Southgate & Arlington Park, Sarasota

Number one on my list in no particular order, I'm going with a combination idea of a district called Southgate in Sarasota and another district right above it called Arlington Park. And we're talking all about geography and location here. That's the name of the game. Because in Sarasota, Florida, like many Florida coastal cities, what made it popular, what made it in vogue originally and still to this day, is all about the beaches, the Bay, the Gulf, and in Sarasota, notably, you have the art. So what I like here about buying in 2023 is I like doing the idea of a resale remodel on an existing home, or at least an aesthetic cleanup one. That's where I think a lot of value lies.

So when you sit here in these two districts, you're just below downtown just a couple miles.

You're just parallel to the east of Siesta Key, which is the world-renowned Barrier Island. Just above that, you have Lido Key, you have Saint Armin Circle, Cosmopolitan Shopping District designed by John Ringling, Long Boat Key, and Annamaria Island right above that. So you go west, you have it all. And you're not 40, 50 minutes one way like a lot of the suburban communities.

Now, this is where we get into these value propositions. So I'd like the location right off the bat, but then by going slightly south of downtown, getting this close, like many districts that get this close to the water in Florida, they're urban. It's street to street. It's house to house. These are not going to be 10-acre master plan communities. They're going to be straight to the street house to house because they've existed forever. Well, therein lies a lot of the valley.

You're going to have a $400,000, which I'll show here. We're going to have a $400,000 bungalow next to a 1.8 to two and a half million dollar property that someone else bought the bungalow and are now selling it as a new construction rendering process. And if you can find the right house on the street, nothing weird, on the right setback, the right lot, there's not going to be people stop pushing into these districts regardless of the market. So I would try to find something that you can carve out a little space of your own, even if you're not planning on reselling it's just to mitigate your risk.

Okay, number two on the list might be the opposite of number one and a perfect juxtaposition to balance these against each other is one individual new construction neighborhood in full-on suburbia, master plan USA. And that is Esplanade Azario by Taylor Morrison Homes in Lakewood Ranch, Florida.

So this is one where you're going to the number one master-planned community in the United States, multi-gen in the United States. 30 plus neighborhoods that are all built post-1994. A lot of them were built post-2010. So you're not running around having a hard time comparing options. There is a ton of options. You're not going to run out of rides. So then you get into a commodity conversation. And opposite of carving out value for number one, where it was because of the texture of them being different, therein lie the perceived value, new construction, they are what they are. One builder will build an entire neighborhood. So in that game, you have to get a lot more micro with what is delineating value. And I think this could help a lot of people buying new construction on just fol, whether you like Esplanade or not on following this path. And the way I like to do that in areas where these new construction communities are a dime a dozen is I like to look at a couple different things. So one of them at first is floor plans. There are a lot of new construction neighborhoods where the floor plan that they build 3000 square feet on a single story in Florida, they do well. 60 to 65 foot front plane, 2,900 to 3,100 square feet. They're nice. MI Homes builds a great one. Neil builds a few great ones. Taylor does the same and Madam Me. A lot of them do well with that. But when you go smaller, 2100 square feet on a 52-foot plane, when you go to 45 foot on a narrow shot and then kind of style home or an attached villa or something like that, they're not all equal. And with that drop off I think you start to lose a lot of value.

What I like about Esplanade Azario is everything from the attached villa like an Ibis to the Roma, which is a, they call it a villa, but it's detached, but it's narrow. 45-foot front plane means you might not lose square footage because they're deep blots, but you will lose the width, that open kitchen, all of that, and the bedrooms will stack because it's narrow. Nothing wrong with that. But then you hop to a 52-foot, which gives you a Lazio. 2100 to 2,500 square feet on a 52. That's the width that sits best with that square footage, in my opinion, on a single story. Then you hop to Plazio and you keep going, right? Plazio is at a 60-foot plane, a 62-foot plane. That's where 3000 square feet sit better. And in this neighborhood particularly, not as much anymore, but they used to build a 76-foot front plane and a 90, which the leaking in the beacon set on where you could do 4,500 square feet or whatever further from the neighbors.

So the important thing here is about Esplanade Azario, I feel like Taylor Morrison at this level builder, not a custom builder, they have such a good line of floor plans that everyone seeks them out individually. If there is demand for every line of homes, then it creates value for all the homes because that rolls you into whether is there room for these homes to grow. Which is my second point, inequity.

If you bought in 2021, did those people keep all the equity? Did they make all the money that's to be made? And I still think this one has room to grow. Because right now the Roma is far cheaper than the Lazio, and the Lazio is far cheaper than the Plazio. I'm going up here. And they're also 700 square feet apart. So if they're $100,000 to $200,000 apart in value, which you need demand in each line in order to create that value, then they still will have room to grow. Also, the leaking and the beacon, those bigger ones, they're not doing anymore. So the scarcity of what that creates by it not being available anymore is going to create a lot of value for the one right under it, which is the Plazio, which is the only player in the game for that size home on the best lots in the future neighborhood.

So I like that a lot. And then you go to amenities for the cost. So gone are the days in new construction where a nice neighborhood pool and stuff differentiates a community. They're all nice. So you have to look at at a couple things. And one of those is amenities and geography. So for instance, where Esplanade Azario sits is it actually sits in the very northeast quadrant of Lakewood Ranch. Lakewood Ranch is 50,000 plus acres. So there's a community in Lakewood Ranch that like Winward by Neil, that's nine to 10 miles from downtown Sarasota where I'm here today, which means 20, 25 minutes from downtown and the beaches. That's the knock on the suburbs. Well Esplanade Azario is going to add 15 to 18 minutes further for that. So you might be asking yourself, why would I do that? You need a reason to do that. And I think Esplanade Azario gives you a compelling reason to do so.

If you're going to go that distance, here you get two resort-style pools, you'll get a 16,000 square-foot restaurant, you get a Bahama Bar with full food service at the pool, which you do not see often. You get a proper size gym, men's and women's locker room, sauna, and salon, and this isn't a thousand dollars a month. There's less than $400 a month for these amenities. In the community I live in Lakewood Ranch, my cost is more expensive than that, and I don't have any of that stuff, not even close to it. And so really good value there. And then if that's not enough for you, add this neighborhood is a deeded golf community, which means a world-class golf course, but 1500 homes, roughly half of those homes get to golf and social membership. Social just means the regular amenities. But the rest, the other half are just the social, all the amenities. The golf for this entire thing, all the things I just named right there is about $615 a month.

So if you're going to go that far, then that is a compelling reason to do so. And that brings me to my final point, replacement value. When this is all said and done, if you love Esplanade Azario and if you're going through the search right now and you hate all the lots available right now, you can empathize with this point. If you love Esplanade Azario, you love it, there's no plan B, and there's nowhere else to go. There isn't. I mean, in Lakewood Ranch, there's not a single golf community in Watersides District. Of Country Club West and East, which is on a waitlist because it's a pay-in membership, that's all resale anyway. There is Lakewood National, which is sold out now, but that's a very different type of home. You have Terra and Rosewood, all resale. The Esplanade community in South Sarasota and the Esplanade community in mid-Sarasota don't have golf.

So you really don't have an apples to apples comparison with Esplanade. And when it's sold up completely beyond the resales of that conversation, it starts to get hard to replace. So right now, as just an example, there's a lot of shades of gray to this, but as an example for my number two, I like Esplanade Azario as a long-term buy in Sarasota, Florida.

All right, my third one on this list is unique, and I'm going with a combination of Longboat Key and Longboat Key Club. So again, this one is more of a premium option, but we're talking about long-term viability across multiple categories. And the idea here, the faux scenario that I'm creating to paint this picture is trying to solve everything: coast, golf, and not losing What's cool about the town?

So Longboat Key is a barrier island that I kind of mentioned earlier, but it sits above Siesta Key Boleto Key. It's about the same length technically as Siesta Key, but it just sits in a northern location, it's above downtown. And the island by itself is great, but what I like in particular is I like one section of it. In this conversation of central proximity and long-term value is a lower Longboat Key. And what I mean by that is I want you to go to an area where you get above Lido Key and above St. Arman Circle, which is like this lovely a hundred-plus shop boutique restaurant district. But if you live in Lido, you're in it. You're in the thick of it. So you get a little closer to town, but I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifice. But by going one mile above it, you launch into this quasi paradise of sorts, which Longboat Key is far more residential feeling and far more private feeling as a permanent homestead than both Jetski and Anna Maria, which are going to be much more touristy. It's just a stylistic difference.

But all the islands aren't the same, right? If you're on mile five of the seven-mile island, you go up north on Longboat, for instance, lovely, probably more quiet. But also that is beach living commitment. You are on it. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you got to choose that. Long-term value, I don't want to lose anything. So you need to stay low enough on the island so that downtown Sarasota now is four miles away. Siesta Key is six below it. The Bay is on one side, the Gulf's on the other side, you get all the perks, but you're still kind of walking distance to even the shopping districts.

That's why I like this one. But once you say that, and now you have the options of you can live on, you can live actually on the Longboat Key Club property, multiple condominium buildings. They're single families. You have all that comes with that. But you also have the option to not, because there's the Gulf side and there's the Bay and it's a skinny island. So you turn your head, you can kind of see both. But you could live, for instance, in a country club with shores, shaped like forks you can see on a map. They're all built in the fifties or sixties. Most of them were on the water. You can sit there with a boat in your backyard on a resell property, and then pay into the membership at the Longboat Key Club. And they have moorings, they have a lot of social components. Unbelievable golf. I think it's technically 45 holes, so two and a half golf courses.

So I like the idea of trying to navigate that situation, the closest you can to sit in this little circle on the lower key. It's almost like where it has unbelievable kind of value to me, but one mile or two the other direction in either direction, I think a lot of the lore, I think it's a little bit more fragile. So that's my number three.

Gulf Gate & Palmer Ranch, FL

My fourth and final option for this list, I'm going to kind of tie a bow on this thing of sorts, is the idea of going in South Sarasota and generally the Gulf Gate to Palmer Ranch area.

So if you think about what I spoke about so far, very, very niche options. I mean, they're an example of what those districts are to the town, but they're a real niche. You had an urban district where it's a very specific kind of homes and neighborhoods. You had full-on suburbia, a full commitment, and then you had full-on literally on the beach. Well, this kind of does an in-betweener, and probably more of an in-between of the second option of master plan new construction and the first option of urban living.

So say that you want to be pretty close to the stuff. The suburbs are a little too far for you. You want to be pretty close to the major districts. You want to be west of I75 or the interstate, which gets you closer to the beach. Say you like Siesta Key, even more particular, but you just, you're not a bungalow person, you're not an urban district. Some people like that, but you're not romantic about that. You don't need a new house, but you want a Florida house. Well, south Sarasota is the suburbs before the new suburbs were created. These are the suburbs built 20 to 40 years ago. But ranch-style homes, Florida-style neighborhoods, and you have some gated, some not. But what it does, is it puts you in a very interesting location, because this is, again, all this land was already built. So the best locations in Sarasota for the most part, they already exist in some fashion.

So you're going to catch homes that have been renovated. You're going to catch homes that investors have already taken. You're going to catch homes that people have lived in forever. You're going to catch neighbors that were built five years ago or 10 years ago in Palmer. But if you can navigate that correctly, it's going to get you a lot better chance of having a home built in the fifties, sixties, eighties, nineties even. But big ranch style, you could get bigger lots over there. And this whole district's four to six miles from Siesta Key. It's also pretty far south in town and downtown's pretty far north. So downtown might take you 20 minutes, but the hidden perk to this would be going south and also having pretty good access to Nicomas, Osprey, and Venice.

If you have kids, the school districts in South Sarasota are lovely. You have Riverview High, but you have Laurel Nicomas right there, which is a nine out 10. Pine View, the number one elementary school in America is down there for the gifted, which is a public charter. But yeah, so I'll digress.



But the idea of number four would be to kind of bring the whole thing full circle if you do want a lot... That's a lot of struggle for people right now. A lot of the homes they want are built 45 minutes away from town. So if you want to try to navigate the in-between, Golf Gate, Palmer Ranch, even Pine Craft on resales, then these would be the areas that you'd want to look in if you weren't a downtown urban living kind of person. So that is what I will say for my number four of some of the best buys right now in Sarasota, Florida.