Main Street at Lakewood Ranch offers residents the opportunity to shop within their own community in a center that mimics the downtown Main streets that can be found in many small towns across the country.

Main Street offers approximately 30 specialty stores and boutiques mixed in with restaurants, a bank, a barbershop and salon/spa.

You can find home furnishings, buy a new bicycle to ride the many trails throughout the community, purchase pastries, shoes or fine jewelry....

One of the most popular communities in the Sarasota - Bradenton area is Lakewood Ranch. Lakewood Ranch is an 8,500 acre master-planned community consisting of 8 villages, with housing ranging from small condos and villas to custom, million dollar estates.

LWR offers residential neighborhoods, business parks, several retail shopping centers, over 20 places of worship, several private schools & schools of higher learning, a medical center, several golf courses (some public, some...

Flood Insurance Update

Congress passed a stop-gap measure to extend the National Flood Insurance Program until November 18th, 2011. It was originally scheduled to end on September 30th.

This is good news for home buyers in Florida, as it means there has been no lapse in the NFIP authority to issue new flood insurance policies.

However, debate is still continuing in Congress on legislation to extend the National Flood Insurance Program for 5 years. The program...

Positive signs are emerging for the local real estate market.

According to an article in today's Sarasota Herald Tribune, the top 10 lenders in Sarasota county made 5% more loans in August than July and the dollar volume was also up.

Another Tribune article gave an overview of the foreclosure filings for August as well as the past few months. Although forecasters were expecting Lis Pendens filings to be trending up in August, they actually fell slightly. http://insiderealestate.heraldtribune.com/2011/09/13/big-sarasota-lenders-see-a-slight-drop-in-early-stage-foreclosures-in-august/...

Forbes magazine recently rated 154 metro areas across the country, looking for the most recession resistant cities for real estate.

The Sarasota - Bradenton area came in 7th on the list. FL had 5 other cities make the top 25, more than any other state.

Forbes teamed up with the real estate site Zillow on this project. Zillow studied the value of homes using list prices, final sales prices, tax records and property histories.

If you’d like to read the...