DREAMS FOR SALE: Lehigh Acres and the Florida Foreclosure Crisis

[Norweger]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcrKdWcxS8c

Welcome to Lehigh Acres, Florida.

Half-built homes litter the seemingly endless grid of half acre plots in a town built entirely on speculation. Dreams were built on the promises of Lehigh Acres, where the social benefits of a wholesome American town were second only to the vast economic potential of affordable land ownership. It was about fulfilling the American dream on dirt plots in southwest Florida.

For decades, things went roughly according to plan. By the mid-2000s, however, the dreams that were sold as half-acre lots to unsuspecting Midwesterners had turned into gold, surging in price at breakneck speed. And then, like a game of musical chairs, the music stopped.

DREAMS FOR SALE is a documentary film that traces the bittersweet story of the rise and fall of Lehigh Acres, told through the eyes of its citizens. It is a tale of hope and despair, of prosperity and loss, and of memories and dreams.

Directed and Produced by Raymond A. Schillinger

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The market hasn't crashed in Norway yet and prices are probably twice as high as they were in America.

[govcheetos]

I've known a few people with property near there including a family member. I looked around there back in 2003 or so and decided against it, Thank God! Although if I got in and out in time I could have made a killing, but was looking to own long term. At the time people were buying stuff pre-constuction and it was getting flipped like 4 or 5 times before even being completed. The people literally didn't own anything! I turned down a job offer in construction near there making almost six figures with hardly any real experience with a company that went bankrupt after the market caved in. Prices were just going up up up and it was like a damn feeding frenzy. My boss at the time and I would talk about it and I remember us saying multiple different times that there was no way it could continue. Prices plummeted and many folks were completely up side down with their mortgage. And even if you were good with yours, your entire street was full of vacant and foreclosed houses so it was almost like why bother. Meth heads would steal anything they could for the scrap prices. I feel for the good people there who weren't a bunch of carpet baggers trying the get rich off of nothing.

[Ponce]

A home should not be treated as a black jack game of cards where you could loose or win (unless you are an expert at that game), owning a home is having roots for you and yours, a place to be sad or happy, to fight or love...a family place.

Even if I don't have a family I own a home, a place where I feel secured and that I can call MINE... if your house if paid in full and you think that you own it you are then very, very, very wrong.......unless you own the land under your home you really don't own nothing, I have learned a lot ever since I got my Land Patent were I am now The King Of My Castle.....a place that I am willing to fight and die for because I know that I would be fighting for what is mine.

V

[Heimdhal]

Im in that area frequently (have a good friend in a smaller town not far from there).

Its not unique to Lehigh. The same thing happened many towns like it, even some close to the big metro areas, like Loxahatchee, Coconut Grove, etc.

lehigh was always a very, very small town straddled between Ft Myers (big metro area) and nothing. its almost all retirees, there were never very many jobs or prospects there, but during the boom the land was cheap and the developers started going further and further inland to chase it, build it and sell it.


A lot of people made a lot of very bad decisions during those years and it is still lingering through most of south florida, very much so including my own immediate family who pretty much got wiped out because of the actions of others.

[Libertytree]

Same as it was/is in Cape Coral. I lost my ass, though to be honest there was one mitigating factor in the deal....it's called a greedy ex-wife.