By Scott Burns

Cape Coral, Florida.  There was a time when Henry Ford and Thomas Edison looked across the Caloosahatchee River from their estates in Fort Meyers and saw Cape Coral as thousands of acres of mangrove swamp. Today, after an improbable development that was chronicled in “The Lies that Turned to Truth”, Cape Coral is everyman’s dream of Florida, retirement and the good life— sunshine, water, fishing, 400 miles of canals, and more sunshine. Not to mention golf.

And much of it is at a price people who actually work for a living can afford. In November the median price of a home in Lee County, which includes Cape Coral, was $106,300, up 20 percent from $88,500 the previous year. More important, the price is far less than the national median of $170,000. Indeed, with the notable exception of cities like Detroit, you could sell your home almost anywhere in the country, move to Cape Coral, and pocket some money.

Check the Metropolitan Area Median Home Price figures here:

http://www.realtor.org/research/research/metroprice

The change may require a few sacrifices. You won’t have the upscale shopping of old Naples or St. Armand’s Circle on Lido Key. You’ll miss the long rows manicured estates of Bonita Springs with a Mercedes CLK convertible in the driveway. You’ll suffer for want of rare unpasteurized cheeses from Whole Foods. And you’ll miss the nifty white anchovy sandwiches you can get in historic Sarasota.

But you’ll still have plenty of sunshine and access to fishing. You’ll still have Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreen’s and CVS. And you’ll still have Publix, the ubiquitous supermarket of Florida. For a few bucks more, you’ll have center console fishing boat with a Bimini— and an insulated well filled with cold beer.

And that’s why I’ve come here. Nancy Dunning, the CEO of the Cape Coral Association of Realtors, deals with what happened straight on. “You can consider Cape Coral to be ground zero for short sales,” she says, referring to the implosion of real estate values that followed the growth explosion of the now infamous housing bubble. In 2005, she points out, Cape Coral was the fastest growing area in the country.

“The staff at city hall couldn’t keep up with the (building) applications,” she says.

Then it ended. Today, lots that sold for $100,000 in 2000 and $300,000 or more in 2004 and 2005 can once again be had for $100,000. Much the same can be said for completed properties. On a recent visit to Realtor.org, for instance, I found 2,502 listings in Cape Coral. Of those, 648 were under $100,000. Many small condos were offered for less than $50,000.

Michele Deal, a realtor newly elected as President of the Association, is cautiously positive. “Cash buyers are buying now,” she says. “But those who need to finance are still waiting for a signal.” The other problem, of course, is actually borrowing money from a bank.

Henry Albrecht, a broker who has been ignoring pings from his phone during our meeting, finally answers a call. He is a self-described military brat, has a German mother, and spent much of his childhood in Germany while his father was stationed there. A good part of his client base is from Germany.

He answers his phone in German. Afterward, he says that a waterfront lot is going under contract and a German family will be building a vacation home on it.

Why build when so many houses are available?

“It’s all about the site and sunlight,” he says. “They want maximum sunlight. It’s what they come here for. They want sunlight on the pool. They will only be here 4— maybe 6— weeks a year so they want it to be right.”

And that leads me back to what I mentioned two weeks ago, the discovery of lots of German phone numbers on Home Away rental listings. According to the Lee County Visitor Bureau nearly half a million international visitors came to the area in 2010, with more expected when the count is done for 2011. Many come from places like Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

They come to vacation. And they come to buy with ready cash. According to the Florida Association of Realtors, over 80 percent of foreign investors paid cash for their Cape Coral property. It isn’t difficult to understand. If you’ve ever been to Hamburg or Berlin during the winter you know why the grass is so much greener in Florida that they will come here and pay cash. It doesn’t hurt, either, that Europe is having a banking, currency and credit crisis.

The crash may have proved that reliable sunshine isn’t priceless, but it also made us forget how treasured it is.