Marco Island Real Estate Cabal Declares State of Emergency

The Marco Island Real Estate Daleks association (MIRED) announced today that real estate sales and prices will further decline due to the earthquake.

“Last year we blamed the precipitous drop in real estate sales and prices on Marco Island on the hurricanes. Before that we blamed a stagnated trend on interest rates. Now, with excuses running out, we are blaming our inability to sell on the earthquake”, proclaimed the chairman of MIRED – who for obvious reasons opted to remain anonymous.

For years, real estate agents on Marco Island relied exclusively on the highly aggressive sales tactic of waiting for the phone to ring. Starting in late 2004, the phones stopped ringing at Marco Island real estate offices, causing the agents to search for all possible culprits – except themselves. With Miami (only 90 miles to the east) booming with new and high-end condominium sales and other markets across the country also expanding rapidly – all during the same period – agents had to determine the “real problem” with real estate sales on Marco Island.

Now they have found yet another pretext. “Clearly, with earthquakes just offshore no one will want to buy on Marco” proclaimed the vice chairman of MIRED. “I mean, look at what happened in South East Asia after that big earthquake a couple of years ago. They got tidal waves, tsunamis, death, destruction, the plague, five of the seven deadly sins, crazy people running around naked, the U.S. Navy was sent to help and all of their beach front tourist sites were wiped out. That can happen here, so no one will want to buy!” further decried the vice chairman.

But there is a bright side to all of these apocalyptic prophecies of dropping sales and flat real estate prices. The City of Marco Island city council in an emergency session to address the economic impact of the earthquake, voted 4-3 (Disciullo, Forcht, Kiester in the minority) passing a referendum that if any large corporation or anyone claiming to be in any way related to any real or imagined American Indian tribe wants to rezone any part of the island to build casinos of any size, they get automatic approval without even having to file any documents.

Reports are coming in that six Mormons claiming to be descendants of the Calusa Indians are desirous in taking advantage of the earthquake ravaged Marco Island tourist economy. They are designing a casino with 25,000 luxury condominiums to be built on Residents Beach.