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Our daughter and her young family will be moving to Lakewood Ranch this summer (east of Lorraine) and we are planning a move to the area to be closer to her. We're currently in Michigan and still debating whether to make this a second home or move completely into our retirement home. We would like to be within 20 minutes or so of my daughter, but also similarly close to the beach - if that's even possible. Ideally looking for a new or almost-new stand-alone home, ballpark $750k, though could go a bit higher if needed, while also keeping all the recurrent fees (HOA, CDD, taxes) low.
Would appreciate any thoughts as far as cities, zip codes, or specific neighborhoods to help target our search.
I can't give you a fish, but can teach you how to fish...
To keep HOA fees low, you will get little, or no, amentities. Are you okay with no guard gate? No clubhouse, no community pool, no dog park, no playground, no Tennis/Pickleball courts? The lowest HOA communities will have NONE of this. Every item from this list costs money, & drives up HOA's, so make a list of must-haves. Also, scratch off all golf course communities, where membership is required, or has any legal ties to the homes...which is nearly all of them. Avoid golf course communities unless you are an avid golfer.
For property taxes, you have 2 choices, Manatee or Sarasota. I prefer Sarasota, having lived in both. I feel they are a better value. I think Sarasota is slightly less, if you compare % of property value on similar properties at your price point for homesteaded homes. I also feel the services are slightly better in Sarasota vs. Manatee. Not a huge diff, but Sarasota gets the slight edge imho.
CDD's. Every new home community we looked at, had CDDs. We just tried to keep them as low as possible. You can pay a large portion of them off if you want, and reduce your recurring fees by ~3/4th, but we decided against that. We didn't feel like we'd get that cash back when we sold.
If I were you, I'd start my search South of University Parkway, & search southward from there. That will all be in Sarasota County. Look at least 1 mile East of I-75 to avoid Interstate noise, power lines, cell towers, retail/commerical areas, and related crime, & work Eastward to insure you will be in a safe residential area.
Buy a paper map of Sarasota County, & use a highlighter to draw these boundaries, then start driving this zone. Buy a Sunday paper, look in the Real Estate section for the map of new home communities. Call each one to ask about HOA, & CDD fees, flood zones, & potential "workforce housing", during off-peak times so you might get to speak to a sales person.
On the map, place a Red X near water treatment plants, railroad tracks, dumps, commercials zones which means truck traffic, & anything else you'd like to avoid. Look at FEMA flood zone maps and mark off low lying areas. Look at crime maps, and do the same.
Use a Green marker to draw stars where there's nice looking highly-ranked schools, libraries, grocery stores, restaurants, parks, higher elevations on the FEMA flood zone maps, firehouses, or anything else you'd like to be near.
That is how I did it. This takes work, time, & quite a bit of driving around. If you are not up for that, find a realtor who specializes in that area.
Not all Realtor's will take the logical & methodical approach I prescribe above, so if you hire a Realtor, you'll need a questionaire for them to complete prior to looking at any communities...ask all the questions contained in my post above. Otherwise, you'll be wasting time looking a nice new home community that have issues. Worse case scenario is that you put a contract in on a home, then find out about issues later.
Before signing anything, what were the prior uses for ALL the land the community is being built upon? Was it a former landfill that contained hazardous materials? (yes, I know of 1 that exists here!).
Now, you know how to catch a fish!
Last edited by beach43ofus; 03-29-2021 at 06:43 AM..
i agree with most of the above, except that rules out being within 20 minutes of the beach,
I suggest you also look in Manatee county just NORTH of University. There are many neighborhoods that dont have CDD, are very near to the commerce on University and have reasonable taxes.
Some older areas such as whitfield estates put you closer to US 1, and closer to the beach, either along Cortez on the north or Ringling Bridge on the south.
Anything east of I75 will, in my opinion put you close to being "in the sticks"
i agree with most of the above, except that rules out being within 20 minutes of the beach,
I suggest you also look in Manatee county just NORTH of University. There are many neighborhoods that dont have CDD, are very near to the commerce on University and have reasonable taxes.
Some older areas such as whitfield estates put you closer to US 1, and closer to the beach, either along Cortez on the north or Ringling Bridge on the south.
Anything east of I75 will, in my opinion put you close to being "in the sticks"
If you look at a map, you can see how the further South you go, the closer you are to the beach.
Heck, when I lived in Braden Woods which was just 1 mile East of I-75, along state rd 70, I could get to Siesta Key faster than I could Bradenton beaches. Look at a map, and find Clark Road at I-75, then find University Pkwy & I-75 and meaure each point to the nearest beach.
There's also less population density right now futher South, down by Clark Rd., than there is near University Pkwy & North...thus less traffic to get to the beach.
I'm a beach person, and I only go to the beach an average 1 time/week...~50 times/year. I'm 15-20 minutes to Venice Beach, and I'm 8 miles due East of the Venice Pier, near I-75. When I was at I-75 & st rd 70, I was 45 minutes to the nearest beach.
WE go to the UTC Mall maybe 3x/year, but if you really like being real close to great retail, then crew further North, so stay just South of University Pkwy in Sarasota county and done go down south of Clark.
There is no right and wrong answer for every homebuyer. For me, the closer you are to Clark Rd, & I-75, but at least 1 mile away from I-75, you are in a goodlocation for beach and retail proximity.
I also like Palmer Ranch area near the Legacy Trail. We rented there real close to Costco, and we were 10-15 minutes to Siesta Key beach off-season, and had great retail all around us. Not much new construction there anymor though, so you have to look along the Honore Corrido, and try to get as far away from I-75 as possible.
I can't give you a fish, but can teach you how to fish...
To keep HOA fees low, you will get little, or no, amentities. Are you okay with no guard gate? No clubhouse, no community pool, no dog park, no playground, no Tennis/Pickleball courts? The lowest HOA communities will have NONE of this. Every item from this list costs money, & drives up HOA's, so make a list of must-haves. Also, scratch off all golf course communities, where membership is required, or has any legal ties to the homes...which is nearly all of them. Avoid golf course communities unless you are an avid golfer.
For property taxes, you have 2 choices, Manatee or Sarasota. I prefer Sarasota, having lived in both. I feel they are a better value. I think Sarasota is slightly less, if you compare % of property value on similar properties at your price point for homesteaded homes. I also feel the services are slightly better in Sarasota vs. Manatee. Not a huge diff, but Sarasota gets the slight edge imho.
CDD's. Every new home community we looked at, had CDDs. We just tried to keep them as low as possible. You can pay a large portion of them off if you want, and reduce your recurring fees by ~3/4th, but we decided against that. We didn't feel like we'd get that cash back when we sold.
If I were you, I'd start my search South of University Parkway, & search southward from there. That will all be in Sarasota County. Look at least 1 mile East of I-75 to avoid Interstate noise, power lines, cell towers, retail/commerical areas, and related crime, & work Eastward to insure you will be in a safe residential area.
Buy a paper map of Sarasota County, & use a highlighter to draw these boundaries, then start driving this zone. Buy a Sunday paper, look in the Real Estate section for the map of new home communities. Call each one to ask about HOA, & CDD fees, flood zones, & potential "workforce housing", during off-peak times so you might get to speak to a sales person.
On the map, place a Red X near water treatment plants, railroad tracks, dumps, commercials zones which means truck traffic, & anything else you'd like to avoid. Look at FEMA flood zone maps and mark off low lying areas. Look at crime maps, and do the same.
Use a Green marker to draw stars where there's nice looking highly-ranked schools, libraries, grocery stores, restaurants, parks, higher elevations on the FEMA flood zone maps, firehouses, or anything else you'd like to be near.
That is how I did it. This takes work, time, & quite a bit of driving around. If you are not up for that, find a realtor who specializes in that area.
Not all Realtor's will take the logical & methodical approach I prescribe above, so if you hire a Realtor, you'll need a questionaire for them to complete prior to looking at any communities...ask all the questions contained in my post above. Otherwise, you'll be wasting time looking a nice new home community that have issues. Worse case scenario is that you put a contract in on a home, then find out about issues later.
Before signing anything, what were the prior uses for ALL the land the community is being built upon? Was it a former landfill that contained hazardous materials? (yes, I know of 1 that exists here!).
Location: Sarasota/ Bradenton - University Pkwy area
4,619 posts, read 7,541,245 times
Reputation: 6036
For new or almost new homes within a 20 minute drive to the beach and also Lakewood Ranch, your options are fairly limited. That's because much of Sarasota is going to be at least 30 minutes or more from the beach -- not because of distance -- but because of traffic, speed limits, stop lights, etc.
Most new or almost new construction in Sarasota is going to be Palmer Ranch, east of I-75 or Nokomis / north Venice area just south of Palmer Ranch. The good news is you would be about 20 minutes from the beach. The bad news is that from there to Lorraine Rd area of Lakewood Ranch (via I-75) in 20 minutes is probably going to be more like 30 minutes, especially when you hit the bottleneck areas of Lakewood Ranch just east of I-75.
The really bad news is that there is literally nothing for sale right now in the way of new construction in the areas I mentioned above, even in your targeted price range. The builders, due to the large volume of sales over the past 6 months, are now limiting lot sales (there fore home sales) to just a few lots per month in most cases so they can catch up on the construction end of things. So buyer names are going on waiting lists. And the entire time your name is sitting on that waiting list, the builders are doing frequent price increases. I talked with a rep I've known for years this past week and he says a number of buyers have literally been priced out of their dream homes while waiting for their names to come up on the lots waiting list in the community where he's currently assigned.
There is talk of at least one builder going to "auctions" for their new lots as they are released. Personally, as much as a buyer would want to obtain one of those building lots for their new home construction, I could not recommend getting into bidding wars over the lots unless you are ok with knowing up front you are overpaying for the current market.
Probably not the news you wanted to hear, but the market is what it is. Hopefully construction will start catching up with demand by fall, at least that is what some of the builders are predicting. Meanwhile, beach430fus did make some good suggestions regarding mapping things out as you research areas and neighborhoods.
After re-reading all the posts here, I should have started out explaining that its ~50 minutes from the Op's family's home & the beach if you head West from Lakewood Ranch. Midpoint being 25 minutes. That midpoint is downtown Bradenton, which I have never heard good things about as a place to live. I know some of the areas surrounding downtown are undesireable as well.
So, the logical solution of moving to the midpoint is not ideal.
This is why I suggested you go directly South into Sarasota County instead.
Sorry I failed to explain this first.
You should know that there are desireable places to live nearer the beach beyond downtwon Bradenton. Then, you'll be closer to the beach, but have to travel through downtown Bradenton to get to your family. It's frustrating, and time consuming, passing through Bradenton East-West, or West-East due to poor government planning. They left no easement space for a future Interstate spur, or bypass, to carry traffic from I-75 Westward towards the beaches by-passing downtown Bradenton. This mistake has repeated itself through out most of Florida. Getting from I-75 or I-95 to any beach in Florida is much tougher than it should be.
When I lived in Lakewood Ranch, I'd leave for the Manatee County beaches at 7:15 am weekends because at that time (25 years ago), nearly all the 40 traffic lights I had to go through would be flashing Amber, so I only had to stop maybe 4 times,and there was no traffic. I'd get to the beaches in 35 minutes, find a restaurant to eat breakfast at & read the newspaper (remember those?) to kill some time before pulling into the beach parking lot at ~9a.m..
After months of doing that, I decided to time a drive to Siesta Key Beach via Clark Road departing at 9 a.m., & the drive time was only 30 minutes, and back then perhaps 10 lights to deal with. Thus, my new beach became Siesta Key Beach, & I learned the further South a person lived around here, the fast they coud get to the beach.
That is why I chose Southern Sarasota County this time when I returned to Florida, instead of returning to Lakewood Ranch.
Also, our Son was off to college, so schools were much less important.
The Honore corridor makes sense for you, or if you want to be closer to the beach, check out Bellacina near Casey Key by Taylor Morrison. That community is 10 minutes from Nokomis beach, near the Legacy Trail, and provides fast access to Lakewood Ranch via 681 to I-75. I would have bought there except we wanted a 3-car garage and a larger lot. Also, at that time you had to drive past a mobil home park to get to it. Now, they've opened up a new entrance so you no longer have to see the mobil home park nearby. That community is in a great central location.
We are in Palma Sola Trace off 75th Street in West Bradenton. It is a Taylor Morrison build on a former golf course. Scenic with views of ponds and green space. The landscaping is mature.
It is 3 miles from Anna Maria Island. We use back roads of 75th to 53rd to get to the Lakewood ranch area. It hasn't taken us longer than 30-35 minutes. The community consists of single family homes, villa homes, and condo/town homes. We are exceptionally pleased with the area. It is close to the island beaches that we frequent often. It is also close to quite a few nature preserves. My husband is a nature photographer and visits the Neal Preserve and Robinson Preserve weekly. The restaurants in the area are plentiful as well. In addition to the island eateries are the downtown ones. (new Jimmy Buffet hotel, marina and restaurants is on Anna Maria sound is a stone throw away). We enjoy the downtown area for dining, Pier 22 comes to mind along the Manatee River, and the town offers many other options for dining or drinks. Downtown has seen a quite a nice revitalization in recent years. Riverwalk is especially nice. We looked in Lakewood Ranch but it was too far from the beach for us to consider. That being said, if and when our son moves down with his young family it is certainly where I would tell them to look.
Originally from Michigan.
Sorry but CCD and HOAs are normal for Florida unless you want your neighbor parking on their lawns.
Unregulated areas go downhill fast.
Gated is good too.
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