Sarasota Roaring Real Estate Market Carries Risk and Reward

Region's roaring real estate market carries reward and risk
By MICHAEL POLLICK

If you've owned a home in Southwest Florida in the past three years, you know what a bubble is.

Headed into 2003, you bought a Sarasota-Bradenton house -- likely in the ballpark of $165,900 -- and could have sold it in July for $333,900, an easy double.

That's faster than real estate has moved anytime since the Roaring '20s, which witnessed a Florida real estate bust preceding the 1929 stock market crash by two years.

The Sunshine State has been in the throes of a real estate frenzy for the past three years, with Southwest Florida racking up some of the largest percentage gains.

Through the first half of 2005, prices seemed to be escalating in their rate of ascent. On top of 20 percent gains in 2003 and 27 percent gains in 2004, prices this year are up 33 percent.

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Article on Sarasota Real Estate

Interesting Points

(1) Don Saba, who specializes in appraising high-end Sarasota property, puts it in a nutshell: "You've got 30,000 people a month moving to the state of Florida. A good portion of them are coming to the west coast.

"I believe values are going to continue to go steadily higher for the next 12 to 15 years."

(2)How leveraged are you?

Some experts use leverage as a gauge for how vulnerable a region's real estate is.

Southwest Florida looks good on paper, less leveraged than most major U.S. markets, a fresh loan-to-value study by SMR Research of Hackettstown, N.J., shows.

Using national data from lenders, SMR ranked 231 counties based on what percentage of their homes had financing of more than 80 percent of their value -- considered a leveraged property in the industry -- and more than 95 percent, "extremely leveraged" in SMR's view.

"Sarasota actually was relatively low on the scale, in other words not too over-leveraged," said George Yacik, an SMR vice president.