PUNTA GORDA — Attractive downtowns across the state are seeing a resurgence in residential real estate activity, and the county seat of Charlotte County is no exception.
Thornberry Custom Builders is building this house on Kings Court west of downtown Punta Gorda. Building permits are up 51 percent through mid-March from the same period in 2014. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 3-22-2015.
From Oct. 1, 2014, through mid-March, residential building permits within Punta Gorda’s city limits were up 51.3 percent, to 59 from 39 the same period a year earlier.
“Yes, there are quite a few of them going up right now,” said John Chalifoux, a homebuilder in Punta Gorda since 2010. He said the new-home market is “incredibly different” from just a year ago.
“The lots have all been bought up. People are coming out of the woodwork wanting to buy downtown,” he said.
Chalifoux, whose company is John Chalifoux Construction, builds traditionally styled houses that blend in with the 80- and 100-year-old structures in Punta Gorda’s National Register historic district.
He just built a model, which is under contract already, and he has another house going up. T.J. Thornberry is his main competition; Thornberry has several houses under construction in “the district.”
A new model home by Gulfview Construction Management Services in Punta Gorda Isles. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 3-22-2015.
But the activity doesn’t stop there. Punta Gorda Isles, west of the popular Fishermen’s Village shopping and dining destination, is booming as well. New homes there are akin to what Sarasotans would find in Lakewood Ranch. Some of them, if on the sailboat-water canals, can be quite large, including a 14,000-square-footer, built in 2013, that is a short boat ride up the canal from Charlotte Harbor.
Thornberry is building for many local clients, while Chalifoux finished a house for a newly retired couple from New Jersey, along with buyers from Pennsylvania. His other current client is a local family.
In the Historic District, buyers tend to want smaller homes with detached garages, Chalifoux said. His target market is northerners who need a garage “so they can keep stuff in there while they are gone” for the summer.
The typical historic-district lot sells for $85,000 (much more on Retta Esplanade, facing the waterfront Gilchrist Park). New construction is $150 to $160 a square foot for air-conditioned space, and $102 for the entire house, Chalifoux said. “I don’t do much with square-foot numbers,” he said, “because everything I do is different. I load up the houses, and that changes your square-foot number quite a bit.”
Builders appreciate the increase in business, but complain that labor is becoming increasingly difficult to find, making it harder to build the houses on schedule.
