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By CHRISTINE HAWES Bradenton Herald

HOLMES BEACH — Roses are placed at the center of every table — and sometimes handed out by the servers.

The owner often walks around the room offering tastes of wine. And if diners are overheard pondering one entree or another, they’ll sometimes receive both their order and a small sample of the other entree they were considering.

These are just some of the special touches that have earned the Beach Bistro yet another top ranking in the Tampa/Sarasota area by the Zagat Restaurant Guide. The Holmes Beach waterfront eatery, owned by Sean and Susan Murphy, was one of only two out of 20 restaurants included that earned a 28-point ranking on Zagat’s 30-point scale.

“You buy the best stuff, you find the best guys to cook it, and you find the best people to serve it,” Sean Murphy said, summarizing what he believes are the keys to the Beach Bistro’s ongoing top-notch reputation. “The story line always reads ‘Sean Murphy,’ but really, I’m just the coach.”

The restaurant’s success is even more impressive considering that Murphy is a law school graduate who opened the Beach Bistro 26 years ago as a way to avoid being deported back to his home country of Nova Scotia.

Murphy said that within two years of opening their own business, he and his wife realized that stress was a major issue for those who worked in the restaurant business.

“People really needed to have a maximum number of hours that they work, and a minimum number of hours in a row off, to have good family lives.”

The Murphys adopted a rule that remains in place today: No one works more than five days in a row, everyone receives good health insurance, and everyone gets two days off in a row.

The rule helps him retain good employees; Murphy says almost everyone who works for him at his two — and soon to be three — locations has been around for at least eight and up to 25 years.

“Sean and Susan are like family to me,” says Annette Walden, the Beach Bistro’s floor manager. “And they reward loyalty and dedication.

“It’s a joy going to work at the Bistro because everyone there is always striving for excellence,” says David Klingler, wine manager, who has worked for the Murphys for 16 years. “Everyone has a passion for their job. We don’t just rest on our laurels and think ‘we’re great.’ ”

Walden and Klingler say they and the waitstaff are trained to be extra-observant of diners’ wishes, including listening in for feedback and sensing when customers “want to have a little more conversation,” or when they “would prefer to just be left alone and have dinner for themselves,” Walden says.

Murphy is also committed to obtaining the best products, whether it be prime American tenderloin, domestic, ranch-raised Colorado lamb, or fresh grouper caught by local fishermen.

He has opened a second eatery in Holmes Beach called Eat Here, and by Nov. 15 will open a second Eat Here on Main Street in Sarasota.

The Zagat guide, produced for the past 32 years, is considered the most prestigious of restaurant guides and ranks restaurants on a 30-point scale that considers food, decor, service and cost.

The Beach Bistro has received a ranking of 28 out of 30 since 2009, and from 2004 to 2006, according to a Zagat spokesperson. The only other restaurant in the Tampa/Sarasota area to receive a score of 28 this year is south Tampa’s Pane Rustica.

MUNDANE GETS A MAKEOVER

By Iyna Bort Caruso

First bathrooms became sumptuous spas. Then closets turned into wardrobe showplaces. Now, laundry rooms, among the last frontiers of domestic utility, are getting their due. They are moving out of the realm of the purely pragmatic and into the high tone company of granite, crystal and travertine.

According to Miele, the premium appliance manufacturer, the average person spends at least six hours a week in the laundry room, so it’s not surprising why a homeowner would be reluctant to spend those hours cocooned in a dingy corner of the house.

Andrea Cueny, of Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty, says at the luxury price point, “which we consider anything over a million,” laundry rooms are designed to impress. The finer the home, the more luxurious the appointments. “People are spending more time at home and they have more help in the home–au pairs, in-laws, nannies. They want to make these rooms nicer with more high end finishes,” Cueny says. Many homes in her territory have two laundry areas, one centrally located on the main level and one by the bedrooms.

The fact is, in a luxury estate, no area is overlooked, no room gets short shrift. “Every room of the house is gorgeous, and laundry rooms are simply the next logical extension,” says Sandra Espinet, an interior designer and HGTV personality. Espinet works with an international clientele from her offices in San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico, and Los Angeles. She says there’s no question that laundry rooms are getting bigger and posher. “Many are basically extensions of the kitchen, and they use the same beautiful cabinetry, the same luxury granite and the same high end appliances.”

In a way, these rooms are more like laundry hubs or centers. Think of them as the emerging superstars of multifunctional spaces. Beyond top tier washers and dryers, homeowners are installing specialty appliances like warming drawers for delicate clothing and rotary presses for crisp, professional finishes. They’re also making room for sewing stations and storage units. Along with the predictable is the unpredictable. Designer/builder John Zito, of Coastline Building in Delton, Mich., completed a laundry room in an estate that incorporates a wine cellar and tasting room. The project was both an engineering challenge as well as a design feat.

The laundry room earmarked for the new home of Lori Cunningham, a blogger who writes about home technology for thewellconnectedhome.com, is smartly conceived and exquisitely designed. “Doing laundry is a chore. I was tired of having a small laundry room and being barely able to move in it,” she says. In fact, her new home, a 6,900-square-foot Tuscan-style residence in Chino Hills, Calif., has two laundry rooms. The larger one boasts an abundance of counter space, a second washer, a built-in ironing board and a sewing desk. She broke open one wall, creating a pass-through with shutters to maintain her connection with the rest of the house. “I like knowing what’s going on and not being closed into a room,” says the mother of two. The finishes are striking: the countertops are granite, the floors are Versailles-pattern travertine and the wood cabinetry is custom.

Cunningham says she went back and forth on her design choices. “Should I make it so luxurious? Did I really need that for a laundry? But I decided I wanted it looking like rest of the house, I wanted it to blend in. It brings a little bit of excitement to a room that’s normally dull and dreary.”

Marion Crandall of Waterfield Sotheby’s International Realty in Winchester, Mass., says house hunters respond to laundry rooms that are sunny and inviting. In a recent sale, she cited the home’s lavish laundry room as a factor in the purchase decision. “The buyer loved the room,” Crandall recalls. “It was light and airy with beautiful wallpaper creating a garden feel. And it had a special window with plant grow lights so when you walked in there you had a room with blooming plants in the middle of winter.” A beautiful laundry room will always generate a positive response from potential buyers, adds Crandall. “It’s an unexpected surprise and buyers love it.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Fancy Vivid Blue 6ct. Diamond Sells for $10M

Hong Kong Auction Garners $65M

Oct 6, 2011 6:32 AM   By Avi Krawitz

RAPAPORT… Sotheby’s Hong Kong received a record price for a fancy vivid blue diamond sold at auction this week as its Magnificent Jewels and Jadeite sale. The auction closed with a total of $65.4 million (HKD 510.2 million) and was 78.6 percent sold by lot and 65.6 percent sold by value.

The top lot was a 6.01-carat, fancy vivid blue diamond ring, which sold to an unnamed buyer for $10.1 million (HKD 79.06 million), or $1.68 million per carat, which was within the pre-sale estimate.  

A 30.31-carat, D, internally flawless diamond ring sold to an Asian private  for $5.5 million (HKD 43.2 million), or $182,811 per carat, and a 4.19-carat, VVS1, orange diamond ring went to another Asian private for $2.96 million (HKD 23.06 million), or $705,587 per carat). Sotheby’s reported that this was a record price achieved for a fancy vivid orange diamond.

”Buyers for the top 10 lots came from five different countries, showing the international participation in this important market,” noted Quek Chin-Yeow, the deputy chairman and head of jewelry of Sotheby’s Asia. He added that 13 lots sold for more than $1.2 million.

The Sotheby’s International Realty® brand has partnered with Smarter Agent, the leader in mobile real estate technology, to co-develop the FREE Sotheby’s International Realty mobile application-SIR Mobile. SIR Mobile is leading the charge of the growing mobile marketplace and helping our network own the mobile relationship with your clients and potential clients. SIR Mobile is unique in that it works on any phone including iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Palm and standard cell phones across all carries, enabling the Sotheby’s International Realty network* to reach all homebuyers that use mobile devices.

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By CYNTHIA ANDERSON, Correspondent
Published: Friday, September 23, 2011 at 5:27 p.m.

It was a lovely home. Updated throughout — floors, kitchen, bathrooms, even wall coverings — and it also was located in a well-regarded Sarasota neighborhood.

The problem wasn’t the house or the location, but the yard. “Plain Jane,” said a neighbor who was preparing his own home for the market, including some investment in the lawn and yard. “The landscaping was virtually non-existent. It looked like Gwyneth Paltrow without makeup.”

First impressions do matter, in real estate sales as in any life transaction. Curb appeal sells. In the home-buying equivalent of speed-dating, potential buyers often decide whether they’re interested in a home within seconds of seeing it from the street. The same holds true for online listings. If the outside of the property is unattractive, viewers just keep scrolling.

“How your home looks from the curb conveys all sorts of subtle messages,” said Walter Molony, spokesman for the National Association of Realtors. “If you have a nicely maintained home inside, for example, but overgrown shrubbery or a patchy lawn, potential buyers may make a snap judgment that the whole house hasn’t been cared for.” It could be an erroneous judgment, too.

Conversely, if buyers get a good feeling on their way in, they’re more apt to like what they see once they get inside.

A recent Michigan State University study found that, depending on where a home is located, quality landscaping boosts the value by 5 to 11 percent. “It’s really important,” said Michael Saunders & Company Realtor Nancy Phillips. “With my sellers, I do focus on the house being well dressed on the outside.”

That attire doesn’t have to be costly, Phillips said. She cited a Lakewood Ranch property with landscaping that was “just terrible — too sparse and half dead.” For a couple of thousand dollars, the owners were able to transform the exterior with “lush, rich plantings that made all the difference.”

A sense of privacy is important, too, Phillips said, recalling a property that languished three years on the market because of a lack thereof. “When you entered the home and looked out the back, you were facing the side of another house. People’s perception was, ‘I’m not going to pay $600,000 to look at a wall.’”

There was a pond, Phillips said, but the eye was drawn away from it by the imposing facade.

The solution was a sizeable hedge, along with some pygmy palms and a few free-flowing plantings. “It made a tremendous difference. We didn’t even have that landscaping in for a month before the house was under contract,” Phillips said.

Francis Doranth of Quality Landscape Services in Bradenton agreed that in most cases, a little landscaping goes a long way.

“You don’t necessarily have to add a lot if what’s there can be made presentable,” Doranth said. “The trouble with many homes is that the landscaping is dated or overgrown or tacky. It’s like if you went to a car lot and all the cars were dirty. Just as people are attracted to nice shiny cars, they’re also attracted to clean, manicured, well-maintained landscapes.”

Doranth suggests creating “elevation interest” by constructing retaining walls or by fitting together large boulders, lining the edges of the hollow with geomat, and then adding soil. An even bigger improvement, according to Doranth, is the replacement of concrete driveways with pavers. “That modernizes the home instantaneously,” he said. “And when people see a paver driveway, they automatically associate it with higher quality throughout the home.”

Other outdoor building projects can boost a property’s value. In fact, according to Molony, the NAR’s 2011 “Cost vs. Value” report suggests that exterior projects get “a bigger bang for the buck” than interior ones. Re-siding the home, upgrading the entry door and adding a deck all get a better return on cost “because they’re so closely tied to curb appeal,” he said.

However, sellers should beware of the “if-some-is-good-then-more-is-better” syndrome. One of the worst things a home seller can do is over-landscape the property, experts agree. Prospective buyers will get a crowded impression if they can’t turn around without running into a lighted walkway or a retaining wall. Leave open space to allow buyers to imagine how they would design the area if it were theirs.

“Potential” is the key. Just as you don’t want to over-decorate the inside of the house — buyers should be able to envision their own furnishings and style in the place, not yours — so too with the exterior.

To that end, Phillips advised the removal of all personal items. “Those little things, like ducks and rabbits that you buy at garden centers — they have to go! Now is the time to put your ceramic frog collection away,” she said.

As for the Plain Jane house in the nice neighborhood? It’s still on the market, but recently it got a landscape facelift. And if Phillips’ experience holds true, it won’t be on the market for long.

Copyright © 2011 HeraldTribune.com — All rights reserved.

Staff and wire reports
Published: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 10:46 a.m.

A sign notes the foreclosure status of a single-family home in Denver in 2010. Big lenders are holding back on foreclosing on homes because they are facing several big lawsuits.

Home prices rose for a fourth straight month in most major U.S. cities in July, buoyed by the peak buying season.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday showed home prices increased in July from June in 17 of the 20 cities tracked.

Prices rose sharply in Minneapolis and Chicago. Prices in two cities hit hardest by the housing crisis — Las Vegas and Phoenix — declined.

The Southwest Florida market is not tracked by Case-Shiller, but prices in both Tampa and Miami also rose from June to July, by 0.8 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively.

Prices in this region have either risen or remained stable for most of the 2011, though they gave some ground last month even as sales rose substantially.

In the Sarasota-Bradenton market, the median sales price of $155,600 was down 3.2 percent from July but up 4 percent from a year ago. The Charlotte County-North Port median was $97,600, down nearly 10 percent from July and 4 percent from a year ago.

The Case-Shiller index measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The July data is the latest available.

Analysts cautioned that the price increases are temporary, and not evidence of a housing recovery. Home sales nationally have declined in each of the months in which prices rose. Prices are expected to drop again this fall and winter, based on the poor sales and expectations that banks will resume processing a raft of foreclosures that have been in limbo.

“This is still a seasonal period of stronger demand for houses, so monthly price increases are expected,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor’s index committee. “While we have now seen four consecutive months of generally increasing prices, we do know that we are still far from a sustained recovery.”

During the past 12 months, prices have fallen in all but two cities: Detroit and Washington.

In Detroit, prices have risen 1.2 percent during that stretch. Still, the city has been among the nation’s worst housing markets over the past decade. In July, homes prices there were at 1995 levels.

Washington, conversely, has had the nation’s best housing market. Home prices in the nation’s capital have increased 0.3 percent in those 12 months, and were equal to 2004 levels in July.

Housing is a key reason the economy has struggled more than two years after the recession officially ended.

High unemployment, larger required down payments and tighter credit are preventing many buyers from entering the market. Many who could afford to buy are waiting because they are worried the U.S. could fall back into another recession and prices could fall further.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Copyright © 2011 HeraldTribune.com — All rights reserved

Sarasota Herald Tribune
By Doug Sword & John Davis

Published: Monday, September 19, 2011 at 12:02 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, September 19, 2011 at 12:02 p.m.

Just as tourism has been one of the few bright spots in the Southwest Florida economy, foreign real estate buyers have become a key source of demand for an industry eager for buyers.

That has been particularly true for condominiums in Sarasota and single-family homes and vacant lots in North Port.

Foreign ownership in Sarasota and Manatee counties jumped 10 percent last year and is up by more than one third since 2007, according to a Herald-Tribune analysis of property records.

Owners listing foreign addresses bought more than 1,000 parcels in the two counties last year, totaling more than $100 million in value, the analysis shows.

In Sarasota, foreign ownership of condos jumped from 1,208 to 1,660 during the three-year period. Just in 2010, foreign buyers snatched up 234 of the city’s units.

In North Port, foreign single-family home ownership jumped 44 percent during the last three years, from 362 to 562. Most of that increase also came in 2010, when the number jumped by 105.

In all, foreigners, mainly Canadians and Europeans, own more than 11,000 parcels with values totaling $1.7 billion in the two counties.

The rising tide is being felt across the state and nation and its growing importance to Florida was made clear in a recent report by the National Association of Realtors.

The NAR report pegged the foreign buyer market at $82 billion per year, with the Sunshine State’s share skyrocketing from 9 percent three years ago to 31 percent in 2011.

Depending on their nationality, buyers tend to be drawn to different parts of the state.

Buyers from the United Kingdom dominate in Orlando, while Argentinians and Brazilians have made a big impact in Miami.

“But in Southwest Florida the buyers are Canadian,” says Brad Nelson, vice president of marketing at Signature Sotheby’s International Realty.

Of that $1.7 billion in foreign ownership for Sarasota and Manatee counties, more than $1 billion can be tied to a Canadian address.

Most of those owners are from Toronto, Ottawa or some other city in Canada’s Ontario province.
Ontario-based buyers accounted for 78 percent of last year’s jump in foreign-owned condos in Sarasota and 79 percent of the increase in foreign-owned single-family homes in North Port.
On the high-end, in particular, buyers are coming from Toronto, says Nelson, noting that Sotheby’s representatives have made multiple trips to Canada’s largest city scouting for buyers.

For years, Torontan Janice Bastow and her husband had been taking extended weekend vacations at the Peppertree Bay resort condos on Siesta Key.

They knew they wanted to buy there but were waiting for the right time.

That came last June, when they bought a Peppertree condo from its Minnesota owners for $290,000. Three other units in the resort were also purchased by Toronto buyers last year.

“There are a lot of people there from Ontario,” Bastow said, noting that the big drop in prices and exchange rates that now put the Canadian dollar on par with its U.S. counterpart were prime factors for the move.

“To be honest, it’s more affordable for us to be down there than it is for us to be up here,” she said.
The sales tax rate in Ontario is 13 percent compared with Sarasota County’s 7 percent rate.
In all, 45 Siesta Key condos were bought by foreigners last year: 38 from Canada, with 33 of those from Ontario.

Like it was for Bastow, the ascension of Canada’s beloved “loonie,” or dollar coin, has been a major draw.

“Florida’s always been the No. 1 state for Canadians,” said Michael MacKenzie, executive director of the Toronto-based Canadian Snowbird Association. “They were going to Florida in droves when it was 62 cents U.S.”

Cold winters and the two-hour flight from Toronto to Florida might get Canadians thinking about Florida, but it tends to be word-of-mouth advertising that gets them to pick specific places.

“These international buyers very much communicate virally,” Nelson says.

A look through property records seems to confirm that particular properties have sudden surges in popularity among certain groups.

Last year, 10 buyers from Ontario bought condos at Serenade on Palmer Ranch, a condo development off Honore Avenue, at prices ranging from $51,000 to $92,000.

One widely publicized Canadian news article trumpets the “tempting times for crossborder shoppers, who can take advantage of crushed U.S. housing markets and a strong Canadian dollar to scoop up finds in the opportunity-rich Sun Belt.”

The big declines in prices also have lessened the impact of Florida’s property tax system, which before the downturn had heaped more than one-third of the state’s taxes on to the owners of second homes, including snowbirds.

The declining market has disproportionately cut taxes on this group, including a nearly $1 billion tax cut last year.

While the return of fairness to the market is another reason that MacKenzie of the snowbird association gives for the influx of Canadian buyers, Sean Snaith, a University of Central Florida economist, dismisses the impact of tax cuts.

Declining home prices and the strength of the Canadian dollar are driving the market, he said.
“Is there some Canadian sense of fairness we’ve offended that’s been soothed? I don’t think so,” Snaith said.

The wealth generated by oil and gas price increases also seems to be bringing more people from resource-rich western Canada, says Sylvia Zimmerman, a residential Realtor for Michael Saunders & Co.

In the last three years the number of parcels whose owners are from Alberta, Canada, jumped from 64 to 83.

“In the last year I’m seeing an increase in the people from Calgary in the gas and oil business,” Zimmerman said.

While Canada’s impact on the region is clear, other patterns are less discernible.

Seven condos sold in Village Brooke off Beneva Road, with two owners each from Slovakia and Israel and the others listing addresses in Montreal, Switzerland and France.

The number of French-owned parcels in Manatee and Sarasota counties jumped from 124 to 251 during the last three years. The number of Polish-owned condos in Sarasota went from zero in 2008 to 10. The number of Bradenton properties owned by Australians increased from one to four.

Shannon Moore, a Port Charlotte-based Realtor, has become an authority in catering to foreign buyers, who invariably pay cash for their North Port investments, scooping up homes for a fraction of what it cost to build them during the city’s real estate craze.

“If we know one of the Macedonians is coming down, scratch that whole week,” Moore said of her schedule of showing houses to foreigners who fly in, buy real estate, and fly home.

The typical buyer is looking for a 1,500-square-foot house built since 2000 for around $100,000, attributes that define much of North Port’s beleaguered housing stock.

Many of the North Port purchases are for investment properties that bring a monthly income to owners and the opportunity to sell at a wide profit margin if and when the real estate market picks up.
“They’ll usually have one house that’s specifically for their retirement home,” said Brian Fischer, a property manager, of his clients who own multiple homes in North Port and who manages 200 properties from Venice to Fort Myers.

“I have a waiting list of tenants looking for pool homes,” Fischer said, noting that for investors he can often have a tenant lined up before a sale closes.

A typical property purchased for $100,000 to $120,000 can rent for $1,100 monthly in this market, he said.

But not all foreign buyers are likely happy with their purchases.

Those that owned their condos in 2007 likely have suffered big losses.

The average value of a foreign-owned condo in Sarasota that year was $318,407. By 2010, it had dropped to $199,948.

Foreigners who own the nearly 2,500 vacant residential lots in North Port also have seen their values plummet during the last three years.

The average North Port vacant lot with a foreign owner in 2008 was valued at $10,208. Last year, it was $4,109.

Those lots have been particularly appealing to French buyers who owned 64 in 2008, but now own 157.

One of the biggest French players was SA Immobiliere Lafayette, a Paris company that acquired nine vacant lots in North Port in 2008 for $444,000. The total value in 2010: $39,600.

Michel and Sylviane Mater of Sanury-Sur-Mer, near Toulon on the Mediterranean Sea, bought eight vacant lots in North Port in 2007 for $416,500. They are now worth $29,300.

May 13, 2011

Urban Land Institute

By Jeffrey Spivak

More than 1 million senior citizens typically move every year to a new locale to spend their golden years. So what are the most popular retirement destinations? The American City Business Journals [http://www.bizjournals.com], which publishes Business Journal newspapers in many major metros, recently used a six-part formula to rank the most popular places for retirees. The formula included the number of residents aged 65 or older, seniors as a percentage of the population and percentage of seniors who moved to that metro.

Not surprisingly, the top of the rankings is dominated by warm-weather cities, particularly in Florida and Arizona. Number 1 overall is Florida’s Bradenton-Sarasota metropolitan area, where more than 25 percent of the population are seniors and the median age is 48, about 12 years higher than the nation as a whole. Most of the highest-ranked places are smaller metropolitan areas, where large concentrations of seniors account for a higher proportion of the total population.

Among larger metropolitan areas, Tampa-St. Petersburg led the group, followed by Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Phoenix and Riverside-San Bernardino, California. In the formula, final scores ranged from +20 down to -10.

Here are the top 10 destinations for seniors:

(Source: American City Business Journals.)

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