Brian Helgemo is a Punta Gorda realtor, and you might be surprised to hear his take on the slowdown.<\/p>\n
“We don’t need any more new homes being built. We could sell what’s existing,” Helgemo said.<\/p>\n
Helgemo says there’s more than enough inventory after builders rushed to meet Southwest Florida’s COVID population boom. The surge in construction during the pandemic created an oversupply that the market is now working through.<\/p>\n
“Three years ago they wouldn’t pay us a commission, and now you know because there are so many homes, they’re trying to get that business,” Helgemo said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He says the market is correcting, with inventory above pre-pandemic levels. The shift marks a dramatic change from just a few years ago when demand far outpaced supply.<\/p>\n
Shan Swelland is president of the Charlotte DeSoto Building Industry Association, and he agrees with the assessment.<\/p>\n
“Yes, definitely, 100% market correction,” Swelland said.<\/p>\n
Swelland says the industry is steady because even though completed permits are down, remodeling is up.<\/p>\n
“We had tons of hurricane damage, and you know there was a lot of work from that. And now we’re just steadying out again, and hopefully back to building homes again,” Swelland said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (WINK)\u2014Construction of new homes across Southwest Florida could be slowing down. Florida Gulf Coast University…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,4250,3837,115],"class_list":["post-339203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-charlotte","tag-collaborator_gen_stories","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}