Sarasota Florida Health Care is Unsurpassed

When you’re considering where to retire, one of the important considerations you need to think about is “how good are the health care facilities and how conveniently are they located?” Certainly you will consider several other attributes of the areas you consider. But clearly, a real important one, at that point in your life, is the quantity and quality of health care services available to you, without having to travel a considerable distance.

The Sarasota Florida area is certainly already on your list of places you are considering. After all, Sarasota has been ranked more than once as “One of the Best Places to Retire.” It has also been deemed “The Best Small City in America” by Money Magazine and “The Best Place to Retire Young” by Money Magazine. Most recently, John Brady, the founder of TopRetirements.com declared Sarasota “The #1 Place to Retire.” You’ll be pleased to learn as you read this article that, with four major hospitals and medical centers, as well as many other health care services available, the Sarasota Florida area also stands above many other locales in the superiority of its health care facilities.

Sarasota Memorial Hospital (SMH) stands among the largest public health care systems in Florida. SMH has a staff of over 4,000 employees and doctors plus over 1,000 volunteers. Sarasota Memorial, located at 1700 South Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, is a full-service health care system, with specialized expertise in heart, vascular, orthopedic, cancer, and neuroscience services, as well as a network of outpatient centers, long-term care and rehabilitation programs. The new Orthopedics Floor includes every advanced feature available to ensure patient comfort during recovery from joint and spinal procedures.

Sarasota Memorial is the only hospital in Southwest Florida named in the nation’s” Top 1% of Hospitals” for consistent clinical excellence, earning a spot on HealthGrades’ “America’s 50 Best Hospitals” list.

Doctors Hospital of Sarasota, also located in Sarasota at 5731 Bee Ridge Road, is a 168-bed acute and general care facility serving Sarasota and Manatee County with a 24/7 emergency department staffed by board certified emergency physicians.

In 2012, Doctors Hospital of Sarasota was designated as Sarasota’s first “Breast Imaging Center of Excellence” by the American College of Radiology. Doctor’s Hospital has also been named one of the nation’s “100 Top Hospitals” by Thomson Reuters, a leader in information systems to improve the cost and quality of health care.

The Lakewood Ranch Medical Center (LWRMC), at 8330 Lakewood Ranch Boulevard, which opened in 2004, offers patient-focused medicine through the use of advanced technology and equipment. This 120-bed acute-care hospital has a staff of over 400 physicians and health professionals across a wide range of specialties. Next to the medical center is a 60,000 square foot Medical Office building housing primary and specialty care physicians, the Lakewood Ranch Imaging Center and the Lakewood Ranch Blood Center.

LWRMC is one of just 620 hospitals in the U.S. to have earned “Top Performer on Key Quality Measures” designation for its achievement in the areas heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical care.

In Bradenton, Manatee Memorial Hospital, at 206 Second Street East serving Bradenton and Manatee County for over 55 years, is a 319-bed acute care facility. The Manatee Heart and Vascular Center at Manatee Memorial provides a uniquely individualized approach to heart care, including assessment, diagnosis, planning, intervention and evaluation. Catheterization, electrophysiology, nuclear medicine, and echocardiography services are offered in addition to a vascular care suite. Surgical services offered at Manatee Memorial include robotic surgery using the da Vinci® Surgical System.

Just north of Sarasota in Tampa, the renowned Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute is located on the campus of the University of South Florida.

In addition to its major hospitals and health care facilities, Sarasota is also home to some of the most innovative approaches to aging including the nation’s first “life fulfilling community.” The Glenridge, for example, is a facility that has created a unique and distinctive approach to retirement living focused upon lifelong learning and optimum health coupled with the security of long-term care and rehabilitation services.

If you, like many others, are considering Florida as your retirement home now or at some point in the future, you should definitely give the Sarasota – Bradenton area serious consideration. Nowhere else in Florida will you find the health care facilities and options that you’ll find here in Sunny Sarasota Florida.

Acting as your Buyer’s Agent, I would be delighted to help you find the perfect home or condo in the price range you prefer. Visit my Sarasota real estate website or, for immediate answers to your questions, call me at 941.266.1799

Consider Investing in a Sarasota Vacation Home

Buy Property in Sarasota for a Dream Vacation Home
    Sarasota is a beautiful city and a fabulous place to take a vacation. It offers wide sandy beaches, water sports and recreational sporting activities, world class shopping, fine dining, and a host of fantastic entertainment opportunities too. If you love Sarasota as much as we do then you’ll know that all of these reasons, combined with over 300 days of sunshine every year, make it the perfect place to buy a vacation home. More than 250,000 people (both from America and abroad) buy property in Florida each year and it’s no wonder, as there are hundreds of great reasons why you should. Here are just a few of them:

Buy-to-Rent Vacation Property
    The short-term rental market in Florida is very strong with vast numbers of tourists travelling to Sarasota from other states, and of course the rest of the world, to take advantage of the fantastic weather and fabulous attractions. Florida is a hugely popular destination and stop-off point for transatlantic and domestic cruise liners, with many cruise passengers choosing to finish their vacations with a week in the Florida sun, perhaps playing a round of golf at one of the many Sarasota golf courses.

    As Planet Cruise says, the memories of cruising across the Atlantic remain forever, and it's easy to see why cruising is a growth industry in this region of the world. Sarasota is a coastal city making it the perfect beach destination, and a stay in Sarasota is often combined, as part of a two-center vacation, with a stay at the Disneyland or Universal Orlando resorts. With all these options for vacations in Sarasota it’s no surprise that it is such a popular place to buy Sarasota real estate as vacation property for rental purposes, and the potential financial returns from doing so are massive. Renting your Sarasota property also allows you to have the best of both worlds: you can ensure your home is empty whenever you wish to use it yourself, and then make a profit from it by renting it when it would otherwise be empty.

Affordable Property
    One of the first questions every potential homeowner needs to ask before they make the decision to buy their own home is can they afford to make this purchase. You need to think not only about your current financial situation but also any potential changes to that in the short term future: is your job safe for example, or are you planning to start a family and dramatically reduce your combined income? There is a wealth of property in Sarasota suitable for a range of budgets so look for a property with the lower end of your budget in mind, rather than stretching yourself to purchase something you can’t really afford. For overseas potential buyers the value of the Pound and Euro are still strong against the dollar, making America a very attractive and affordable place to invest in one of our attractive communities of Sarasota golf course homes or perhaps a waterfront condominium in Downtown Sarasota. You’ll get considerably more for your money and the weather alone makes Sarasota a much better place to buy a vacation home than, say, London!

    America is the third most popular place in the world for British people to buy vacation property (after France and Spain) and another benefit of buying in Sarasota for overseas buyers looking to invest in foreign property is of course that there is no language barrier, as there would be in France or Spain. You can discuss your specific requirements with your realtor and feel confident that none of your requirements would be overlooked or lost in translation.

Florida is Much More than Orlando!
    When many people think of Florida, they immediately think about Orlando and all of the attractions it has to offer. But Florida is about so much more than Disneyland and Universal Studios. Coastal regions like Sarasota are in fact considerably more beautiful than Orlando, and particularly attractive to tourists and vacationers, as well as people looking to permanently relocate to warmer climes and make Florida their home.

    For more information on homes and condos for sale in Sarasota Florida, please send me an E-Mail or, for an immediate response to your questions, call me today in Sarasota Florida at 941-266-1799. International callers, please dial 001-941-266-1799.

While Problems Exist Elsewhere, Sarasota Home Sales Continue at a Strong Pace

Home sales across the nation are being held back by a number of forces including higher prices, higher, mortgage interest rates and, unfortunately, a general lack of homes on the market. 

Of course, the antics in Washington shutting down the government and threatening to default over the debt ceiling did nothing to make Americans feel more confident. So many real estate markets are finding that sales volumes flattening out or even dropping off.

Fortunately, that has not been the case here in the Sarasota real estate market.  A couple of reasons, I think explain our good fortune. First a fair percentage of properties in the Sarasota real estate market are sold for cash so the higher mortgage interest rates have had little effect. And, Sarasota has retained its high standing as one of the "Best Cities in which to Retire," one of the "Best Places to Re-invent Yourself" and as the "Center of Florida's Arts & Cultural Scene."

But Sarasota Florida has more than good titles and rankings.  For sun and beach lovers, there are over 35 miles of beaches including world-famous Siesta Key beach known for having the whitest sand in the world. And nowhere in the world will you find more gorgeous sunsets than on Florida's West Coast jewel of Sarasota.

 For lovers of the game of golf, metro Sarasota including Bradenton, Osprey and Venice offers over 80 golf courses ranging from public courses to the most challenging public and private courses. There are golf courses to challenge every level of player, many with communities of country club homes  surrounding them. Boaters, day-sailors, scuba divers and fishermen will love the Sarasota offerings of every conceivable water sport.

Sarasota also offers the widest possible variety of residential properties from downtown high-rise condos and penthouses to golf course communities and waterfront homes in every price range and to meet every imaginable desire you may have. The barrier islands,  Siesta key, Lido Key, Bird Key, Longboat Key and Casey Key each offer their own unique but generally upscale lifestyles. St. Armands Key with St Armands Circle, with its upscale shops and boutiques, offers some of the most elegant shopping in Florida.

So, it should come as no surprise that Sarasota home sales continue to grow.  September home and condo sales in Sarasota County were 22% above the volume at the end of September one year ago.
For more information on Sarasota homes for sale, in general, and Sarasota golf course homes, in particular, call me today at 941-266-1799.