Sunday, February 9, 2014

Nocatee updates

 Two years ago, when I first started photographing in Nocatee, our super development, most of the roads ended with signs like these and a sign with the name of the future sub-division. We were still mired in the recession and things were very buttoned up and quiet. In the last year this has changed incredibly.
 This little pink house is one of about forty in a brand new sub-division near the giant Publix supermarket. They are small and brightly colored and, it seems, occupied as soon as they are finished.
 This was woods and scrub last summer. It is immense.
This too was a section of woods and scrub as of a year ago. There was no street and no houses. All of these are occupied and, just to the right of this shot there are ten more in various states of build, with sold signs in front of them. These are no 1%er houses but solid middle class "estates". I hope that it's a sign of a true recovery, but I am skeptical still.

2 comments:

Carl Weese said...

Interesting, real estate is still a horror show here. "Modest" price places only sell for firesale prices, and the big expensive places (this is NYC weekender country) can't even get a look because the one-percenters aren't getting off their money. Odd sidelight is that, because nobody will buy for the price people need to get, house rentals are in high demand and the price has gone sky-high. It's a real mess. It would be a 'buyer's market' except what the buyers want to pay would leave most sellers (of low to middle range homes) underwater, so nobody can buy, sell, move, whatever. Trapped until something changes.

James Weekes said...

Carl...Florida is a funny place for real estate. There is a ton of very inexpensive real estate all over the state as long as you are ten miles or more from the water. Nearer than that and it goes up at a sickening rate. We came here, from Vermont, in 1993. By pure dumb luck we hit a very slow market and managed to get a small older house, right on the Intracoastal Waterway at a price below what our house in VT went for. Here, unlike New England, the developer is king. Or at least has one or more legislators in their pocket, party not important. If you have ever read Carl Hiassen or Dave Barry about South Florida and the rapacious developers, you will be shocked to know that they aren't exaggerating.

When Nocatee started everybody was a little worried about the size and scope of the place. 2008 took care of a lot of it as two developers just said it wasn't worth it and left houses unbuilt or half built. I read about one woman who got the house of her dreams in a brand new development, lawn planted, car in the garage. The first house finished with new neighbors to come. Then the builders left and she spent four years surrounded by half-built or un started houses, with weeds and dust all over the place. Now she has neighbors and is better off, I suppose.

The place is building again and there are a lot of people employed again so that our little neck of the woods is coming out of the recession a little faster than the slow crawl the rest of the country is experiencing.

Monologue over, stay warm and keep shoveling;-)