Land Prices

Still, builders in the Naples area continue buying land as prices rise and the local real estate recovery takes hold, according to Steve Hagenbuckle, managing principal of real estate investment firm TerraCap Management Corp. in Cape Coral, Florida.

Undeveloped land with zoning approvals in Estero, north of Naples, sold to a public builder Hagenbuckle declined to name for $40,000 per quarter-acre lot. Eight months ago, Toll Brothers Inc. bought similar land for $10,000, he said.

Premier Sotheby's International Realty sold 41 Naples residences priced at $2 million or more this year through March 17, a gain of 14% over the same period in 2010, according to Lutgert Cos., a Naples property developer that owns the brokerage. There were 55 sales of homes priced between $1 million and $2 million, an increase of 17%, President Howard Gutman said in an e-mail.

"The buyers are value-conscious, but they're making decisions," said Van Arsdale, who brokered four transactions for a combined $27 million since Christmas. The properties sold for about 30% less than peak prices, she said.

$80,000 Savings

Richard Azrael, 65, wanted to buy last year at WCI's Marquesa subdivision next to the Ritz-Carlton until the company bankruptcy delayed his purchase. Last month, he closed on a three-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot condo and golf membership for $720,000, saving about $80,000 over the 2010 price, he said.

"We've been thinking of this for several years, and we felt that if we were going to do it, we should do it now," said Azrael, a real estate developer from Columbia, Maryland. "We've been spending a lot of time in Florida on both coasts, and we happen to like the pace and environment in Naples."

Naples, with a bay like its namesake Italian city, was developed in the late 1880s by John S. Williams, a U.S. senator from Kentucky, and Walter Haldeman, publisher of the state's Louisville Courier-Journal. They built homes, a pier and a 16- room hotel, according to the Naples Historical Society website.

The town, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) south of Tampa, remained "a small, lovely oasis along the Gulf of Mexico" until the 1950s, the website says.