Premier Sotheby’s CEO: Hurricane Ian won’t hurt housing demand
Here’s a tip from a resident of Barefoot Beach at Bonita Springs, a barrier island community slammed by Hurricane Ian’s 8-foot storm surge and 145mph winds: Look closer at the pictures of storm destruction.
• “One looks at it and thinks, ‘Oh my god, this place is completely devastated,'” Budge Huskey tells Axios over the phone.
Yes, but: That’s not true, says the president and CEO of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, with nine offices across Southwest Florida.
• Huskey says the homes on his street — representative of newer construction on the coasts — are all elevated, with the living space built well above sea level to comply with modern codes, strengthened after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
The intrigue: The first floors washed out by floodwaters were nonconforming, uninsured garage and storage spaces.
What he’s saying: Huskey says he doesn’t want to minimize the impact of the storm on his neighbors, and he realizes he’s in the business of selling real estate in Florida.
• But he doesn’t think this hurricane will have a big impact on the area’s high housing demand.
• This shows modern houses can withstand the worst hurricanes. People will rebuild, putting new homes in places where old homes were destroyed.
Here’s a tip from a resident of Barefoot Beach at Bonita Springs, a barrier island community slammed by Hurricane Ian ‘s 8-foot storm surge and 145mph winds: Look closer at the pictures of storm destruction .
• “One looks at it and thinks, ‘Oh my god, this place is completely devastated,'” Budge Huskey tells Axios over the phone.Yes, but: That’s not true, says the president and CEO of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, with nine offices across Southwest Florida. He was on business in Colorado when Ian made landfall.State of play: As folks on the barrier islands north of Naples assess the damage, they’re learning, Huskey says, that the modern homes — like Huskey ‘s, built in 1999, and his neighbors’ — actually stood pretty well against one of the worst hurricanes on record.
• Huskey says the homes on his street — representative of newer construction on the coasts — are all elevated, with the living space built well above sea level to comply with modern codes , strengthened after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.The intrigue: The first floors washed out by floodwaters were nonconforming, uninsured garage and storage spaces. In other words, a lot of people lost framing and drywall and the contents of their first-story garages, but their actual homes are fine.
• “It’s not living area,” Huskey says. “And when you look at the second floor, there’s no harm.”Zoom out: There are other places in Ian’s path where preventative planning appears to have paid off — like Punta Gorda, which embraced modern building codes and escaped relatively unscathed, and Babcock Ranch, a solar-powered town where native landscaping helped control stormwater, Axios’ Jennifer A. Kingson reports.What he’s saying: Huskey says he doesn’t want to minimize the impact of the storm on his neighbors, and he realizes he’s in the business of selling real estate in Florida.
• But he doesn’t think this hurricane will have a big impact on the area’s high housing demand .
• This shows modern houses can withstand the worst hurricanes. People will return. People will rebuild, putting new homes in places where old homes were destroyed.The bottom line: “There’s some risk of living in paradise and people recognize that,” Huskey says. “My house withstood an 8-foot storm surge and 145 mph winds. It did what it was built to do.”
