CAPE CORAL, Fla. • Here at the epicenter of the nation’s housing crisis, an ebullient Marc Joseph bounces off a pontoon boat onto a dock behind a lovely waterfront home – it was recently vacated when its former inhabitants couldn’t pay the mortgage.

“The tiki hut comes with the house, guys!” the slim 41-year-old real-estate agent says as a dozen or so potential buyers disembark from two boats and start poking around the 2,600-square-foot house. It’s being offered by a bank for $574,000.

Considering that this particular home – situated on a wide canal leading to the Gulf of Mexico – sold for $776,000 in 2005, it’s going to be steal for someone.

Joseph hopes he might have the buyer aboard his latest boat tour of upscale foreclosed homes, all accessed via the network of salt-water canals that snake through the backyards of much of this southwestern Florida community.

Having made national news last year with his bus tours of vacant homes in the county that leads the nation in foreclosures, Joseph is now attacking by sea, filling boats weekly with curious snowbirds, international tourists, potential investors and local looky-loos.

A three-hour tour on this warm afternoon included four abodes ranging from a 2,000-square-foot, ranch-style place with an algae-covered hot tub out back for $279,000 to a McMansion that was purchased for $1.1 million a few years ago and is now being offered for $669,000.

At the latter, an opulent 3,000-square-foot residence, Joseph gestures to the mangrove trees waving in the breeze 40 yards across the canal. “This is all owned by the state – your view is never going to change,” he says.

Pedro and Karin Weber are Germans who recently moved to Florida from Venezuela and hope to set up some sort of retail business so they can stay. They did their homework and chose to relocate to Cape Coral. They hopped on the boat hoping to find a place in the $350,000 range.

“It’s tough, at the moment, in the whole world, so why not go to the States?” asks Karin Weber, 53.

“We’re not rich. We have money (put) back for buying a house,” she says, standing on a screened pool deck at one stop. “So maybe we can buy a house for $300,000 that’s worth $500,000 or $600,000.”

Joseph imparts his message emphatically: In southwestern Florida, now is the time to buy.

Speculators took advantage of no-money-down loans in 2005 and 2006 to fill cow pastures and scrub lands with new subdivisions full of houses that were left vacant and in foreclosure after the market crashed and the economy tanked. Many of those homes were intended to sell in the $260,000 range. Now they’re being offered by the banks for $90,000.

Joseph sees the boat tour as a way to snag opportunistic buyers who can afford a little larger piece of the Florida dream.

“There’s a little fear in the economy, but you’ve got to understand where you’re at, guys,” he says.

“The sun is still shining. Our roads are full, our beaches are packed. People are down here looking. The product will not last long.”

Construction on the USOC headquarters building at 27 S. Tejon St. Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette