Dave Diaz notices the telltale signs when he pulls up to the house in his GMC pickup. A soggy work permit rots in a display case. A coffee cup and a Pepsi can sit on a wall, abandoned, as if workers had fled to find cover in a storm. The home, like one every block or two in this Southwest Florida neighborhood called Gator Circle, is unfinished.
Diaz, a builder, works here in Cape Coral, a city of 230,000 with a once-hot real estate market that’s gone cold. Cheap financing and a burst of real estate buying during the Covid pandemic drove the boom. At the same time, a new kind of lending let regular people—doctors and physical therapists alike—invest in homes. “The whole world had come here to profiteer,” Diaz says.