Market Adjustment

Investors like Hank Porterfield are bedrock of the commercial real estate business in the Fort Myers area.

For the most part, institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies and the like have never had a significant presence in tertiary commercial real estate markets like Fort Myers. Instead, most of the capital for shopping centers, office buildings and warehouses has come from individual investors who put up equity and arrange community bank financing.

Porterfield is like many investors who made their fortunes in manufacturing, real estate and other ventures in the Midwest. He and others moved down to the Fort Myers area during the boom, in many cases using tax-favored exchanges to swap properties up north for others of equal value in Southwest Florida early in the last decade.