“Money was flowing, easy money.
Anybody could qualify – I mean anybody.
A bank teller with an annual salary of 23 thousand dollars
got a $216,000 mortgage, with no money down and no income verification – not even a phone call from the lender.
I wish I could say the market here was driven by end users
and retirees, but it wasn’t. Two-thirds were speculators.
You could flip’em before you had to close on’em.”
– Marc Joseph,
Fort Myers real estate agent