VIERA, Fla. – In recent years, the Space Coast has changed.
Other than the roars of rockets lifting off, tractors and trucks are the sounds on Central Florida’s Space Coast, specifically in the growing master-planned community of Viera.
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“There’s development around the interchange that’s mixed-use, there’s development in the Viera town center,” Viera’s President Todd Pokrywa said. “There is this gravitational pull in Central Florida to Brevard County and Viera. When you look over the last 10 years or so, in 2010 the population was 20,000. With the census, the population is over 30,000 people.”
That means the population has seen an increase of 51% in the last decade alone.
“It wasn’t what the Space Coast was 10, 20, 30 years ago,” Pokrywa said. “It’s a high-tech center. A lot of new millennials are coming into the market. Families are moving in here. We have big stakeholders -- SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, L3 Harris, Terran Orbital just announced they are bringing 2,000 new jobs to the Space Coast with an average annual salary of $84,000. So Viera being in the center of this market, there is really no better place.”
What has been 30 years of meticulous planning—of new homes, schools and roads, built in unison—is now feeling the pressure more than ever to keep up with demand.
The median price of a home here is only about $300,000, around $25,000 less than in the Orlando market.
“We can’t get infrastructure in the ground fast enough,” Pokrywa said.
There were about 500 new homes sold in 2019, Pokrywa said. But in 2020, that number shot up to more than 700.
“That’s a 45% increase in sales year over year,” he said. “It’s challenging to be able to replenish your inventory in that short amount of time.”
To overcome that challenge, Viera has now resorted to a lottery system for new homes not even built yet.
“Purchasers need to put down ahead of the new lot releases in certain neighborhoods in Viera, and then it’s a lottery. They randomly get chosen and have the opportunity to buy,” Pokrywa said.
It’s a gravitational pull Pokrywa doesn’t see letting up anytime soon.