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Fla. Real Estate Agent Offers Foreclosure Tours

Jim Zarroli

This is the second in a two-part series .

Prospective home buyers file off of real estate agent Marc Joseph's "Foreclosure Tours R Us" bus in Lee County, Fla., where the housing boom has turned into a bust. Jim Zarroli, NPR hide caption

Prospective home buyers file off of real estate agent Marc Joseph's "Foreclosure Tours R Us" bus in Lee County, Fla., where the housing boom has turned into a bust.

Part 1 of This Series

Lee county, fla., suffers foreclosure glut.

Real estate agent Marc Joseph always figured that when he turned 40 and hit his midlife crisis, he'd go out and buy an expensive sports car — maybe a Porsche or a Viper.

Instead, he ended up sinking his money into the green bus.

Joseph offers tours of bank-owned properties in Lee County, Fla., where the housing boom has turned into a bust faster than you can say "sheriff's sale."

Foreclosures are something of a growth industry in the area these days, with about 40 coming on the market each day, and Joseph noticed not long ago that everywhere he went, people were asking him about how to find them.

So he bought a bus from a church, painted it green and printed "Foreclosure Tours R Us" across the side.

"As a business owner with years of experience, when you realize your business is starting to suffer, you need to make a move or you're going to be put out of business. My move was the green bus, selling foreclosures," Joseph said.

The tours are only a few months old, but Joseph says they are luring a lot of bargain-hunters into the area.

On a recent Saturday morning, Joseph and his staff drove about a dozen people through the streets of Cape Coral, a city of about 160,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico. For three hours, they visited nearly a dozen bank-owned properties, many of which had been marked down more than 50 percent. They included:

-- A four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with an in-ground pool that last sold for $741,500 in March 2006; it's on the market now for $369,900

-- A three-bedroom ranch house on a freshwater canal selling for $143,500, having been sold just 17 months ago for $316,800

-- A five-year-old, three-bedroom condo with Italian-marble floors selling for $284,900; it sold for $480,000 in December 2006

The real estate fervor that gripped Florida and other states during the easy-money days of 2005 and '06 has left a glut of unsold properties. Fishkind and Associates estimates that Lee County has a three- to five-year inventory of unsold homes, compared with one year in normal times.

As a result, homes can now be bought for well under the replacement cost, Joseph says.

"There is a lot of inventory on the market, and there's a lot more coming," Joseph says. "The key to understanding what's happening is that when these foreclosures are gone, and we've cleaned up our subprime problem, we will be back to our original market. And that is going to be the point at which everyone is going to say they wish they had done something."

Those showing up for the tour included a Canadian couple eager to take advantage of the favorable exchange rate by buying a retirement home; a Michigan businessman eager to relocate to the area; and a couple hoping to buy an inexpensive condo for their daughter, who has a low-paying bank job.

Prices are "very reasonable. I was down here when they were at their peak, and they've really dropped drastically," said Leo Felber, a retiree with family in the area. He had tried to buy before, but prices were too high.

"I can afford what's down here now," he said.

In fact, the silver lining of the real estate downturn has been that housing has become affordable again. During the boom, working people such as teachers, police officers and service workers had trouble buying homes in the county, says Shelton Weeks, professor of real estate at Florida Gulf Coast University. The high housing costs made recruiting employees into the area much harder, Weeks says.

Joseph says he started the foreclosure tours to keep his business going, earning commissions when he sells bank-owned properties. But Joseph, who grew up in Fort Myers, also believes he is helping Lee County bounce back from the housing bust.

"I'm taking the product off the market that's driving our economy down," he says, "and I'm taking the product that is on the market and putting it in the hands of people who deserve it — [the buyers] who couldn't afford it two and a half years ago."

Foreclosure Tours R US

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Seven Foreclosure Tours R’ Us

• Published: June 2021
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By the 1990s, Florida’s Land Giant communities had increasingly transformed themselves from retirement communities to bedroom communities for people with jobs in in more-populated areas on the coast. Lots were plentiful there, while the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) assisted first-time buyers in purchasing homes. So did the Nehemiah Program, a well-meaning but now illegal program that allowed developers to donate a customer’s 5-percent down payment to Nehemiah, which in turn donated the down payment for the customer’s loan. Developers loved it, for it allowed homebuyers to secure government-backed loans with no money down. In Lee County, where Land Giant developers had saddled the county with at least 200,000 empty lots, a developer named Pat Logue used the Nehemiah Program to sell houses for as little as $79,900. Logue sold thousands, and by the mid-2000s Florida had one of the hottest housing markets in the nation. As a result, when the subprime mortgage crisis hit, the crisis hit hard, particularly in communities in Lee County, where the median price of an existing single-family home dropped 73 percent, from a high of $322,300 in December 2005 to just $87,300 in April 2009.

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The giant Ponzi scheme that is Florida

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A few years ago , the St. Petersburg Times sent reporters out to investigate grouper, the succulent, meaty fish drawn from the Gulf of Mexico. They bought the fish at restaurants around the Tampa Bay area and had it tested at a DNA laboratory. Most of it was something else.

Some of it was hake, some of it was pollock. Some, as the newspaper put it, was "Asian catfish masquerading as grouper." The contents of one meal were unidentifiable, even to the DNA technicians.

The stories provoked an uproar and Florida state authorities were forced to step in. Inspectors did another round of tests and found that just about everybody was passing off cheap fish as the more expensive grouper. Eventually, fines were paid and the state stopped investigating.

Last year, an identical scam was uncovered further south, in Fort Myers. Still, just about every restaurant I visited along the Gulf Coast last week was cheerfully offering bargain grouper.

Fried, crusted in pecans, sautéed, baked. Whatever. It tasted all right and, anyway, the actual DNA of whatever is on the plate is the least of anybody's worries nowadays.

Swindled and beaten bloodier than most states by the economic crisis, Florida is lying awake at night like a terrified cardiac patient, praying the angina will pass. The confidence games here were ruinous. The housing fraud was industrial-scale. The economic shortsightedness bordered on lunacy. 

End of the dream

Lehigh Acres, a sprawling bundle of communities without any kind of municipal government, is the worst. You enter it along Gunnery Road, running east of Fort Myers, and pretty soon the dilapidation flows everywhere.

Particularly striking is the newness of it all. Some of these homes — pastel orange, blue or green — have never been occupied, yet the windows are smashed, the appliances have been ripped out and the yards are a tangle of garbage-strewn brambles.

Many of the residents now are renters, attracted from even tougher areas, living alongside despairing homeowners who thought they'd bought a piece of what some still insist on calling the American Dream.

Four years ago, Lehigh Acres homes were selling as fast as they were built and speculators and developers threw them up cheap and quickly. Back then, anybody who could fog a mirror could get a mortgage. Housing prices swelled every week.

Many of the mortgages were predatory, even fraudulent; buyers were encouraged to lie about their incomes, and many did.

By December 2005, when the housing market began to collapse, the median sales price of a home in the Fort Myers area was $322,000. Today it is $99,000.

In Lehigh Acres, it is more like $50,000. Marc Joseph will gladly sell you one.

Foreclosures are us

"The beauty of these prices is that people are here taking advantage of the glass being half full," says Joseph, with the relentless optimism of a realtor. "Some people lost. For other people, they gain."

Trim and energetic, Joseph is prospering. He runs Foreclosure Tours R Us, a company that does just what its name implies. His green bus, blaring the company's logo, hauls around groups of bargain-hunters responsible for the sudden upsurge in real estate sales.

In upscale neighbourhoods, people just glare at the bus and retreat inside their homes. On more distressed streets, he's just ignored.

"This is the time to pull the trigger," he tells his clients. "If the market has not reached bottom, it is very close to bottom. Things are turning around."

Perhaps. That remains to be seen. South Florida's recent sales surge is more likely due to the sudden willingness of federally-supported banks to accept half, or even a third, of what a property was once worth.

These same banks account for nearly two-thirds of the sellers here. In other words, the market is still deeply diseased, just shedding its more gangrenous flesh.

Up and left

Floridians, meanwhile, still have to live here, striving for normalcy as their society shrivels around them.

Cape Coral, more upscale than Lehigh Acres, lies on the other side of Fort Myers, surrounded by the clear water of the Gulf. It's the second biggest city in Florida by size, with more canals and water access than any city in America.

A vast, rambling place with no core and ghost towns on its edges.

I met a woman named Connie there, living in a bungalow. She allowed herself to be coaxed out into the flat March sunlight on the promise that her family name wouldn't be used. She's embarrassed by the state of her neighbourhood and probably embarrassed by her own impending eviction.

The house next door is empty. Foreclosed. The one two doors down is empty, never occupied.

The family across the street abandoned their home a year ago. Just packed up and left.

Connie thought they were going on vacation. They even left their car, a late-model white Dodge Intrepid. A notice on the driver's window threatens it will be towed, at the owner's expense, if it isn't moved in three days.

"The city put that notice on nine months ago," says Connie. "I wish they'd tow it. I hate looking at it. I hate it."

She hates the overgrown yards, too. They're a fire hazard and they attract snakes.

The Ponzi state

Cape Coral can't afford to tow the car, though, or clear the brush from yards. The loss of taxes from foreclosed properties is strangling its municipal government. It's the same story all over the state.

Not that there was ever much government to strangle. Florida is light on government in general. Governments cost money and Floridians don't like paying taxes. There is no state income tax here.

Gary Mormino, a professor at the University of South Florida, has compared the economy here to a giant Ponzi scheme, the confidence game in which investors are paid with the money of new investors.

The Ponzi State. The phrase is catching on and it's making Mormino famous.

He says Florida's economic setup has always depended on ever more people, often retirees on fixed incomes, arriving from out of state with money to spend.

Since 1970, the state has grown by an average of 350,000 new residents a year — or a thousand a day.

To accommodate them, politicians in Tallahassee basically let developers build whatever they wanted just about anywhere they wanted. Usually, that has meant apartment towers and minimally inspected cinder-block homes on concrete slabs.

The construction barely paused and neither did the waves of tourists — as many as 80 million vacationers a year, all ready to pay hotel taxes and rental taxes and restaurant taxes and sales taxes.

Now, everything's flat. In fact, more residents might be leaving than arriving. And the tourists are staying away.

For Mormino, Florida is just a palm tree fantasy with a tax structure "that was insane." And now, he says, "we're paralyzed."

Unemployment is nightmarish and rising. Tax-hating Floridians, turning to their government for help, are finding a stunted, business-driven entity with nothing to offer.

"When people began looking behind the palm trees and into the account books," says Mormino, all they discovered was "massive fraud and lack of oversight."

The 'rocket docket'

The disposal pipe for this dismal mess is the Lee County Courthouse in downtown Fort Myers.

Here, judges brought back from retirement preside over something called a "rocket docket," expressly designed to push through thousands of foreclosures a month.

The homeowners who actually show up for this last hearing have no fight left. Many are working-class minorities who were talked into believing you can own a house on minimum wage. They seem to shrink when they stand to face the bench.

Judge Jack Schoonover is gentle with them. If there are kids in the house he'll usually allow 60 days. But they will have to leave.

Schoonover won't tolerate poor paperwork by bank lawyers. If they make a mistake, he kicks the case to the back of the line and tells the homeowner to go home for awhile longer. But a hardship plea goes nowhere with him. He tells one woman he can't find her a job. "The president has to do that for you."

By midday, he's dealt with 190 cases, creating more product for the bottom-feeding investors who come in and buy in bulk.

At the Anna Maria oyster bar in Bradenton, waitress Carolyn Walker is keeping up a stream of cheery patter for the tables of retirees in plastic bibs. Lobster is on special tonight.

"I'm an optimist," she stresses, setting down my fried grouper.

But she does allow that tips are stingier these days. Her life is getting tough.

She has a 12-year-old daughter she hopes someday to send to college. Lately, though, she's been "literally living day to day."

In middle age, she's taken a second job cleaning people's homes and that helps. "My daddy," she says, "raised me to be happy."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neil Macdonald is a former foreign correspondent and columnist for CBC News who has also worked in newspapers. He speaks English and French fluently, as well as some Arabic.

• Video by Neil Macdonald
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Fla. Real Estate Agent Offers Foreclosure Tours

Real estate agent Marc Joseph always figured that when he turned 40 and hit his midlife crisis, he'd go out and buy an expensive sports car — maybe a Porsche or a Viper.

Instead, he ended up sinking his money into the green bus.

Joseph offers tours of bank-owned properties in Lee County, Fla., where the housing boom has turned into a bust faster than you can say "sheriff's sale."

Foreclosures are something of a growth industry in the area these days, with about 40 coming on the market each day, and Joseph noticed not long ago that everywhere he went, people were asking him about how to find them.

So he bought a bus from a church, painted it green and printed "Foreclosure Tours R Us" across the side.

"As a business owner with years of experience, when you realize your business is starting to suffer, you need to make a move or you're going to be put out of business. My move was the green bus, selling foreclosures," Joseph said.

The tours are only a few months old, but Joseph says they are luring a lot of bargain-hunters into the area.

On a recent Saturday morning, Joseph and his staff drove about a dozen people through the streets of Cape Coral, a city of about 160,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico. For three hours, they visited nearly a dozen bank-owned properties, many of which had been marked down more than 50 percent. They included:

-- A four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with an in-ground pool that last sold for $741,500 in March 2006; it's on the market now for $369,900

-- A three-bedroom ranch house on a freshwater canal selling for $143,500, having been sold just 17 months ago for $316,800

-- A five-year-old, three-bedroom condo with Italian-marble floors selling for $284,900; it sold for $480,000 in December 2006

The real estate fervor that gripped Florida and other states during the easy-money days of 2005 and '06 has left a glut of unsold properties. Fishkind and Associates estimates that Lee County has a three- to five-year inventory of unsold homes, compared with one year in normal times.

As a result, homes can now be bought for well under the replacement cost, Joseph says.

"There is a lot of inventory on the market, and there's a lot more coming," Joseph says. "The key to understanding what's happening is that when these foreclosures are gone, and we've cleaned up our subprime problem, we will be back to our original market. And that is going to be the point at which everyone is going to say they wish they had done something."

Those showing up for the tour included a Canadian couple eager to take advantage of the favorable exchange rate by buying a retirement home; a Michigan businessman eager to relocate to the area; and a couple hoping to buy an inexpensive condo for their daughter, who has a low-paying bank job.

Prices are "very reasonable. I was down here when they were at their peak, and they've really dropped drastically," said Leo Felber, a retiree with family in the area. He had tried to buy before, but prices were too high.

"I can afford what's down here now," he said.

In fact, the silver lining of the real estate downturn has been that housing has become affordable again. During the boom, working people such as teachers, police officers and service workers had trouble buying homes in the county, says Shelton Weeks, professor of real estate at Florida Gulf Coast University. The high housing costs made recruiting employees into the area much harder, Weeks says.

Joseph says he started the foreclosure tours to keep his business going, earning commissions when he sells bank-owned properties. But Joseph, who grew up in Fort Myers, also believes he is helping Lee County bounce back from the housing bust.

"I'm taking the product off the market that's driving our economy down," he says, "and I'm taking the product that is on the market and putting it in the hands of people who deserve it — [the buyers] who couldn't afford it two and a half years ago."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Fla. Real Estate Agent Offers Foreclosure Tours

Real estate agent Marc Joseph always figured that when he turned 40 and hit his midlife crisis, he'd go out and buy an expensive sports car — maybe a Porsche or a Viper.

Instead, he ended up sinking his money into the green bus.

Joseph offers tours of bank-owned properties in Lee County, Fla., where the housing boom has turned into a bust faster than you can say "sheriff's sale."

Foreclosures are something of a growth industry in the area these days, with about 40 coming on the market each day, and Joseph noticed not long ago that everywhere he went, people were asking him about how to find them.

So he bought a bus from a church, painted it green and printed "Foreclosure Tours R Us" across the side.

"As a business owner with years of experience, when you realize your business is starting to suffer, you need to make a move or you're going to be put out of business. My move was the green bus, selling foreclosures," Joseph said.

The tours are only a few months old, but Joseph says they are luring a lot of bargain-hunters into the area.

On a recent Saturday morning, Joseph and his staff drove about a dozen people through the streets of Cape Coral, a city of about 160,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico. For three hours, they visited nearly a dozen bank-owned properties, many of which had been marked down more than 50 percent. They included:

-- A four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with an in-ground pool that last sold for $741,500 in March 2006; it's on the market now for $369,900

-- A three-bedroom ranch house on a freshwater canal selling for $143,500, having been sold just 17 months ago for $316,800

-- A five-year-old, three-bedroom condo with Italian-marble floors selling for $284,900; it sold for $480,000 in December 2006

The real estate fervor that gripped Florida and other states during the easy-money days of 2005 and '06 has left a glut of unsold properties. Fishkind and Associates estimates that Lee County has a three- to five-year inventory of unsold homes, compared with one year in normal times.

As a result, homes can now be bought for well under the replacement cost, Joseph says.

"There is a lot of inventory on the market, and there's a lot more coming," Joseph says. "The key to understanding what's happening is that when these foreclosures are gone, and we've cleaned up our subprime problem, we will be back to our original market. And that is going to be the point at which everyone is going to say they wish they had done something."

Those showing up for the tour included a Canadian couple eager to take advantage of the favorable exchange rate by buying a retirement home; a Michigan businessman eager to relocate to the area; and a couple hoping to buy an inexpensive condo for their daughter, who has a low-paying bank job.

Prices are "very reasonable. I was down here when they were at their peak, and they've really dropped drastically," said Leo Felber, a retiree with family in the area. He had tried to buy before, but prices were too high.

"I can afford what's down here now," he said.

In fact, the silver lining of the real estate downturn has been that housing has become affordable again. During the boom, working people such as teachers, police officers and service workers had trouble buying homes in the county, says Shelton Weeks, professor of real estate at Florida Gulf Coast University. The high housing costs made recruiting employees into the area much harder, Weeks says.

Joseph says he started the foreclosure tours to keep his business going, earning commissions when he sells bank-owned properties. But Joseph, who grew up in Fort Myers, also believes he is helping Lee County bounce back from the housing bust.

"I'm taking the product off the market that's driving our economy down," he says, "and I'm taking the product that is on the market and putting it in the hands of people who deserve it — [the buyers] who couldn't afford it two and a half years ago."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Are investors pumping up another housing bubble in Florida?

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/investors-pumping-another-housing-bubble-florida

Since Florida's housing market crashed nearly a decade ago, a wave of investors offering cash to flip or rent properties has helped restore market values. Now, some homeowners who suffered foreclosure but are ready again to qualify are being priced out while rental prices rise, adding to concerns about another housing bubble. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

GWEN IFILL:

Home prices continued their climb back during the past year, even in some of the cities that took the hardest hits during the housing crash.

But economics correspondent Paul Solman found there's a much more complicated picture behind the numbers.

Here's his story, part of our ongoing reporting Making Sense, which airs every Thursday on the NewsHour.

PAUL SOLMAN:

In Fort Myers, Florida, realtor Marc Joseph's welcome bus tour, an overview of the local housing market every Wednesday morning. And shades of the last real estate boom here, things are heating up.

MARC JOSEPH, Founder, Marc Joseph Realty:

The time to buy is now because inventory is tightening up.

Of course, in real estate-speak, now is always the time to buy.

MARC JOSEPH:

If you're questioning if it's the right time to buy, it is definitely the right time to buy.

That was Marc Joseph five years ago, when we first met him, on what he then called Foreclosure Tours R Us, taking rubbernecking retirees around the wreckage of Southwest Florida's spectacular real estate crash.

December of 2005, up here, we hit $322,000 as the average median sales price. Since December '05, it came straight down. For the entire last year, we have been hovering at a leveling off of between $85,000 and $90,000 over the entire last year.

That was spring 2010, 24,000 foreclosure cases then backlogged in the county court. Too bad we didn't buy, because five years later, the median sales price has more than doubled, to nearly $200,000.

But Joseph's job is to move the product.

It's location, it's the timing, and it's the price.

Like this bank-owned foreclosure, last sold for $218,000 in 2005, still 50 percent off today.

This is concrete block. I cannot reproduce this for $109,000.

Or this one, last sold for $246,000 in 2005.

It's 32 cents on the last sales price because I'm only asking $77,000. So when somebody says, are there deals still out there, this is a deal. They're paying $85,000 for vacant lots in this neighborhood to put up homes.

Small wonder, says Joseph, that investors large and small are now jumping in, buying houses to rent out, or renovate for resale.

People are taking money out of their retirement plans, and they're making a move. I'm seeing it every day.

Jim Gandhi, down from Toronto, was primed to pounce.

JIM GANDHI, Toronto:

We're used to $300 a square foot. When we look at something below $100 a square foot, I mean, it's mind-boggling.

Debbie Abdale hails from Buffalo, New York.

DEBBIE ABDALE:

You're going to make a lot more money doing this than leaving your money in stocks or bonds or annuities.

If you have cash, you are king right now.

In fact, cash bidding wars are erupting.

Cash. Everybody's on the same page now. Please watch your step getting off.

So, guys, what you have is a two-bedroom, one-bath, $101,000.

How much can you rent this out for?

This is $900, $950 to $1,000. You may even get $1,200 because of the desirability of where you're at.

This is going to seem like I'm just your straight man or something, but why wouldn't anybody do that?

That's what I ask myself every day.

CHRIS TAMBURELLO, Boston:

Because it comes with the couch.

Younger Gen Xers and older millennials may recognize the one celebrity on the bus, Chris Tamburello, C.T., of MTV's "Real World" and other reality shows. What was he doing here?

CHRIS TAMBURELLO:

I'm interested in buying a few of those rentals on the lower end and finding me a fixer-upper to live in, and just kind of making my little castle, you know, my little piece of paradise.

There were fixed-up fixer-uppers on the bus tour, two former foreclosures already being flipped. This one's now on the market for $279,000, this one for $399,000, higher prices that demand higher rents to justify as investments.

But, says foreclosure expert Daren Blomquist, the renters are plentiful.

DAREN BLOMQUIST, Vice President, RealtyTrac:

These are displaced homeowners who still often need a place to live, but they can't qualify to buy, and so for now they are renters.

LAURA NEGRON:

People like myself that are still trying to get their credit back in shape.

We met Laura Negron in 2010, translating for Marc Joseph in a cash-for-keys transaction, a sort of voluntary eviction.

It's kind of intimidating and scary that someone would just offer you $1,500 to get out of your house. It hits home.

It hit home because Negron herself was in default on her mortgage, hadn't made a payment in nearly a year.

My husband was out of work for eight months.

It's been hard. I'm sorry.

Today, Negron still works for Marc Joseph, has been promoted to real estate agent.

We had to short-sale our house. We did a bankruptcy.

And are you going to buy in the next year or two?

Absolutely. Can't wait.

Boomerang buyers like Laura Negron are further stoking the market, says Daren Blomquist.

DAREN BLOMQUIST:

We are seeing a first wave of buyers who lost their homes to foreclosure now qualifying and being able to purchase again. But the irony is that, in some markets, they may have been priced out because of the big investors who've come into those markets and propped up prices.

Very big investors.

We have large hedge funds in our area buying up mass amounts of houses, renting them out, and then they take them in big pools and they sell them up to the New York Stock Exchange, to the REITs, the real estate investment trusts.

What Joseph senses is, to put it bluntly, another bubble in the making.

To go from $85,000 to $200,000 in five years? My fear is the people that are in those homes, if they don't make their rent payments…

See you later.

We have a lot of see-you-laters.

And a lot of investors losing a lot money.

Daren Blomquist isn't worried yet.

But if the momentum can't be stopped in terms of that home price appreciation of 10, 20, 30 percent a year, that's where we're going to very quickly get into that danger zone for a housing bubble. And, unfortunately, human nature is such that a lot of times that momentum carries farther than it should.

Show of hands. How many people are investors here, please?

And even if momentum isn't a problem, there could be another glut if Florida's so-called shadow inventory suddenly hits the market.

You have to go out and check a property to see if it's vacant or if it's occupied.

Florida leads the nation in zombie foreclosures, where the owner can't be found, may even have died. It leads in actual foreclosures, 300,000 cases pending, 20,000 new cases a month.

Another 500,000 Florida homeowners are at least three months behind in their payments, technically delinquent. And hundreds of thousands of modified mortgages and home equity loans are about to balloon in payments. Is Marc Joseph predicting another crash? He wouldn't dare. And neither would we. But loans requiring only 3 percent down are now back, he says, and:

It's a big scary thing, because we are getting almost to where we were in 2005 at $317,000. And if we get there, how does that schoolteacher, how does that fireman, how does that police officer, how do they buy a house when it's $317,000?

Oh, we're going to get creative. We're going to give them zero down, no income verification loans. And here we go again. No, we can't do that.

This is PBS NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman reporting from one of the disaster areas of the last crash, Fort Myers, Florida.

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St. Petersburg, FL foreclosure homes for sale

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Showing 59 homes around 20 miles.

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• 830 sqft 830 square feet

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• 7,425 sqft lot 7,425 square foot lot

• 1,244 sqft 1,244 square feet

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• 5,562 sqft lot 5,562 square foot lot

• 1,144 sqft 1,144 square feet
• 1.72 acre lot 1.72 acre lot

• 2,242 sqft 2,242 square feet
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• 1,488 sqft 1,488 square feet

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• 700 sqft 700 square feet

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Facts about St. Petersburg, FL

Schools in st. petersburg, fl.

• Bay Vista Fundamental Elementary School
• View homes for sale
• Pasadena Fundamental Elementary School
• Shore Acres Elementary School

Home values for neighborhoods near St. Petersburg, FL

• Downtown St. Petersburg Homes for Sale $1,125,000
• Historic Old Northeast Homes for Sale $1,325,000
• Coquina Key Homes for Sale $368,999
• Historic Kenwood Homes for Sale $744,637
• Bartlett Park Homes for Sale $350,000
• North Kenwood Homes for Sale $567,500
• Lakewood Terrace Homes for Sale $419,500
• Old Southeast Homes for Sale $869,000
• Melrose - Mercy Homes for Sale $360,000
• Lakewood Estates Homes for Sale $574,000
• Greater Woodlawn Homes for Sale $792,475
• Lake Maggiore Shores Homes for Sale $382,250
• Harbordale Homes for Sale $375,000
• Euclid Place - St. Paul Homes for Sale $904,517
• Bayou Highlands Homes for Sale $404,950

Home values for cities near St. Petersburg, FL

• Clearwater Homes for Sale $375,000
• Largo Homes for Sale $398,999
• Palmetto Homes for Sale $425,000
• Apollo Beach Homes for Sale $514,900
• Ruskin Homes for Sale $377,000
• Pass A Grille Homes for Sale $755,000
• Pass A Grille Beach Homes for Sale $755,000
• St Petersburg Beach Homes for Sale $755,000
• Seminole Homes for Sale $419,900
• Rocky Point Homes for Sale $399,900
• Pinellas Park Homes for Sale $339,000
• St. Pete Beach Homes for Sale $730,000
• West Lealman Homes for Sale $251,500
• Treasure Island Homes for Sale $787,000
• Gulfport Homes for Sale $412,450
• Madeira Beach Homes for Sale $879,950
• Lealman Homes for Sale $313,000
• Safety Harbor Homes for Sale $649,000
• South Pasadena Homes for Sale $369,000
• Indian Rocks Beach Homes for Sale $1,084,539

Home values for counties near St. Petersburg, FL

• Hendry Homes for Sale $342,000
• Indian River Homes for Sale $439,900
• Clay Homes for Sale $375,000
• Flagler Homes for Sale $420,500
• Bradford Homes for Sale $325,000
• Gilchrist Homes for Sale $349,500
• Highlands Homes for Sale $309,900
• Glades Homes for Sale $345,000
• Citrus Homes for Sale $319,975
• Lake Homes for Sale $410,000
• Brevard Homes for Sale $389,900
• Alachua Homes for Sale $349,900
• Hillsborough Homes for Sale $429,900
• Collier Homes for Sale $749,500
• DeSoto Homes for Sale $349,950
• Charlotte Homes for Sale $395,725
• Hernando Homes for Sale $350,000
• Hardee Homes for Sale $380,000
• Lafayette Homes for Sale $420,000
• Dixie Homes for Sale $386,000

Home values for zips near St. Petersburg, FL

• 33706 Homes for Sale $755,000
• 33708 Homes for Sale $667,500
• 33707 Homes for Sale $410,000
• 33709 Homes for Sale $254,000
• 33703 Homes for Sale $507,000
• 33702 Homes for Sale $379,000
• 33715 Homes for Sale $549,000
• 33705 Homes for Sale $440,000
• 33710 Homes for Sale $395,000
• 33713 Homes for Sale $459,450
• 33701 Homes for Sale $940,000
• 33711 Homes for Sale $359,900
• 33714 Homes for Sale $300,000
• 33777 Homes for Sale $350,000
• 33704 Homes for Sale $1,249,500
• 33782 Homes for Sale $320,000
• 33616 Homes for Sale $499,950
• 33760 Homes for Sale $254,000
• 33712 Homes for Sale $427,000
• 33773 Homes for Sale $375,000

How to buy a home in St. Petersburg, FL

Be prepared to buy, moving cost calculator, foreclosures in st. petersburg, fl.

Foreclosure homes for sale in St. Petersburg, FL have a median listing home price of $474,945. There are 8 foreclosing homes for sale in St. Petersburg, FL, which spend an average of 62 days on the market. Some of the hottest neighborhoods near St. Petersburg, FL are Downtown St. Petersburg , Historic Old Northeast , Coquina Key , Historic Kenwood , Bartlett Park . You may also be interested in foreclosing single family homes and condo/townhomes in popular zip codes like 33706 , 33708 , or neighboring cities, such as Clearwater , Largo , Palmetto , Apollo Beach , Ruskin .

Top foreclosure markets in Florida

• Orlando foreclosures
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Fla. Real Estate Agent Offers Foreclosure Tours

Real estate agent Marc Joseph always figured that when he turned 40 and hit his midlife crisis, he'd go out and buy an expensive sports car — maybe a Porsche or a Viper.

Instead, he ended up sinking his money into the green bus.

Joseph offers tours of bank-owned properties in Lee County, Fla., where the housing boom has turned into a bust faster than you can say "sheriff's sale."

Foreclosures are something of a growth industry in the area these days, with about 40 coming on the market each day, and Joseph noticed not long ago that everywhere he went, people were asking him about how to find them.

So he bought a bus from a church, painted it green and printed "Foreclosure Tours R Us" across the side.

"As a business owner with years of experience, when you realize your business is starting to suffer, you need to make a move or you're going to be put out of business. My move was the green bus, selling foreclosures," Joseph said.

The tours are only a few months old, but Joseph says they are luring a lot of bargain-hunters into the area.

On a recent Saturday morning, Joseph and his staff drove about a dozen people through the streets of Cape Coral, a city of about 160,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico. For three hours, they visited nearly a dozen bank-owned properties, many of which had been marked down more than 50 percent. They included:

-- A four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with an in-ground pool that last sold for $741,500 in March 2006; it's on the market now for $369,900

-- A three-bedroom ranch house on a freshwater canal selling for $143,500, having been sold just 17 months ago for $316,800

-- A five-year-old, three-bedroom condo with Italian-marble floors selling for $284,900; it sold for $480,000 in December 2006

The real estate fervor that gripped Florida and other states during the easy-money days of 2005 and '06 has left a glut of unsold properties. Fishkind and Associates estimates that Lee County has a three- to five-year inventory of unsold homes, compared with one year in normal times.

As a result, homes can now be bought for well under the replacement cost, Joseph says.

"There is a lot of inventory on the market, and there's a lot more coming," Joseph says. "The key to understanding what's happening is that when these foreclosures are gone, and we've cleaned up our subprime problem, we will be back to our original market. And that is going to be the point at which everyone is going to say they wish they had done something."

Those showing up for the tour included a Canadian couple eager to take advantage of the favorable exchange rate by buying a retirement home; a Michigan businessman eager to relocate to the area; and a couple hoping to buy an inexpensive condo for their daughter, who has a low-paying bank job.

Prices are "very reasonable. I was down here when they were at their peak, and they've really dropped drastically," said Leo Felber, a retiree with family in the area. He had tried to buy before, but prices were too high.

"I can afford what's down here now," he said.

In fact, the silver lining of the real estate downturn has been that housing has become affordable again. During the boom, working people such as teachers, police officers and service workers had trouble buying homes in the county, says Shelton Weeks, professor of real estate at Florida Gulf Coast University. The high housing costs made recruiting employees into the area much harder, Weeks says.

Joseph says he started the foreclosure tours to keep his business going, earning commissions when he sells bank-owned properties. But Joseph, who grew up in Fort Myers, also believes he is helping Lee County bounce back from the housing bust.

"I'm taking the product off the market that's driving our economy down," he says, "and I'm taking the product that is on the market and putting it in the hands of people who deserve it — [the buyers] who couldn't afford it two and a half years ago."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Foreclosures for Sale in St. Petersburg, FL

Foreclosure in St. Petersburg, FL:

Welcome to this delightful 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom North Kenwood home located at 2584 16th Avenue N, St. Petersburg. This home features a spacious living room perfect for relaxation, and an eat-in kitchen ideal for casual dining. Enjoy the comfort of a brand-new AC system and appreciate the newly installed windows in the garage, which also features a convenient laundry area. Step outside to the expansive deck, perfect for outdoor entertaining, and enjoy the huge backyard with plenty of space for a pool, garden, or other outdoor activities. Situated in a prime location, this home is just minutes from the vibrant downtown St. Petersburg, where you'll find an array of dining, shopping, and enter

You will enjoy this updated 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath home right in the middle of St. Pete. Easy access ground floor light and bright unit offers updated kitchen with new appliances, granite counters. Light and bright dining and living room open to screened porch that overlooks a tranquil pond. Primary bedroom suite with large walk in closet offers ensuite half bath that access full bath. Fresh paint and new LVP throughout. HVAC and water heater just replaced. No age restrictions and you can bring your small pet. Enjoy the amenities this community has to offer as well as shopping and restaurants across the street.

Price Improved! Welcome to 1142 Venetian Isle Drive NE, St. Petersburg, FL! This charming 3-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom corner townhome is located in a prime spot just off Gandy Blvd, offering an easy commute to both Tampa and downtown St. Petersburg. The second floor, the first living level, features a spacious dining area, a large kitchen with rich cabinetry and granite counters, a half bath, a large living room, and a bonus room perfect for a home office. Enjoy the serene views of the small retention pond from your screened porch, providing a peaceful retreat. Upstairs on the third floor, you'll find the primary bedroom with an ensuite bath, complete with double sinks, a large tub, and a separ

Great location. 2 bedroom / 1 bathroom. Kitchen with small eat in space. Living room. Storage room. Inside utility room. Easy access to all of the stores and retail that you need. Multiple access points to the beaches. Just 15 minutes from downtown St. Petersburg's Beach Drive and Central Avenue which is now the &quot;trendy hot spot&quot; on Florida's West Coast. So much to do that is centered around the new St. Petersburg Pier. Enjoy North Shore and Vinoy Park which overlooks Tampa Bay and is the meeting spot for community fun, games and music. Miles of walking trails, dog park, baseball field, tennis courts, volleyball fields and sand courts. There is also North Shore Aquatic Complex. Mu

This beautifully updated townhome boasts a new kitchen with granite counters and stainless appliances. New Flooring throughout and has been freshly painted in and out. HVAC was replaced in 2023 as well a s the water heater. Great layout with Kitchen with that opens to dining room and family room area. Huge primary bedroom suite with an upgraded ensuite bath with dual vanities. W/ D hookups. Bath 2 has been upgraded as well. Laundry hook up on second floor. Monthly fees are low at only $300/mo and includes water/sewer and trash and grounds. maintenance. Private fenced back yard.

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Foreclosure

Discover this amazing condo located within the amazing Cove Cay gold course community featuring 2 bedrooms and 2 baths, offering full panoramic views of beautiful Tampa Bay. The lovely and fully equipped kitchen features plenty of cabinet space. The spacious master bedroom boasts stunning water views and a good sized walk-in closet. From the living room/dining room combination to the outdoor screened-in patio, you'll enjoy breathtaking bay views, ideal for savoring your morning coffee while watching the sunrise. The community provides an array of amenities, including an 18-hole golf course, a restaurant, trails, a recreation center, a pool, a spa, and entertainment space. The on-site marina

Ahead of its time with an open floor plan, is this Imperial Cove condominium villa. &nbsp; The living-dining room is open to an enclosed patio that is now a Florida Room. &nbsp; Builder floor plans claim this unit is 1400 air-conditioned square feet, but public records have not yet caught up to the additional square footage&hellip;. .The unit features an eat-in sized kitchen, an inside laundry room, a storage closet in the Florida Room. &nbsp; In addition, there is an assigned storage closet in the carport&hellip;. . One of the reasons you purchase an Imperial Cove condominium is the resort lifestyle it affords. &nbsp; Imperial Cove is a 55+ plus community. &nbsp; It has a full time social

Based on information submitted to the MLS GRID as of Mon Aug 26 2024. All data is obtained from various sources and may not have been verified by broker or MLS GRID. Supplied Open House Information is subject to change without notice. All information should be independently reviewed and verified for accuracy. Properties may or may not be listed by the office/agent presenting the information.

Foreclosures for Sale in St. Petersburg

There are currently 5 foreclosures for sale in St. Petersburg at a median listing price of $465K. Some of these homes are "Hot Homes," meaning they're likely to sell quickly. Most homes for sale in St. Petersburg stay on the market for 70 days and receive 1 offers. Popular neighborhoods include Pass-a-Grille Beach , Downtown St. Petersburg , Historic Kenwood , Shore Acres , and Historic Old Northeast . This map is refreshed with the newest listings in St. Petersburg every 15 minutes.

In the past month, 424 homes have been sold in St. Petersburg. In addition to houses in St. Petersburg, there were also 761 condos, 137 townhouses, and 49 multi-family units for sale in St. Petersburg last month. St. Petersburg is a minimally walkable city in Pinellas County with a Walk Score of 43. St. Petersburg is home to approximately 244,992 people and 105,596 jobs. Find your dream home in St. Petersburg using the tools above. Use filters to narrow your search by price, square feet, beds, and baths to find homes that fit your criteria. Our top-rated real estate agents in St. Petersburg are local experts and are ready to answer your questions about properties, neighborhoods, schools, and the newest listings for sale in St. Petersburg .  Our St. Petersburg real estate stats and trends will give you more information about home buying and selling trends in St. Petersburg . If you're looking to sell your home in the St. Petersburg area, our listing agents can help you get the best price. Redfin is redefining real estate and the home buying process in St. Petersburg with industry-leading technology, full-service agents, and lower fees that provide a better value for Redfin buyers and sellers.

More real estate resources for St. Petersburg, FL

Neighborhoods.

• Pass-a-Grille Beach homes for sale
• Downtown St. Petersburg homes for sale
• Historic Kenwood homes for sale
• Shore Acres homes for sale
• Historic Old Northeast homes for sale

Nearby Cities

• Largo homes for sale
• Ruskin homes for sale
• St. Pete Beach homes for sale
• Belleair homes for sale
• Indian Shores homes for sale
• Madeira Beach homes for sale
• Seminole homes for sale
• Apollo Beach homes for sale
• Clearwater homes for sale
• Treasure Island homes for sale
• Redington Beach homes for sale
• Gulfport homes for sale
• Tampa homes for sale
• Indian Rocks Beach homes for sale
• Pinellas Park homes for sale
• 33713 homes for sale
• 33701 homes for sale
• 33703 homes for sale
• 33708 homes for sale
• 33710 homes for sale

Nearby Cities with Foreclosures

• Tampa foreclosures for sale
• Clearwater foreclosures for sale

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How to buy a house in St. Petersburg, FL

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Popular Markets in Florida

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CAPE CORAL COLLAPSE

• Susan Taylor Martin Times staff

As the minibus swings into the driveway, Janet Kenyon takes one look at the new three-bedroom, two-bath house and lets out a shriek. "Oh, my God. I hate yellow!'' The house is indeed very yellow, but the hour is getting late and Kenyon and husband Blu have yet to see any place they really, really like. So they head inside to a pleasant surprise. "Aw, this is nice,'' she coos, stroking the faux granite countertops. "Sweet, isn't it?'' he agrees, exploring a custom walk-in closet. Best of all, the price: $103,000.

Three years ago, a house like this might have gone for $250,000 as investors swooped into Cape Coral and transformed the sleepy waterfront city into one of the country's hottest real estate markets. Then demand dried up, and by February, the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area had a new distinction: No. 1 in the nation in foreclosures.

The area is still Florida's foreclosure capital, though it has dropped to fourth nationally. Sales are up as cut-rate prices attract buyers like the Kenyons, who are moving from Connecticut to be close to Janet Kenyon's parents in nearby Estero.

Cape Coral is once again affordable, but with such a plunge in taxable value that the city of 170,000 is laying off dozens of employees and cutting park programs and other services.

And with nearly 11,000 homes in foreclosure - 1 in every 31 households - it could be two years before all the distressed properties find buyers.

"There's always a wisdom in maintaining a sense of cautious optimism,'' said City Manager Terry Stewart. "You obviously don't want to go off the deep end and say some of the positive things you see happening are absolutely going to continue.''

'Feeding frenzy'

Cape Coral is one of Florida's youngest cities, the creation of brothers Jack and Leonard Rosen. In 1957, they paid $678,000 for Redfish Point, renamed it and began building their "affordable waterfront wonderland'' across the Caloosahatchee River from Fort Myers.

What Cape Coral may lack in historical charm, it makes up for in size and location. At 115 square miles, it is the third biggest city geographically in Florida, trailing only Jacksonville and Tampa. Even today, 50 percent of the land is undeveloped, giving parts of Cape Coral the look of a windswept Kansas prairie.

Among the city's selling points are 400 miles of canals, many with direct access to the Gulf of Mexico. That, along with cheaper housing prices than those in the Tampa Bay area or South Florida, attracted hordes of speculators as loose lending standards and low "teaser'' interest rates fueled a nationwide real estate boom starting in 2004.

"It was a feeding frenzy,'' recalls Suzanne Sherer, an agent for RE/MAX in Cape Coral. "People were flipping properties right and left. You'd see some homes in bidding wars the minute the sign went up.''

Teachers, police officers and others who had made Cape Coral a bedroom community of Fort Myers were priced out of the market as the average sale price soared to $309,000 in 2006. Then the inevitable happened.

"Prices didn't make sense anymore,'' Sherer said. "Anytime a market is driven solely by investors, it can't sustain itself.''

In March 2005, the city issued 848 permits for new single-family homes. This March, it issued nine.

Word spreads abroad

Somewhat surprisingly, commercial development has remained fairly strong even as home building tanked. Once ignored by national chains that instead focused on Fort Myers, Cape Coral has recently landed its own Lowe's, Target, Carrabba's, a Kohl's department store and Starbucks.

City officials see that as a sign of the cape's long-term appeal.

"Even at the peak, we were undervalued in comparison to many other places in the state, and a lot of those places are pretty much built out,'' said Stewart, the city manager. "Cape Coral still has great opportunities not only for developing but for baby boomers coming to retire.''

To reduce inventory and jump-start the market, prices on builder- and bank-owned homes have been slashed. The strategy appears to be working: Adams Homes sold 55 new four-bedroom houses in June for as little as $128,900 and may start building again soon.

Such deals are especially enticing to Europeans, whose strong euro makes a $128,000 home cost the equivalent of $82,000. Word of foreclosure-drivenbargains has spread so far that a German TV crew was recently in town to make a documentary.

Package deal

As foreclosures peaked in January, Marc Joseph Realty Inc. bought a 12-seat minibus wrapped in a green sign: Foreclosure Tours R US. Weekend tours of bank-owned homes for sale are so popular that all 12 seats are often taken.

"We realized that this is where our business would be,'' said Bill Mitchell, an agent who showed 14 houses to the Kenyons on a recent day.

Blu Kenyon, of Waterbury, Conn., has a freight delivery business so he likes Cape Coral's proximity to Interstate 75 and Southwest Florida International Airport. But the couple decided not to buy one house in Cape Coral.

Instead, they decided to buy three. Among them: an 1,800-square-foot home built two years ago for $314,500.

Today's price: $99,000.

Contact Susan Taylor Martin at [email protected].

Bay Magazine Correspondent

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A family who roadtrips 4,000 miles a year shares the best hidden-gem destinations in the US

• Rob Taylor, a Florida-based road trip expert, has traveled to 48 states with his family.
• Taylor focuses on educational trips, visiting lesser-known destinations for unique experiences.
• He recommends stopping at under-the-radar destinations in Alaska, Utah, and on the East Coast.

International destinations can be awe-inspiring — but road trips around the states can feel just as unique, from New England to the coast of Alaska.

That's according to Florida-based road trip expert Rob Taylor , who has traveled to 48 states. Over the last 13 years, he and his husband, Chris, have driven their two kids to 30 states.

"The US is so large, and you can get such variation in experiences, activities, landscapes, cuisine, and culture from one corner of the country to another," he told Business Insider. "We're making our way. Eventually, we will hit all of them."

Regarding family road trips , Taylor seeks out lesser-known destinations where the kids can learn something new.

"So much of our travel specifically focuses on education and making sure that we're not just going to theme parks," he said. "We're actually out there doing programs with the rangers and educators."

Typically, Taylor takes the kids out of school three to four times a year for up to two weeks at a time. He added that the educational factor makes teachers more supportive of their travels during the school year.

"That's why we feel OK pulling them out of school as much as we do," Taylor said. "We've never had a complaint that we've missed too much school."

Taylor shared with BI his favorite hidden-gem road trip stops around the US for families — and some are in popular states you wouldn't expect.

Drive through a lesser-known part of Alaska.

Alaska may be a popular tourist destination, but as a former resident of the state, Taylor knows where to go to avoid the crowds .

"There's the whole scenic side of the state that people pass over because everybody drives on the Parks Highway that goes from Anchorage up to Fairbanks," he told BI. "On the other side, you can drive through the wilderness and experience the tundra. It's not a mainstream destination."

To get to this under-the-radar stop from Anchorage, Taylor said to drive towards Palmer.

"You'll pass several state parks before crossing over the beautiful, albeit rough road, called Hatcher Pass," he said. "This will add time and connect you back to the main Parks Highway, but it's well worth the detour."

Taylor added that he's taken the family on multiple hikes in the bird watching, moose watching, and a mining tour in the area.

Avoid crowds on the eastern side of Glacier National Park.

" Glacier National Park is definitely not a lesser-known place, but so many people approach it just from one side," Taylor said of the mountainous park in Montana. "A lot of people just overlook that whole other half of this national park ."

In Taylor's experience, tourists crowd the park's west side.

"But the east side of Glacier National Park, where it meets the Blackfoot Nation, is really incredible," he said, referring to the Native American reservation also known as Blackfeet Nation . "It has far fewer people than the west side. It's one of those spots where you can still have a detached-from-the-rest-of-the-world experience."

In Utah, swap out Zion National Park for Canyon Lands...

Utah may not be the first place you think of as a hidden gem — but it can be.

"With Utah having so much public land , it's a great place to get away from people," Taylor said. "So many people think of going to Zion National Park , but there are other parks in Utah that are just as incredible."

Canyonlands National Park , for example, is less frequented than Zion, he said.

"It's very red and orange and gold, and the land is a lot of canyons and washouts," he said.

... or Capitol Reef National Park.

" Capitol Reef is not crowded at all," Taylor told BI of this national park in Utah's south-central desert region . "And it is astounding with the landscape and tons of history within the park in terms of western settlement."

Aside from having fewer tourists than Zion National Park, Taylor said Capitol Reef will "give you a totally different spin on Utah."

"There are really large monoliths of sandstone in the middle of mountain ranges that are dark gray and flaming red," he said. "There are contrasts of hot and cold colors everywhere with really dramatic landscape features, like natural bridges that form because of really intense erosion."

Taylor recommends Capitol Reef for families who want to "geek out on geology."

"If you're traveling with kids, it's one of those spots where there's literally science around every corner," he said.

On the East Coast, take the less-traveled route through South Carolina and stop in Columbia.

Taylor said the East Coast is full of historic cities, and Columbia, South Carolina , is a hidden gem off the major highway.

"Columbia is not on the 95," he said, referring to the interstate that connects Florida to Maine, "but it's not difficult to veer off that north-to-south route that everybody ends up driving here on the East Coast."

"Columbia has lots of wonderful history in terms of civil rights and civil war reconstruction history," he added.

Taylor also recommends visiting Conagree National Park, just outside the city.

"It's an incredible Cypress swamp full of snakes and alligators and birds and fireflies," he said. "It's beautiful, it's creepy, and it's squishy. It's a unique park visit with kids."

Instead of visiting the coast of Maine, go to the highlands.

" Maine is one of those places that surprises me with each visit," Taylor told Business Insider. "A lot of people think of Maine as a place to see lighthouses and maybe eat some lobster, but the Maine Highlands are really cool."

The highlands are in the middle of Maine and attract fewer tourists than coastal destinations, according to a 2023 economics report by Maine's Department of Administrative and Financial Services .

"It's really a wonderful place for wildlife, and you get to see what the northeast was like before all the cities were booming," Taylor said.

Now that you know where to go, check out Taylor's best tips for family road trips in his book, "The Road Trip Survival Guide."

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