5 Big Lies You've Been Told | Living in Sarasota, FL

This article is a direct transcription of our YouTube video, the video is linked at the bottom.

We are back. I'm Adam Hancock. We are standing at maybe the greatest view in Sarasota at the Qua. And today I want to talk about, in this beautiful setting ... I don't want to talk about the setting. I want to talk about five lies or misnomers or whatever you want to call it about Sarasota, Florida. Things that I think are too biased, too antiquated and undereducated from locals' opinion or the internet's sake. So I want to unravel five. I think they'll apply to a lot of folks. I hope you enjoy.

• Traffic is Awful
• Everybody is 100 Years Old
• It's Sleepy, There's Nothing To Do
• Everything Cost Million Dollars
• Too Many Snowbirds

1. Traffic is Awful

All right, so my perspective on this is, just in the simplest form on a micro level, I've lived in a lot of cities in Florida; Tampa, Miami, Naples, the Panhandle. I think that's incredibly overblown. I've never felt so peaceful in traffic regardless of how many people influx to the area since I moved back in 2019. And I would say that's probably an example of the most people that have ever been here in a single time. So I think a lot of it's perspective. If you've lived in any reasonable size city, then it always surprises me that people say this. Maybe if you're from very docile areas, I still think it would be similar. But any other city I've ever been to out-of-state, in state, it's nothing compared to that. Also, the big thing you got to consider here, because what people are nervous about is that all these people are moving here.

This area's not going to look the same once these people actually move into the new construction homes. But you got to understand that a lot of this surrounds work culture and work commutes and I've talked about that a lot. If we double our population and you still don't have everyone trying to drive to downtown between 7:30 and 9:00 AM, everybody trying to drive home at five to 7:00 PM, you don't have three or four major work districts that everybody tries to get to across two or three major city roads or interstates, then the influx of people doesn't impact most people's daily lives because everybody's kind of doing their own thing at random times and work commute is heavily the issue of every other city I've lived into because cities bottleneck in one are two major areas and the streets can't brunt a sudden increase of the population. So that's my piece on that. I think it's incredibly overblown. I think you would know that if you spent a month at any random month of this year, season or not, you would feel that.

2. Everybody is 100 Years Old

So the building behind me is an old building. I'm at the Qua in Sarasota surrounded by a bunch of new buildings and in a lot of ways, in a cheesy way, that's how Sarasota currently sits. I am 36. I moved away for a very long time because I felt the same way. I felt like it was sleepy, everyone was older or it was retirement so it didn't orient how I lived at all. People like me are moving back because of family, so it's getting younger just for the fact of family ties will eventually draw people back. But more poignantly is the work from home thing change things drastically. If you are not tied to a major city to work, which is a lot of the reason no one moved to Sarasota, no one moved to Naples, that was younger, under 45.

And then the COVID era created an entire work from home culture that is potentially either permanent or it changed the way people thought about work-life balance at all and they want to do something different. And then if you step back and you say, "I could live anywhere in the country, financial, economics wise that would benefit me but also peaceful lifestyle wise and if I worked from home, what would I do?" And that completely changed the landscape of Sarasota because, this in my opinion, especially in the entire Southwest Florida, but the entire state, one of the absolute best cities you could possibly live in if you worked from home.

The ease in and out, the different districts you could do it in, the emergence of co-work space, virtual offices, et cetera, I think the average age is down drastically in Sarasota city limits, in Venice, Lakewood Ranch is number one multi-generational in the entire United States. Our average age might be getting in Sarasota, I think it's under 50 now. So the median age, obviously even lower than that. So I think overall this is a misnomer still that if you really took the time to vet out, it's a lovely place to live.

3. It's Sleepy, There's Nothing To Do

So this is another one that probably five years ago I felt the same exact way, but things are drastically changing and this was my hedge on moving back because of ... and I'll talk a little bit about what I miss, but let's just unravel some of them. First, beach variety. Here the benefit is you have something for everyone and every lifestyle. So Siesta Key, it's more eclectic beach village style, touristy. It's a place people congregate. The beach is long from parking lot to water. So people stack, hang out in congregated areas and they want that for that. Looks like you picture online on a Florida vacation. Longboat Key, Lido Key is a little bit more upscale, a little bit more uppity. St. Armands Circle, it's higher end. It's like cosmopolitan and beach combined. Hundreds plus boutiques, shops, seafood restaurants, one mile from the beach, you can walk to it from there. Probably even less for some entrances.

You have Venice, that's older, quaint. You have Anna Maria Island, you have Manasota Key. So by just simply hopping around, but all of these are very condensed areas. Then let's take outdoor recreation. Say you like just trails, whether that is your road cyclist, whether that is you walk and run, whether that is a paddle trail on the water. We have the Legacy Trail, which is one of the most innovative ways to cut through town. What I hear a lot is you can literally bike straight for a very long distance because you don't have to find all these weird ways to circle and get the distance you want. There's Oscar Scherer Park. There's tons of ways to get outside and get active. We have yoga on the lawn, we have yoga with goats. You have places like this, which is like a public private park used for mixed green space.

Let's take the food scene, food and drink. This is another one that I think when I do stuff for activity, I'm usually surrounding some sort of food scene probably. The amount of Zagat rated restaurants in a low density we have is incredible. We have a full melting pot of food, whether that's the highest end, that's fish camps for seafood, that's everything in between. And then we also have these emerging areas, which is very different than it used to be. We have downtown Sarasota, which is a mile from here. It's very one of the cleanest, most pleasant downtowns I've ever been in. And all the major streets you can walk in 20 minutes. We have Waterside Place, which is Lakewood Ranch based. It's emerging, it's full on downtown they built in the suburbs. We have Fruitville Commons in between. So we have a lot of separate places you can go to now and have a full end of the spectrum.

You can get your haircut, you can eat breakfast, you can have a cocktail, you can eat high end dinner. The whole in between. They're all safe and they're clean. And then all that, not to get too unarticulated here is then say, just on a macro sense, is someone like me, I'm very transient. I moved around a ton. Sarasota is probably the best city geography in the entire state in my personal opinion because no city is perfect. You might want access to the rest. That's the benefit of this location. If you had to pick one, if you're forced to pick one, 45 minutes to St. Petersburg, Florida, 60 miles to Tampa, hour and a half to Fort Myers, two hours to Naples, we are three and a half to Boca Raton and Miami. There's a ferry that will take you from Fort Myers to Key West, four to St. Augustine, Nocatee, Jacksonville area, five and a half to Savannah, Georgia.

I mean, if you had to pick one, you can get all your jollies hopping around, but you don't have to deal with that city day to day as far as the busyness and all the cool things the city gets that is busy and you can live here and you can commute to it. I think all of that makes this place very special.

4. Everything Cost Million Dollars

Okay, so this is a sensitive one. I think it's worth broaching. A lot does cost a million dollars and I would say that might even be conservative for a lot of the property. But what I think you have to understand is this isn't the average. All is not equal. And Sarasota's a unique town, which I'm going to unravel here in a second, but it's a unique town for this conversation. So what I'm talking about is if you're looking for inexpensive property, there are many parts of Sarasota County greater and Manatee County that that's very feasible in. The average price isn't anywhere near 500K. And so North Port, Florida, which is east of Venice, Englewood, which is south of Venice, Western Bradenton, which is the part of Bradenton that no one talks about that's not in Lakewood Ranch, Parish, which is a junior version of Lakewood. These are all areas that became en vogue because the area in front of them or closer to the coast or more central got popular, but they're still incredibly affordable for what it is.

And where this really matters is the size of Sarasota. So if you look like your BFE on a map east, Sarasota's so small that it is incredibly hard to get more than 40 minutes one way to the beach in all of these areas. So the town being condensed brings all of this ... Obviously they're not going to be Longboat Key, they're not downtown Sarasota. But also the price isn't the same. But Tampa Bay Metro or Naples Metro, where Lehigh Acres is to Naples or Alva or Wesley Chapel is to Tampa or New Port Richie is to Pinellas County and Pasco County, those areas if you're familiar, they just get you further from the stuff. So if you get the same value prop, I drive further and I save money, Sarasota's town is so small that there's nothing east. It's just like Myakka Forest. So our far isn't that far. And I think that makes it really interesting if you're open-minded because eventually it's easy for those areas to become more popular because the value prop to the entire state as things continue on will be more attractive the closer you are to the coast.

5. Too Many Snowbirds

So at one time, Sarasota definitely was, I think, more than 50%. They doubled their population during season versus not. And so a lot of folks don't like that because they're like, "How am I going to form a community if I move here and everybody leaves?" No one's going to take care of their property and/or they're going to rent it when they're not here and that's going to change the texture of the neighborhood. Everybody just rethinking things over the last couple years, whether you were going to retire in five years and now you're going to work out the rest of the retirement here, regardless of if they make you come back or not. Younger people are moving here for what I mentioned earlier in the video. You have all these reasons that people maybe make seven, eight month residences here instead of 51% of the year or even less.

I think intentionality matters a lot. So people living in a town, for what it's worth as a homestead, I think the way they treat the town, the way they treat each other, I think everybody's pumped to be there. A lot of people viewed this as a once in a lifetime that they thought they were going to have to wait a significant period of time to move here. So I feel like the energy of town right now is exciting and I think the snowbird thing, it's always going to be a thing here because it's just too attractive if you can go halfsie in North Carolina or something like that or you have family elsewhere. But I think really if you look at the numbers that will actually become census data when all this stuff is documented in a couple years, I think we're seeing a drastic change.

I'm not a local who's anti people moving here. Regardless of if I benefit from it and blah blah blah, I think it's cool the way people operate when they view themselves in paradise. Like you were in Boston for 25 years in snow and the way you act here every day, even the shittiest day weather wise, it's like this is the dream. And that six degree effect on everybody around them is very interesting and a lot of my staff is in that exact boat. So I like it. I don't think it hurts a town. You can't hide cool places. This town's amazing. I thought it was underpriced. It's en vogue. Makes sense to me. You can't keep it a secret. And I think that's where things currently stand.

Conclusion

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