Cape Coral / Ft Myers Multi-Fam

[Jaret Walker]

I have been looking at Multi-Family property in Florida and I am wondering what everyone's thoughts on the Cape Coral / Ft Myers area. Most of what I do is buy vacant land and build multi-family properties for long term rentals so my big questions about the area would be. How strict are the building codes in the area? What kind of ROI are people seeing? And what does the market look like on long term rentals in terms of supply and demand? Anyone in the area or investing in the area I would love your input!

[Sam Ferguson]

Hey Jaret,

Fort Myers is in the middle of a boom right now, a report just came out that Fort Myers is the highest construction market (By Percentage underway) in the nation. With that being said, I do not know much about the building codes, but there are a lot of apartments about to come into the market within the next 12-18 months. All under construction are 100+ units, with the largest being a 360 unit development. I am a broker in the area and we have recently put a couple of apartments under contract. As for ROI, there are a lot of 60s and 70s builds in the area. They are trading anywhere from high five caps to mid seven caps. The newer builds are much bigger and obviously trade for much more compressed cap rate.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out.