Why many businesses in Wildwood, NJ are for sale now?

I counted 5-6 of them only in Pacific ave. area. No tourists? Local taxes? I understand with houses - with higher bank rates some people cannot pay mortgages, houses are being sold by banks. New owners cannot buy them for the same reason. So many houses become rental instead of owned. But what is wrong with businesses? People will be still coming to the shore - to owned or rental property...

Wildwood NJ was originally a tourist town that had a large number of hotels and motels. These hotels and motels were in the business of short term stays (weekends to week long visits). the owners of the motels lived in Wildwood all year and therefore being on site ran the business as they saw fit.

Fast forward to around 2002. There is a huge spike in speculation for investment properties. These hotels and motels are being turned into Condos. There are very few true motels/hotels in Wildwood anymore. What you do have are a bunch of condos that are for sale. All the speculators realized that they could not rent the places out for the amount of money they needed to break even. People just weren't willing to pay $2000 to rent a condo for 1 week. 20 years ago families were heading down to Wildwood from NY, Philadelphia and Deleware with their 2 or 3 kids to spend a week there. The days of a family vacationing in Wildwood dried up when the prices began costing more than a trip to Disneyworld.

Also, there was a big rush of teenagers who would flood Wildwood through the month of June. These kids would spend senior week (after graduation) down there living it up for a week or 2 at a time. Now many of these kids spend less money heading to Cancun. In Cancun the legal drinking age is 18 so there are less hassles with the police.

This drop in tourism has cause a hardship for the business. If you think that there are a lot of businesses for sale, look at how many residences are for sale. I drove through Wildwood about 3 months ago. There were 5 or 6 for sale signs on every blok that I drove through.