This week saw the 2026 Market Trends event at the Caloosa Sound Convention Center in Fort Myers, with roughly 1,300 real estate and development professionals in attendance. The headline message from the panel of industry experts: Southwest Florida's housing slowdown is a market correction following the pandemic-era boom, not a crash. The commercial side, meanwhile, remains structurally strong.

A few specific takeaways relevant to our three markets.

LSI Companies president and CEO Justin Thibaut highlighted Southwest Florida's most active growth corridors, including Burnt Store Road in Charlotte County, the Oil Well Road area in Collier County, and eastern Corkscrew Road in Lee County. He noted that every major national homebuilder is now active in the Burnt Store corridor, and suggested it could rival or surpass Babcock Ranch in new construction volume in coming years.

On Babcock Ranch specifically, Thibaut noted that residential permits there declined from 1,526 homes in 2024 to 863 in 2025 — a number some media coverage has framed as a worrying drop, but which Thibaut framed as a normal market correction and stabilization of inventory. Builders, he noted, are working through excess inventory created during the boom before increasing permit activity again.

On the commercial side, the panel was notably more bullish. Population growth in Southwest Florida continues to drive demand for retail, medical office, and service-oriented commercial space, and the supply pipeline remains constrained relative to that demand.

For local commercial real estate professionals, the practical implication of the Market Trends event is that we should expect a year of differentiation. Top-tier locations — anchored retail with strong demographics, modern industrial near logistics infrastructure, well-located medical office — will continue to perform. Marginal locations and older product without a clear repositioning thesis will lag. The narrative of 'everything is slowing down' doesn't survive contact with the actual transaction data.

We'll continue translating these macro signals into local intelligence as the year progresses.

Image credit: Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash (via Unsplash). Reporting in this article draws on coverage from Cushman & Wakefield, LSI Companies, SVN Commercial Partners, Suncoast Searchlight, WUSF Public Media, FOX 4 Now, the Gulfshore Business Market Trends event, the Eshenbaugh Land Company, Charlotte County Economic Development, the City of Arcadia, the DeSoto County Board of County Commissioners, and public listings on LoopNet and Crexi. Specific transaction details and quotations are attributed in-text.