualified and the reason is because you can't put the land in the truck and drive the land to Tampa the land will be here tonight tomorrow night the next day you you lots finally sold in Lehi for fifty and sixty thousand that was Abby's the banks were lending thirty thousand dollars our you know how much you can get for a lot today maximum five thousand bucks that's maximum the banks are negative twenty five thousand dollars I thought this will never end you know I had no reason to believe it would but I knew in 2006-2007 I can see the handwriting on a wall with these with these people buying houses with with zero down that doesn't work I ran a little test about maybe 10 years ago 12 years ago I ran an ad in the newspaper in the Fort Myers news press no money down no payments for 90 days $50 a month I sold 22 Lots you know me people paid me in the fourth month zero zero no money down no payments for 90 days $50 a month in the fourth one zero you have to have the money to buy the proud you would think one person would had the money one people were encouraged on television to take money out of their homes and buy something everybody had a credit card to sell you everybody said take out an equity line everybody said consolidate your debt buy something else and I thought you know that's kind of peculiar because I grew up where you saved your money bought a house and you really defended your house you didn't want to take anything out of it you were always trying to find a way to but I didn't think much about it until it crashed and then I thought gee we we had the perfect financial storm opportunities like Lehigh don't come along every day and I hope you'll take advantage of this one I know you'll be glad you did Saturday and Sunday as we come out here to sit play Scrabble and try and sell this house where are you asking for it now sixty-nine nine and any idea how much it might have been during the boom the height about two hundred fifty thousand dollars probably she was a friend of mine that had the house and she probably she bought it in about eighty to nineteen eighty two and probably paid sixty nine nine for it at that time that said yeah yeah she bought a fully furnished there's no longer any furniture to goes with it years ago you know we're twenty five hundred dollars to buy a lot out here they went up to you know forty fifty thousand dollars you know during the boom now probably twenty five hundred dollars again people who knew who you know are true investors no one but they know what to look for when they get out I mean look at this that's how they make sure we use we used to comment you know you drive by all these new new condos and developments and everything and saying where are all these people getting all this money you know to do that and there and as soon as they build them they they fill them up as fast as you know they as they were built they beat on that like dirt getting on waiting lists you know to get into projects you couldn't get you the people couldn't be down here fast enough to get what was going on it was it was just amazing people were buying four or five homes thinking they could flip them before the market you know before there was any consequences we had people telling folks you can buy now and you'll never make a mortgage payment because somebody will pay for it well you know you'll sell it so it was just nuts there was a time when typically on and on any given day five new homes were being started now get fifteen in a month and everyone says well that's pretty good a lot of these sitting for sale and these aren't small homes some of these are huge here's one never finished the world of speculation went from low to medium all up to stratospheric when units are being created at a rate that exceeds the growth coming in to the area at its best and highest growth period you're still building more units and people that are moving in that doesn't make sense and that's clearly where we were if you were anywhere related to construction or financing or real estate there was plenty of work and great opportunity in the mid 2000s so that money was coming in so you could afford to buy a house what I can write construction business stopped they couldn't pay the mortgages anymore so they rent it well they couldn't pay the rent than him what it moved as bigger banks started to have difficulties and and late payments and foreclosure rates started increase it was that was the tell-tale sign you know that the market had totally changed this is something that was all set up and was gonna have lots of these luxury homes on this nice big lake and it's been sitting like this for a long time I know if you remember back to the future was they called it Lionsgate bellavista at kismet legs now it's Bella nothing it finally reaches the point where there's nobody that's going to pay this inflated price and when there's nobody to pay for it you stopped with it my name is Melinda pin singer I'm a CPA I work for a public accounting firm in Fort Myers and I was a owner of a coffee shop in Lehigh Acres the la cafe and coffee house until November of 2008 I was driving home from Fort Myers where I worked and thinking that we needed a place like a coffee shop in Lehigh there was nothing like that in Lehigh so knowing that I had equity in the house I decided to to do that and I researched for about two and a half years and opened in January 2008 my feeling was that if the coffee shop didn't go as planned the worst it could get I would have to sell the house I could pay off the equity loan and the first house I bought Lehigh Acres I bought in 2002 I was there for two years and I bought this one in 2004 at one point it was appraised at two hundred and ninety thousand dollars that was in 2006 in November it appraised at 140 and now it's down to 79 nine it every time I have someone look at it it's lower I had to make a choice at one point whether I was going to try and keep my house or keep the business going because I could I didn't have enough credit to keep making payments on both of them and I couldn't get more credit so I decided to stop making the payments on the house and try and save the business but then because I wasn't making house payments the credit card companies even my business credit card companies started to increase my rates even though I was paying them every month on time and I got notice from one that they were going to increase my rates 33 percent unless I wrote them a letter by a certain day which I did and they closed my account because of writing that letter but then when I tried to negotiate the rate lower when they raised it anyway they said my account was closed I owe about three times what the house is worth now the abandoned homes and the economy being the way it is huge uptick in crime for a while the air conditioners even from homes that were being lived in they wouldn't just come back at the end of the day and no air conditioner left outside they were stolen for the copper tubing the police were have been there many many times DEA and FBI all surrounded the house there quite a scene one day next thing you know people were gone and no one's taking care of it mm the house I lived in sold for $45,000 three four years ago they wanted $210,000 for that house you know it's still for sale half of these houses are for sale or more than half of my hair or foreclosures I mean I'm in the middle of it watching all these deeds being record recorded we're having just an unbelievable time trying to keep up in the official records with all the mortgages and deeds and everything mortgage foreclosures two years ago for them for we had three thirty five hundred filed for the first seven months of our fiscal year last year we had fifteen thousand sixty one for the same time period that's October through April this year we had a mere fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty five so it's down three percent from last year and it's still up three hundred and thirteen percent from two years ago my name is Matt Gonzalez and I live in Cape Coral Florida and January 1st is when we renew our lease for 2009 well the landlord or manager came to the household to tell us that the owner had stopped paying the house in September of 2008 the manager said that the owner was using our rent money to pay for lawyers and we get this in the mail for one month next month same document still same thing and the mail saying that the house is going onto foreclosure and another one and another one this was actually the first one and then this is our actual August lease I was actually very worried that the bank would just come you know someone would come to our door and say all right well you got 30 days to move out you know so that's what I'm worried about if we move out it's it's like a jungle out there because there's so many people in our same situation that are looking for a roof over their heads to live and you know it's hard since there's so many of us to find a place to live you I've never ever seen anything in the 60 some years I've been here that that I've ever seen anything like that it's just outrageous what happened for about five years we knew that the property wasn't valued at that we being the Realtors our community knew that things were overpriced we knew that there was going to be a huge correction and we also know that it's going to go back it won't go back to 217 it will be there but it won't be there in the morning um on the business side we have seen a pickup in business the sophisticated investors decided that prices are low enough for me you can buy a house for $50,000 that would cost you one hundred and twenty thousand to build or one hundred and forty thousand to build they're coming in and they're buying them in large numbers I could tell you that if you talk to any Realtors today they'll tell you that they're writing the same number of contracts as they've ever written probably more the difference is the size of the contract I'm writing 65 70 80 thousand dollar contracts where two years ago I was writing two hundred and seventeen thousand dollar contracts for the exact same property well I can tell you that prior to the boom there were about six real estate companies in Lehigh Acres during the boom there were 40 now there's probably back down to five or six and and I can tell you the reason why is the companies that were here before and and that didn't participate in getting buyers into houses beyond what they could afford those are the companies that have repeat referral customers not that we didn't participate in and I'm not saying that everybody is guilty and we're innocent but I am saying that if you saw it coming you didn't put people in homes they couldn't afford we know there are people hurting in this community right now and our network of nonprofits whether it's churches or nonprofits have really come together to bring services to people and make sure they know what services are available to get them through this economic time I see the the community of Lehigh Acres is actually it's taken this opportunity to take a stand and to make sure we know exactly who we are and that we're not a slum I got a call from a national publication said your traffic citations are done why are they down in Lee County and throughout Florida Charley and my first reaction was much better drivers than we were but the truth of the matter is there's not as many cars on the road and not only are traffic citations down but our felony cases are down our misdemeanor cases are down all our cases except foreclosure down and that's because a whole segment of our population all these people that were helping to build all these properties construct all these homes put up all these condominiums build all this community got up and left they went within an eight month period of time they were gone and when they left they took it took a lot of the crime with him a lot of the stuff that we had went with them and they also left behind properties that just said well I can't pass on their left one of the things that troubles me a little bit is we are seeing the institutional investor come back into the real estate market this is not the speculator of before these are well-heeled deep-pocket groups of people or companies that are coming in and buying the property that's being foreclosed upon but they're not homeowners and so ultimately while they help us in the short term soak up some of this excess inventory they prolong the recovery because as soon as the market starts to recover they will take and put those houses right back on the market again we went from a society that doesn't think anything about borrowing to a society that can't borrow from whatever reason the banks aren't lending the their credits ruined so we're going to go to a more cash society we're going to probably depend more on our local banks again and we're going to reinvent how we do business and I think that's probably a very strong underpinning for us to carry forward I got the forbearance but my credit card companies are still increasing my rates and so I don't know if I'll be able to hang on right now I'm listening it for a short sale it was the comps are that it's worth seventy nine thousand nine hundred dollars so I owe two hundred and fifty thousand dollars the other side of foreclosure is the people that could never buy a house three years ago four years ago five years ago now have the ability to step in and buy a property I have moods 36 times in my life and the last thing I wanted to is move again so I I was sitting in the couch when I said hey let's find the house you know when you're hearing on the news houses for eighty sixty thousand dollars you know why not we're so settled here with my unit with my family that why not just try to purchase the house so we actually went my aunt as a mortgage broker and my cousin is a realtor so we in Miami so she got us all prepared with all the paperwork and we put an offer to the owner and offered to the bank since the house is now a short sale and we're just running around in circles being the paperwork in order I would say for at least five years things ought to be on a more even keel because the economy has to finish turning around and people I have learned a lesson but how long will that lesson last usually memories are pretty short and I'd say twenty years from now if the opportunity existed he same thing would happen again we'll get back to a normal stable market where we have you know about the same number of buyers and sellers and back to modest appreciation where we should be but we're on the right track we've been here for 33 years we're going to be here for hopefully 33 more that's why we work we'll be back in the boom and I know we will hopefully I'll be retired playing golf more often enjoying the good life people say oh you moved here from Miami Beach and I said I never regretted it because it was a wonderful place and I feel that it still is

Channel: DreamsForSaleMovie

Views: 669,805

Keywords: foreclosures, lehigh acres, florida, housing crisis, economic crisis, american dream, documentary, abandoned, raymond schillinger, urban exploration, fannie mae, housing bubble, real estate, scams, dreams for sale, fort myers, naples, cape coral, orlando, miami, the big short, house of cards, hurricane irma, ft. myers, lee county, SW Florida, great lockdown

Id: OcrKdWcxS8c

Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 27 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/ryanryans425]

People who lived through this the first time are probably like “oh shit, it’s about to happen again “

[u/[deleted]]

I watched this and then looked up all the locations on Zillow. So funny to see Kismet Lake

[u/[deleted]]

Looking at redfin. Lehigh Acres currently is just a bunch of empty lots with a few overpriced homes interspersed. Unreal.

[u/Clear-Reindeer-7733]

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3300-52nd-St-W-Lehigh-Acres-FL-33971/81948942_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare

House is up 129%

Insane.

[u/Deltabagsmasher]

Certainly a fair amount of parallels. Definitely enjoyed this video. They all seem like really down to earth people.

[u/HeavySigh14]

Very interesting documentary. My family actually has land in Lehigh Acres. We visit it every other year to check up on it.