Huffington Post senior financial writer Ben Hallman traveled to two diverse neighborhoods for his article: The Villages north of Orlando and Lehigh Acres east of Fort Myers. In an interview with WGCU this week, he said they are as stark a contrast as he’s seen anywhere. Hallman goes on to describe the Villages as a sprawling sleep-away camp for older folks.

“It has 513 holes of golf, dozens of swimming pools. It’s immaculately maintained. Home sales are going through the roof. And it’s growing rapidly,” he said.

Fishkind has been a consultant for the Villages for more than 25 years. He said he wouldn’t use the word “rapidly” to describe its growth.      

“Even the Villages, which has been the best-selling master planned community in the U.S. for the last three years, even they have experienced substantial reductions in volume from the peak years,” said Fishkind. “That said, the active adult communities across Florida have been the strongest housing sector over the last couple of years.”

By contrast, Hallman drove through southwest Florida’s Lehigh Acres a few weeks ago. He described it as very much the opposite of the Villages -- devastated, with a foreclosure rate four times the national average. 

“It’s a large tract of land divided up into thousands of plots that sort of developed slowly,” said Hallman.  “By 2006 and 2007 at the height of the housing boom developers were trading around these houses like playing cards and they were going up, up, up in value beyond what made any sense and when the collapse happened construction jobs went away and these were people who lived in Lehigh Acres and they simply were no longer able to pay their mortgages.”

Average home prices in Lehigh Acres have fallen dramatically since 2007, down to $60,000 from more than $200,000 a few years ago. But economist Hank Fishkind said home prices in Lee County have come up substantially over the last 18 months and the excess inventory is being sold off. What Hallman didn’t do admittedly, was drive through Lehigh Acres 15 or 20 years ago to notice things there look very much the same now as they did back then, according to Fishkind.

“Well perhaps there was some significant speculative building that occurred back in the outback of Lehigh Acres that is ill conceived, ill placed, badly priced and frankly it’s going to sit vacant for a long time because there never was any market,” he said.

Development in Lehigh Acres began in the 1950s. By 1992, Lee County had declared it blighted. 

But, what Hallman’s article predicts is an impending demographic bubble because places like the Villages with its clientele are growing while working class neighborhoods like Lehigh Acres are not. He wrote that over the next 20 years, the number of adults over age 62 in the U.S. will double to 80 million, as the largest generation in American history retires. He used the Villages as his example that Florida offers a preview of what the entire country will experience down the road.

Hallman attributed that strong elder housing market as the challenge for Florida for the coming couple of decades because he said the current 65-year-old will eventually turn 85 and need more services.

He said, “And because of the way Florida’s tax structure is set up it’s very reliant on the sales tax and older people spend more money on services and less money on goods as they get older. And as my story in the Huffington magazine says they also tend to vote against initiatives that would help the state long term such as education spending.”

What the state needs, said Hallman, is college-educated 30-somethings. They move more often meaning they’re buying and selling homes. He said they’ll provide the backbone of the economy.

“They’re more likely to innovate,” said Hallman. “They’re more likely to start companies and they’re also needed to provide the services that this huge and growing older population is going to demand. These workers are going to be increasingly in short supply and that’s going to likely have an effect on wages. The salaries will go up which is good for these workers but maybe not so good for the older people who live on fixed incomes and are going to have to foot the bill.”

Hallman concluded that if more young people don’t move to Florida there will be this “demographic train wreck,” a quote he used from the director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness. 

But, Fishkind said there is no impending train wreck. He said there is no factual basis to support the contention that Florida’s population growth is dominated by people aged 65 and over. In fact, he said, data over the last 50 years is to the contrary. Fishkind said there is no county in Florida whose population age 65 and older exceeds 35 percent and in this economy that’s not going to change. Between 1995 and 2000 the census reported that roughly 22% of people aged 65 and over moved. That propensity to move has dropped by half. 

“The destruction of wealth and the drop in housing prices has inhibited the normal movement of retirees to Florida because people can no longer sell their big homes in the Northeast and Midwest, come out with a large capital gain, use that to buy a big house in Florida for cash and put money in the bank,” said Fishkind.

Moreover, Fishkind said as Florida’s economy improves, more young folks will move in. He said construction is turning around. Building permits are up significantly. The country is having a modest recovery but it takes an extended period of time to reach the new normal.