CAPE CORAL, Fla. — 2025 was supposed to be shaping up to be a year of renewed momentum in real estate but that doesn't seem to be the case for Cape Coral.
According to a new report from Construction Coverage, an online real estate research publisher breaking down key indicators from Redfin, Cape Coral ranked 123 out of 123 midsize U.S. cities in it's hottest real estate markets of 2025. Dead last.
What brought the once booming city down? During the pandemic, home values soared, with year-over-year price growth peaking at 26.1% in May 2021. Sale prices slowed in 2022, and actually declined in 2023. But by the end of 2024, home prices were just 6.3% higher than the year prior—a pace more in line with historical norms.
According to the report, median sale prices were down 1.3% from last year, and median days on the market were a staggering 69.1 days. The only other city beating that was Fort Lauderdale at 86.8 days.
The share of listings with price drops was 34.2%.
The silver lining, in December 2024, home sales were up 10.8% compared to one year prior, which is the strongest annual growth since mid-2021. That could be due to a lot of inventory and AirBNB's going on the market, as we have previously reported.
In terms of other small cities in the area, Port Charlotte also came in dead last, in it's category of city size. It saw a six percent dip in median sale price and over 35% of properties seeing a price drop.
As far as states, Connecticut came in at number one for the hottest real estate markets in 2025, Florida came in last.
A look at 'Construction Coverage''s Methodolgy:
The data used in this analysis is from Redfin’s Data Center. To determine the locations with the hottest real estate markets in 2025, researchers at Construction Coverage created a composite score, equally weighting the following metrics:
- One-year change in median sale price (Dec 2023–Dec 2024)
- Share of homes that sold above asking (2024)
- Median number of days on the market (2024)
- Average sale-to-list percentage (2024)
- Share of listings with price drops (2024)
