The owner of a realty company talks from the front of a boat to prospective buyers as they motor down a canal during a foreclosure boat tour on March 26 in Cape Coral, Fla.
This is how empires rise and fall, pulling our fortunes along with them. Start with virgin territory: back in 1957, the Rosen brothers of Baltimore flew over Cape Coral, Fla., in a plane, liked what they saw, paid $678,000 for the farmland and started dredging 400 miles (640 km) of canals, which is more than Venice can claim. It was a peaceful place for old people Cape Coma, folks called it, until about five years ago, when the gold rush began. College kids were waiting tables to buy condos and flip them; speculators got into bidding wars on unbuilt houses;...
