Cape Coral Property Management

Douglas Realty Cape Coral Office

 

Douglas Realty and Cape Coral: A Perfect Match

If you had a genie in a bottle and were looking to create the perfect city to invest in property, what would you ask for?

Cape Coral is often referred to as a “waterfront wonderland”, but is waterfront actually what makes this city a wonderland?

Let’s assume you’re like any property owner and go back to our genie in a bottle. Wouldn’t you ask for a city that can produce a good, quality tenant? One that allows for a massive pool of renters that are chomping at the bit to find a place to live due to a low inventory of homes? Wouldn’t you ask the genie for the opportunity to make huge returns on your money?

Enter the City of Cape Coral.

The history and development of this city has cultivated one of the best rental market systems in the country, spawning a plethora of residential property management companies to help handle the load of investors looking to get in on the action.

The good news is the Cape Coral still has massive room for development as the building market has taken off yet again, allowing even more investors to get in on the action.

To fully understand exactly what makes Cape Coral the perfect city to own rental property, it’s important to understand its roots.

The History of Cape Coral

Did you know Cape Coral was one of the largest land scams ever? In fact, it was never meant to exist at all.

The Rosen brothers started the initial development in the late 1950’s after purchasing the giant land mass, that is now Cape Coral. It’s hard to imagine it was a sea of wetlands, and looked like an unpromising place to start a city.

They began digging canals, and used the sediment as fill for construction of homes, buildings, and even the roads. It’s no surprise Cape Coral now has over 400 miles of waterfront canals. In fact, the “8 lakes” just south of the parkway were specifically dug out due to large marrow deposits that helped build our roadways.

The scam

The land scam was to sell lots at $50 down and $50 a month. With the right marketing and word of mouth, it was a smashing success. Customers would be flown over land areas with a small plane and would toss sandbags out the window to mark what lot they purchased. These planes operated off of Coronado parkway, directly behind our Douglas Realty Property Management location. In fact, several of the duplexes that were the sales offices are still standing across the street.

As the lot sales increased, more attractions came. The famous Rose Gardens were built alongside Dolphin pools, fountains, etc. Many celebrities such as Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller were brought in to promote the newly founded city. Eventually, people started to build homes in the early 60’s in the Yacht Club area. As the population grew, more shopping centers, grocery stores, bridges to Ft Myers, and other infrastructures began to spring up.

The book Lies That Came True authored by Eileen Bernard is a fascinating read and details the development of the waterfront wonderland.

As a city, Cape Coral was zoned very little commercially. This is why the city is known as a “bedroom” community as it mainly consists of condos and single family homes and lacks large store fronts and main shopping centers that are housed in the larger commercial zoned city of Ft Myers. This is the biggest reason Cape Coral is the perfect city to house renters. Everyone lives in Cape Coral, and everyone works in Ft. Myers.

Read our article >

Cape Coral is located near some of the best fisheries in the world. Only minutes away by boat from Pine Island Sound, Matlatcha, Estero Bay, Sanibel, the Caloosahatchee, and The Gulf of Mexico, it’s truly a boaters paradise. The ability to own or rent a home with a boat lift gives boaters immediate access to a life filled of adventure.

The Early Days

In it’s early days, founder of Douglas Realty, Kevin Haag, was among some of the first residents. His stories of being a youngster in a new town are fascinating and help tell the story of such an amazing city. Him and his father, Douglas, saw the growth and potential the city offered, and decided bringing their business ethics, personalities, and talents to the real estate world was their contribution to Cape Coral.

Douglas Realty is the oldest standing real estate firm in Cape Coral, and is proud of it. Still one of the fastest growing cities in the country, the real estate market grows ever larger.

Professional Property Management

Cape Coral and Douglas Realty were meant for each other. We started here over four decades ago, and we don’t plan on going anywhere.

The need for rental properties is at an all time high, and so are rent managers.

Seeing a professional property management niche that needed to be filled, Douglas Realty Property Management was born and has sought to provide great service for its client, all while keeping the sanctity and history of Cape Coral very much alive.

As quickly as the rental market is growing in the area, there is a lack of expertise in the residential property management service industry while many companies are not set up to handle the arduous and menials tasks that come with managing properties.

It’s no accident Douglas Realty Property Management manages the largest number of annual rentals in 5 cities surrounding and including Cape Coral. It’s taken years of dedication to always be striving to better ourselves and find new and innovative ways to make the headache of being a landlord, well, disappear.