Bird Key

Discover a tropical lifestyle on Bird Key. Surrounded by the shimmering waters of Sarasota Bay, Bird Key is a private, exclusive enclave of 500 single-family homes. Quiet streets and striking vistas of Sarasota Bay and the city skyline have recently attracted younger residents who enjoy world-class shopping on St. Armands Circle, glorious days and evenings at Lido Beach, and the dazzling schedule of the downtown theater district. Older homes, including some of the largest and most extravagant, are being renovated or rebuilt. A boater’s paradise with its own prestigious yacht club, many homes are on the bay or deep-water canals.

Year-to-date closed sales on Bird Key total $7,737,500. Of that total, Michael Saunders & Company listed and sold $6,987,500—an impressive 90% of the sales volume. These sales included two canal homes and one bay front home. The home at 623 Mourning Dove demonstrates the true power of Michael Saunders & Company involving proper pricing by Deborah Beacham and Kathleen Callender, of the St. Armands office, recognizing the right home for her client. This exceptional Bird Key home was on the market with Michael Saunders & Company for just nine days. The only other property closed year-to-date is a garden home. This market dominance illustrates the value of Michael Saunders & Company agents previewing our active listings on a weekly basis.


There are currently 41 active listings for sale on Bird Key: 9 garden homes,18 canal homes and 14 bay front homes. The garden homes range from $625,000 to $1,495,000. The canal homes range from $850,000 to $2,900,000. The bay front homes range from $1,799,000 to $9,490,000.

Presently there are nine properties under contract waiting to close. Five are garden homes, four are canal homes and one is a bay front home. From the above statistics, Bird Key market at this time is quite robust.

Hidden Harbor

Beautiful waterfront homes grace the community of Hidden Harbor. Pictured: 5132 Jungle Plum Rd.
Located on the bayside north end of Siesta Key—convenient with quick access to Siesta Key Village and the mainland—Hidden Harbor is a gorgeous, upscale community embellished by a lush, Selby Garden-like environment and meandering brick paver roads. The heavily treed, private neighborhood is ideal for boaters, with a number of elegant waterfront homes with some docks accommodating large watercraft.

Contemporary Florida architectural design is the predominant style of homes in this neighborhood, but a number of custom built properties are intermixed and add their own unique flair.
Market Activity – Hidden Harbor

There are currently four active properties in Hidden Harbor, three of which are represented by Michael Saunders & Company agents. The price range for the four available listings is $3,445,000 – $4,950,000. Each home is well over 5,000 square feet, and all are situated on the water front—three on the bay and one on a canal.

In the past six months, Hidden Harbor has had one sale, a 3,597-square-foot, recently renovated canal front estate built in 1964.

One property is currently pending with a listing price of $2,999,000. This home is over 4,200 square feet and was built in 2000.

Why Choose Hidden Harbor?

An exclusive and lavish community offering its residents a casual tropical island lifestyle, Hidden Harbor enjoys a remarkable location on beautiful Siesta Key.

Top 10 Ways to Lower Homeowners Insurance Costs

Keeping your home safe can lower insurance costs.
It seems as though with some insurance providers, premiums for homeowners insurance policies are constantly on the rise. If there is an increase in home insurance claims in your area, due to whatever reason, your premiums have most likely up—even if you have not submitted any claims. To offset these increases, you might have to take some necessary steps to lower your premium.
To help, here are our top 10 ways you can save money on your homeowners policy:

1. Raise Your Deductible –In most cases, the homeowner never files an insurance claim. Select a higher deductible and reduce your monthly premium. To prepare for an unexpected event, establish an “in case of emergency” savings. Therefore, if a fire or natural disaster causes damage to your property, you’ll have some funds to help pay the deductible. Ask your agent what the various deductibles offered are, and the premium cost for each one

2. Consolidation - Consolidate your homeowners insurance policy with your other existing insurance carriers. In many cases, if you use the same agent or insurance company for all of your insurances needs you get multi-policy holder discounts.

3. Stay Put – If you’ve kept your coverage with a company for several years, you may receive special consideration. Several insurers will reduce their premiums by 5% after you’ve been with them for three to five years, and some companies will discount you as much as 10% after six years. Especially in today’s tight insurance market, your current vendor is more likely to give you a good price.

4. Insure your Home, not the Land – Although your home and its contents are at risk from fire, theft, windstorms and other perils, the land your house sits on is not. Don’t include the value of the land in deciding how much homeowners insurance you need to buy. Talk to your insurance agent about elimination of this protection. Unless you have good reason to anticipate a sinkhole or other unusual geological event occurring in your backyard, land coverage is pointless

5. Price Check – Price compare rates offered to you from several companies each time your policy comes up for renewal. Rates given on insurance can vary based on the company’s situation, and your situation at the time that you apply. Just because one insurance company is cheaper this year, does not mean their rates are always the lowest.

6. Protection Features – The more protection your home features, the better. For example, some home owner’s insurance polices give discounted rates if you install a home alarm system, deadbolts on your doors, or a new roof. Homeowners with plentiful protection receive lower quotes on their policy. To pay a smaller premium, install fire detectors and extinguishers on each level of the home.

7. Senior Discounts – Insurance companies have found that retired people stay at home more, therefore able to keep watch on the property more than working people. Older people also have more time for maintaining their homes. If you’re at least 55 years old and retired, you might qualify for a discount of as much as 10%.

8. Check Up – You want your policy to accurately reflect the value of your home and belongings. If you review your policy every year, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments.

9. Group Rate – Look into discounts for group coverage. Alumni and business associations often work out insurance deals with an insurance company, which includes a discount for association members. Ask your association’s director about any such deals.

10. Credit – Check your credit rating. Insurance companies frequently check your credit score to determine how much they should charge you for insurance. Consider it one more reason to stay on top of your credit. Make sure your credit is in good shape, and if it’s not, seek out companies that do not run credit checks.

What IS Risk Retention and How Will It Affect You?

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. The law’s far reaching impact will take years to understand, but as professionals we do know that Title IX (Risk Retention) will have a dramatic impact on consumers and the mortgage industry.

What is Risk Retention?
Risk Retention is a new burden for those who securitize mortgages- those entities that bundle closed loans into pools and sell them in the secondary market. These are typically Wall Street style entities. They have little to no direct impact with the consumer, but play a vital role in maintaining liquidity in the housing market. Their role is to replenish the cash available for lenders to lend by buying closed loans from lenders (thereby providing new cash for lenders to lend again). As intermediaries between lenders and long term investors, securitizers perform a much needed function.

While it seems that loans guaranteed by the government (FHA, VA, USDA, etc) will have their securities exempt, there is still a huge number of conventional loans (including loans slated for Fannie and Freddie) that will be impacted.

As a result of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, these securitizers will be required to retain an interest in many of the loans. Up-to-now they mostly have just been a pass-through entity. That adds costs to their operations; costs that will have to be passed on to the consumer.

What will be the cost?
Good question! Although this is slated for enactment and enforcement in April, there is no clear definition or direction from the government. The bill talks about retention of 5% of the risk, but what is the risk? We are confident in saying it’s not 5% of the loan amount because typically a lender doesn’t lose all their money in a foreclosure and not every loan gets foreclosed on. There is some sentiment that “risk” might be defined as 2% of the loan amount; and 5% of that would only be 10 basis points, but that would likely mean a 10 basis point hike in mortgage interest rates to capture the additional cost from the consumer. That hurts home buyers, sales prices, and slows recovery.

Understand that everyone is taking educated guesses. We can see scenarios where lender would be almost forced to avoid lower loan amounts which would have an even bigger impact on the areas that fuel recovery- neighborhoods for first-time buyers. If it lowers the number of first timers who become home buyers, it will hurt those sellers who are looking to move up. Higher rates coupled with lenders shying away from lower cost neighborhoods…..bad recipe.

A lack of clarity and a lingering start date are forcing some of the major securitizers to start implementing strategies to protect themselves from a compliance prospective. Many lenders have focused on lobbying for a narrow definition of “risky” loans and have promoted eliminating convention loans that are fully documented with certain credit scores or income documentation, for example.

But, NOT Wells Fargo….
Wells Fargo is on record as proposing that anyone who buys a home utilizing conventional financing with less than a 30% down payment should be required to get Private Mortgage Insurance- a significant increase from the 20% now required. (Having that PMI, would make the loan virtually risk-less for the securitizer.) Of course, that PMI would bring with it additional costs for borrowers and, once again, make buying a home more expensive (in this case for many of the “A Borrowers”).

I want to point out that we are 90 days away from SOMETHING that is going to make home buying more costly and force some renters to stay put. If you are looking to buy, GET MOVING! If you are looking to sell, PRICE YOUR HOME TO COMPEL BUYERS TO MAKE OFFERS. Time is running out. Tick Tock!

Top 5 Home Improvement Projects Based on Average Cost and Return on Investment

RISMEDIA, January 20, 2011—HomeGain.com, a website to offering Web-based, free instant home values, announced that it has released the results of its nationwide home improvement and home staging Home Sale Maximizer survey.

HomeGain surveyed nearly 600 real estate professionals nationwide and configured a list of the top 10 do-it-yourself home improvements that cost under $5,000 and benefit sellers most when they sell their homes.

According to the HomeGain survey, the top five home improvements that real estate professionals recommend to home sellers based on average cost and return on investment (from highest to lowest ROI) are:
1. Cleaning and de-cluttering – ($290 cost / $1,990 price increase / 586% ROI)
2. Lightening and brightening – ($375 cost / $1,550 price increase / 313% ROI)
3. Home staging – ($550 cost / $2,194 price increase / 299% ROI)
4. Landscaping – ($540 cost / $1,932 price increase / 258% ROI)
5. Repairing electrical or plumbing – ($535 cost / $1,505 price increase / 181% ROI)

Cleaning and de-cluttering continues to rank as the top suggested home improvement (since the survey was originally conducted in 2000), recommended by 99% of real estate professionals, costing less than $300 and returning a value of nearly $2,000 to the home’s sale price, or a 586% return on investment.

“Sellers need to prepare their homes for sale before putting them on the market,” said Louis Cammarosano, General Manager at HomeGain. “Homes that have initial appeal have a better shot at selling faster and closer to the asking price than homes rushed to the market with no improvements.”

Rounding out the top 10 low cost, do-it-yourself home improvements includes: updating electrical systems and/or plumbing, updating the kitchen and bathrooms, replacing or shampooing carpets, painting interior walls, repairing damaged floors, and painting the outside of the home.

The home improvement projects with the highest price increases to a home’s resale value are updating the kitchen ($1,265 cost / $3,435 price increase), followed by painting the outside of the home ($1,467 cost / $2,222 price increase) and home staging ($550 cost / $2,194 price increase).

Housing Moving to Higher Ground in 2011

RISMEDIA, January 18, 2011—Housing will see gradual improvements in activity this year as the nation’s economy and job market continue to move to higher ground, establishing momentum that will produce more considerable gains in 2012, according to economists who appeared at the NAHB International Builders’ Show in Orlando on January 12.

“This year’s spring selling season will be better than last year’s,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe, with job growth providing a stronger stimulus in the housing market than last year’s tax credits for home buyers
Crowe forecasted 575,000 single-family home starts in 2011, a 21% climb over an estimated 475,000 units started in 2010, which in turn showed a 7% gain from the 442,000 homes started in 2009.

Multifamily, which is poised to profit from a disproportionate number of Gen Y members moving into the housing market, has seen the bottom of the cycle, he said, and will see its starts rise 16% this year to 133,000 units, with a further 53% increase in 2012 to 203,000 units.

Builders’ access to the credit they need to start new homes remains the fragile component of the NAHB forecast, Crowe said. So far, small builders have experienced extreme difficulty in obtaining financing, and rectifying the situation as soon as possible is the top priority of the association.

More encouraging is a rebound in the confidence of consumers, who mid-2010 “froze in place, faced with a lot of uncertainty,” he said. A recent pickup in durable purchases for such items as automobiles and furniture indicates that consumers are less afraid today of losing jobs and income.

The U.S. economy will receive a boost from the massive tax package enacted at the end of last year, he said, including more income going into the pockets of wage earners thanks to a one-year 2% reduction in Social Security taxes. This will contribute to the gross domestic product strengthening from the 2.5% range to 3.5% to 3.8% by year’s end.

New-home sales, Crowe projected, “will struggle” but begin following employment gains, reaching 405,000 for the year, up from an estimate of about 320,000 for 2010.

The housing recovery will start up slowly this year, he said, because it will be driven by the relatively low housing production Plains states, with Texas the most powerful of the bunch. Traditional bulwarks of housing activity such as California and Florida, on the other hand, will not be among the states whose housing markets recover the fastest.

In addition to stimulative fiscal and monetary policy, Freddie Mac Chief Economist Frank Nothaft said that housing affordability and demographic trends will help support growing housing demand.

Citing research from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Nothaft said that households should be growing at an average annual rate of 1.2 million to 1.5 million over the next five to 10 years, suggesting the need for a sharp increase in housing production; half of the 500,000 to 600,000 starts of the past two years were needed just to replace the number of homes being removed from the housing stock.

While there will continue to be supply overhangs in some important large markets, by and large the housing price slump should bottom out by the middle of this year, he said, and price increases are already occurring in some local areas. That should attract prospective buyers who have been procrastinating until they see prices hit bottom.

“Potential buyers who have resources to buy but want to buy at the bottom are likely to start coming into the market in the springtime,” he said, which for fence sitters will be “the time to come into the market.”

Fixed-rate mortgages will move up from their current 4.75% to the 5.75% range by the end of this year, he forecasted. This will push total single-family mortgage originations down about 30% below the 2010 level as refinancings fall sharply in the face of rising mortgage rates.

While a 20% increase in housing production in 2011 is good news for housing, to put things in perspective, Nothaft said that this gain is from an extremely low level, with single-family production declining about 80% from peak to trough.

Lakewood Ranch Community Video

Lakewood Ranch is a premier planned community, conveniently located to both Sarasota and Bradenton. It’s known regionally for carefully preserving and highlighting the natural beauty of the areas unique geographic qualities including its many lakes, wooded areas, and wetland preserves that can be enjoyed by its residents through miles of nature trails and bike paths.

Housing Industry Readies Mortgage Tax Break Fight

RISMEDIA, January 18, 2011—(MCT)—The housing industry is girding for a fight in Congress to protect the mortgage interest deduction, along with a number of other housing-related tax breaks. The National Association of Home Builders is putting a high priority on lobbying in favor of the mortgage interest deduction, along with breaks such as the capital-gains exclusion on home sales, and has already created a website, http://www.savemymortgageinterestdeduction.com, to begin rallying public support behind its position.

“This is a huge benefit for 35 million taxpayers a year. And the biggest beneficiaries are middle-class families and younger home buyers,” said Robert Dietz, who oversees tax policy and issues for the NAHB.

The mortgage interest deduction has come under scrutiny before, but housing groups have always united against attempts to do away with it. The National Association of REALTORS® and the Mortgage Bankers Association are two other powerful lobbies that have opposed those efforts in the past.
“There are a couple of sacred cows in the tax code, and the mortgage interest deduction is one of those. Politicians take it on at their own risk,” said J. P. Delmore, the senior federal legislative director for the home builders’ group.

The builders were worried enough about the tax situation that they excluded the media from their recent sessions on tax policy at the 2011 International Builders Show in order to formulate strategy.

In a news conference, Dietz and Delmore touched on at least some of what that strategy will entail. “Without question, we will be very aggressive in the media, and we are prepared to do that,” Delmore said.

Another key point housing groups will focus on is the still-shaky state of the housing market. Although estimates vary widely on what elimination of the mortgage interest deduction could mean to home sales, Dietz said at least one analysis shows home prices falling 15% in that event.

But Delmore believes some sort of tax legislation is likely to advance in Congress either this year or next as lawmakers contend with mounting deficits, a presidential commission’s recommendations for reform and the 2012 expiration of tax breaks that Congress merely extended late last year.

One idea being floated is to replace the interest deduction with a 12% tax credit, but Delmore pointed out that for many middle-class taxpayers in the 25% tax bracket, that would amount to a 50% cut.

And any elimination of the capital-gains exclusion could harm older American homeowners, many of whom bank on the equity in their home to bolster retirement savings and need to sell to cash out, Dietz said.

“Any changes will have a huge impact on current and future homeowners,” Delmore said. “Any tax reform would have to be pushed like the health care reform was pushed, or it will fizzle out.”

Delmore said that President Barack Obama’s upcoming State of the Union address could provide clues as to how much impetus tax reform will get this year. The speech is set for January 25.