Florida: Snowbirds, meet the repo men

" The property crash is devastating a boom townYOU can gauge the depth of Florida’s economic woes with a quick look at a parking lot on the north side of Cape Coral, on the state’s south-western coast. Since the implosion of the local housing market last year, Gulf Coast Recovery has hauled in the cars of wiped-out building workers who fell behind on their payments. But now the beefy, heavily-tattooed repo men at Gulf Coast hoot about the red Corvette they have just towed away; and their lot contains Cadillacs, $40,000 Harley-Davidsons, even speedboats. “We don’t mind taking those,” says Scott Friga, the company’s owner. “They’re toys.”Cape Coral was a boom town a few years ago, buoyed by a huge upturn in house-building. Workers flooded in, and speculators and builders alike could buy Hummers on credit. In 2004 the Los Angeles-based Milken Institute rated the resulting sea of stucco and strip malls the best-performing city in America. Now it is 120th. One in 71 homes in Cape Coral’s Lee County has a foreclosure filing, and nearly half the mortgages on recently purchased houses in the area are under water. ..." (2008-11-13)

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