Cape Coral keeps growing fast, even as its home prices cool

Cape Coral is still one of the fastest growing large cities in the country. The Census Bureau's July 1, 2024 estimate put the population at 233,025, a rise of 20.1 percent since the 2020 Census, against about 2.6 percent for the nation over the same span. That is a city adding people at nearly eight times the national rate. And yet the housing market has cooled from its peak, with Redfin's data showing a median sale price near $360,000 for the spring, down roughly 2 percent from a year earlier, while price per square foot held about flat. The two facts are not a contradiction. A market can take a breather on price while the underlying demand, measured by how many people actually move in, keeps climbing, which is close to what the numbers describe in Cape Coral right now. For buyers, the near term looks calmer than the frenzy of a few years ago. For the city, a population growing this fast is the number that shapes every budget, road and canal-side lot for the next decade.