Philip Levens spent years in Los Angeles working as an actor. He knows what a city feels like when it is not working well. When he moved to Naples, Florida, the difference hit him fast. "When you come from a city that is not well-run, like Los Angeles, you immediately notice the difference, and just everything seems to work," Levens said.
His wife, actress Carolyn Stotesbery, had a sharper reason for leaving. She was pushing her daughter in a stroller past a homeless man lying on the ground in LA. "It just really kept my nervous system on high alert," she said.
In Naples, she described the entire vibe as more at ease and peaceful. "He was FaceTiming me from the beach, and he just had a sparkle in his eye, and showed me the beach and the city, and loved the architecture and the colors, and it just really called to us," Stotesbery said.
Levens said downtown Naples reminded him of Beverly Hills.
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That personal story sits at the center of a real estate boom worth multiple billions of dollars along Florida's Gulf Coast. People with money are leaving California because of high housing costs, homelessness, proposed tax increases, and worries about public safety and how cities are managed. They are picking Florida's Gulf Coast because it feels quieter, cleaner, and safer than what they left behind.
The action is concentrated along a stretch of highway that runs from Tampa to Naples. Ed Jahn, senior vice president at Kolter Urban, calls the I-75 corridor unique because it gives people choices in a two-and-a-half-hour drive.
"Tampa down to Naples is a unique corridor because it gives you, in that two-and-a-half-hour geographical drive… you have both culture, you have the arts there, but you're able to settle in a more quaint community that isn't as urbanized as it may be on the East Coast," Jahn said.
That is a lot of cranes and concrete. Developers are betting that the flow of California money is not a blip - it is a long-term shift in where wealthy Americans want to live.
Madeline Tracy, a Compass agent and Naples native, said this move is common, especially for younger families. Older people come for retirement or family, but younger ones are looking for life transitions and want to know what it's like to live somewhere, not just vacation.
The boom may not be done. Miami has become the obvious landing spot for rich newcomers, but it is becoming oversaturated. The Gulf Coast offers more price flexibility.
The next crop of buyers could come from a familiar source: tech money. As companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI go public, their newly rich employees will have big decisions to make about where to live. Florida's tax-friendly status is a powerful draw for someone cashing out stock options.
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