Neal Communities buys 788 acres in Alva for $34.1 million

Neal Communities has paid 34.1 million dollars for 788 acres in Alva, a rural stretch of eastern Lee County where the land already carries entitlements for as many as 1,099 homes

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 20, 2026

The bare wooden frame of a long single storey house stands on flat cleared ground under a grey overcast sky, with stacks of framing lumber, a sawhorse and loose boards spread across the dirt in front of it, a low scrubby tree line behind, and one small distant unidentifiable figure in a door opening. No signage, lettering or landmarks appear. A generic illustration of new home construction, not a photograph of this event.

Stock photo

Stock photo. Not the actual scene. Photo: Ryan Stephens / Pexels

What it changes

The number that matters to a Lee County resident here is not 34.1 million dollars. It is 1,099. That is the maximum number of homes the county has already agreed can be built on this land, and it was agreed in March 2025, before this sale closed. Entitlement is the part of Florida development that decides everything and gets the least attention: once a rezoning passes, the right to build travels with the dirt, and the only remaining questions are who owns it and when they start. The county's decision was made eighteen months ago. What happened this week is that a builder with the balance sheet to act on it now holds the deed. So the practical read for anyone living in Alva or North Olga is that the argument about whether these homes get built is over, and the argument about pace has begun. Gulfshore Business reports a first phase of 290 single family homes, which is roughly a quarter of the entitlement, and the developer told that outlet the final count depends on what sizes sell. That is the lever to watch. A builder who sells well moves to phase two quickly; a builder who does not can sit on entitled land for years, and entitled land is a perfectly good asset to hold. For buyers, the relevant comparison is the adjacent Owl Creek property the same company bought from D.R. Horton in 2023, where Gulfshore Business reports homes priced from about 290,000 dollars to about 450,000 dollars. That price band is well below the Collier County median and it is the reason inland eastern Lee County keeps absorbing the region's growth while the coast does not. It also arrives into a rental and for sale market that has been softening across Southwest Florida, which is a real risk to the pace of any new subdivision. For taxpayers there is a second effect, and it is the one that shows up on a tax bill rather than in a sales office. Roughly 315 acres of houses in a rural area east of State Road 31 means new roads, new school capacity, new utility runs and new emergency response distance, and those costs are carried by the county whether or not impact fees cover them. Whether they do is the specific question worth asking at the next budget hearing, because impact fees are set by ordinance and are a policy choice, not a fixed cost of building. The conservation side is genuine and should be counted as such: about 473 acres, some 60 percent of the parcel, goes to retention and conservation rather than to houses, which is a materially better ratio than a conventional Florida subdivision delivers. What none of this settles is water. Land between North River Road and the Caloosahatchee is exactly the ground where drainage and retention design decides whether the neighbourhood downstream floods, and a retention acreage figure in a development order is a plan, not a performance record.

Neal Communities has bought 788 acres of largely undeveloped land in Alva, in eastern Lee County, for 34.1 million dollars, according to David Dorsey at Gulfshore Business, who reports the purchase closed in two back to back transactions recorded as deeds with the Lee County Clerk.

That reporting names the sellers as members of the Cary and Duke families, longtime Lee County landowners who had first tried to sell the property to Bonita Bay in 2006, and the Povia-Flint families, who sold their portion at the same time earlier this month.

The land sits between North River Road and the Caloosahatchee River, just east of Babcock Ranch Road, which is also State Road 31. Lee County commissioners rezoned it in March 2025 and entitled it for a maximum of 1,099 dwelling units. That rezoning was reported at the time by Gulfshore Business, WINK News and WGCU.

The first phase will be 290 single family homes, and about 315 acres of the site will carry the housing while roughly 473 acres, some 60 percent of the land, becomes retention ponds and conservation, according to the development order as described in the Gulfshore Business account.

Combined with about 200 adjacent acres the same company bought from D.R. Horton in 2023, known as Owl Creek, the purchase gives the Lakewood Ranch based builder a contiguous position in the area.

Pat Neal, the founder and chair of the company, told Gulfshore Business that he could not close until every permit was in hand, and said the company spent about 1.2 million dollars on permitting fees. He described deals of this kind as taking "four or five years," and said most involve litigation, which is his general characterisation of the business rather than a statement about this transaction.

No primary document is linked on this item. The deeds are Lee County Clerk records and the development order is a county record, and this publication has not retrieved either. Every figure above is the Gulfshore Business reporting, attributed as such, and none of it has been independently confirmed against a document by this desk.

Where we read it: David Dorsey at Gulfshore Business. Read their story.

The document: No public filing has been released.

Neal Communities has paid 34.1 million dollars for 788 acres in Alva, a rural stretch of eastern Lee County where the land already carries entitlements for as many as 1,099 homes

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