Sie träumen von weißen Sandstränden, tropischen Palmen und Sonne satt? Idyllischer Florida Lifestyle statt Partymetropole? Kommen Sie nach Anna Maria Island!

Anna Maria Island liegt an der Golfküste Floridas südlich der Tampa Bay ca . 30 Kilometer von der Kulturhauptstadt Sarasota entfernt. Da aufgrund der Bauvorschriften keine Hochhäuser gebaut werden dürfen, konnte sich Anna Maria Island den Flair der alten Tage erhalten.

Anna Maria Island Immobilien zählen zu den gefragtesten in der Region. Dementsprechend haben auf Anna Maria Island auch in Zeiten der Immobilienkrise weiterhin viele Immobilien den Eigentümer gewechselt. Die Preise sind zwar auch hier gefallen, der Markt beginnt sich aber bereits zu erholen. Besonders Immobilien in guter Lage sind sehr gefragt.

Dies gilt umso mehr, als sich Immobilien auf Anna Maria Island auch als Investition gut eignen. Wie auch kürzlich im Herald Tribune berichtet wurde, ist die Nachfrage von nationalen sowie internationalen Feriengästen nach Mietobjekten hoch, die meisten Objekte sind bereits jetzt für die kommende Saison ausgebucht.

Falls Sie Informationen über Immobilien auf Anna Maria Island erhalten möchten, nehmen Sie bitte Kontakt mit uns auf, wir beraten Sie gerne!

There is no denying that Anna Maria Island is fulfilling its economic potential these days.

Its hotels and vacation rentals are full.Its stores and restaurants are generating increased revenues. Its developers and builders are busy upgrading its housing stock. And its employees, both on and off the island, are finding jobs.

Despite all these positives, some year-round residents on nearby islands are terrified by what Anna Maria has become.

They do not like the idea of sharing their beaches, restaurants and roads with hoards of care-free northerners and have managed to keep them off their islands for years by slowing development of tourism-related businesses and restricting access to vacation homes. But with recent court decisions and the election of a free-market governor and Legislature, anti-growth residents in beach communities throughout the state are facing the most serious threat to their protectionist ways in decades.

In Venice, a string of legal defeats has forced the city to suspend an ordinance prohibiting property owners from renting dwellings more than once a month. That means landlords can now provide tourists with what they want — short-term rentals and access to Venice’s nearly 12 miles of beaches.

Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, Senate Bill 833 and House Bill 476 are speeding through the Legislature and could have much the same result for property owners statewide.

“The Legislature seems to be saying with its new bills that all neighborhoods are the same and that someone who has a house in a single-family area can override local ordinances and rent that house overnight to 20 students on vacation,” said Catherine Luckner, president of the Siesta Key Association.

But the idea of letting anyone in a single-family neighborhood rent their property to tourists destroys the very very notion of a neighborhood, Luckner said.

“It’s fun to have people coming and going, and it works well in areas that are zoned for vacation rentals,” she said. “But there are other areas where people have made a permanent home and want to make sure they have a safe place to live.”

Bob Waechter, another resident of Siesta Key, feels the same way.

“Having vacation homes on the same street is horrible,” Waechter said. “If owners rented to responsible people, it would be one thing. But, unfortunately, units are often filled with groups of people whose expressed intent is to party for a week or two.”

As a free-market Republican, however, Waechter also sees the benefit of reopening Florida’s beaches to tourists.

“The reality of this economy is that we may need to lighten up a little and take our income from wherever we can get it,” he said.

The big middle

Because of Anna Maria’s openness to tourists, the island is doing much better economically than neighboring islands on a variety of fronts.

Tourism tax dollars generated by its three municipalities have risen every year since 2005, hitting $2.9 million during the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2010 — an 88 percent jump from the same 12-month period in 2005-2006.

No other island community in the three-county region has performed even half as well.

Siesta Key came the closest, with a 40 percent increase in tourism-tax revenues during the five-year period. But its economy has been in the doldrums of late. Tax revenues fell 4 percent in 2009 and only rose 4.5 percent in 2010.

Anna Maria’s three cities, by comparison, saw tourism tax revenues rise 20 percent in 2009 and 28 percent the following year.

Demand for short-term rentals has fueled a new construction and real estate sales boom on Anna Maria, with both permitting and sales activity exceeding boomtime averages.

“Even during the worst economy in a lifetime, Anna Maria has been doing historic business,” said Ed Chiles, an Anna Maria restaurateur, developer and the son of a former Florida governor, the late Lawton Chiles.

“Last year was challenging because of the weather and the oil spill, but we still almost set a record. And this year has been nothing short of amazing.”

The reason other beach communities have not performed as well as Anna Maria is that landlords are generally not permitted to provide short-term rentals that modern tourists want. Both Sarasota and Manatee counties have ordinances in place that limit rentals to once every 30 days.

But certain landlords in both counties are allowed to provide shorter stays if they were providing that service before the ordinances went to effect.

“Americans are taking more frequent and shorter vacations,” said Virginia Haley, president of the Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau. “They are working longer and harder and it is difficult for them to plunk down for a month or more.”

Even on Anna Maria, there are areas that prohibit owners from renting on a short-term basis.

But neighbors tend to be more tolerant there than on other islands, said Larry Starr, who manages 1,000 vacation rentals from St. Petersburg to Punta Gorda through an affiliation with ResortQuest.

“The lines between areas that allow rentals and those that don’t are blurred so much on Anna Maria that they tend to be allowed everywhere,” Starr said. “Use is regulated by complaints. As long as no one complains, the units are rented out.”

After Anna Maria, the community with the most short-term rentals is Siesta Key. It has 2,570, according to figures provided by the Sarasota County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

But Siesta Key, according to Starr and other tourism boosters, has building codes and zoning laws that preclude landlords from upgrading and modernizing rental units.

As soon as their structures undergo significant change, owners immediately lose the right to cater to as many tourists. So they either carry on with their dated buildings or sell to developers who turn vacation hovels into seasonal homes for the uber-rich.

The result is that Siesta Key looks more and more as if it is engaged in a battle between rich and poor, while Anna Maria, with its renovated rentals, caters to the broad middle class.

“We need to do something on Siesta to encourage redevelopment of older places,” Haley said.

Restrictions and stagnation

Other beach communities along Southwest Florida’s coast have different problems.

Longboat Key has been unreceptive to tourists for so long that it has become difficult to rent properties in the middle of the island.

“If you talk to rental agents, it’s the hardest sell,” Haley said. “People want to be around St. Armands, where things are lively. The perception that Longboat is dead is a real issue and the closing of the Colony Beach & Tennis resort has fed into that.”

Over the past five years, tourism tax dollars generated by Longboat Key have risen only 12 percent.

What is more, they have been falling for the past two years — 11 percent during the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2009 and 2 percent during the same period in 2010. And those numbers do not take into full account the Colony’s closing.

Without tourists, businesses move off the island, which makes it a less desirable place to live, said Starr, the vacation rental expert.

“Longboat has taken too long to realize this,” he said. “It has broken the cycle that makes people want to come back.”

Anna Maria has never broken the cycle, Starr said. People come down and stay in hotels or a beach house, and may come back for a few seasons before thinking about buying a place for retirement.

“You have to have tourism on your island,” Starr said. “You have to have a way for people to come and visit or the value of real estate will ultimately suffer.”

Venice is in a similar predicament. Its tourism tax revenues only increased at a quarter the pace of Anna Maria’s during the past five years and have been declining for two years. They fell 6 percent during the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2009, and 3 percent more during the same period last year.

Steve Milo, an entrepreneur who tried to start a vacation rental business on the island in 2002, said Venice made a big mistake when it changed its laws to drive him out.

Not only did he win a three-year legal struggle and force the city to pay him a $300,000 settlement for selectively targeting his rental properties, but the region lost his money-making and tax-paying abilities.

“After they tried to put me out of business, I focused my energies on the Jacksonville-St. Augustine area,” Milo said. “I now have a company that manages 400 properties, generates well over $10 million in revenues, has 35 employees and provides an enormous amount of bed-tax revenues. I’ve also been credited with helping to sell condos and homes to people looking for second homes to rent.

“I could have done that in Venice,” Milo said. “Anyone who drives through the city can see it has tremendous potential.”

Oil and water

Milo and other tourism boosters realize the basic conflict between vacationers and year-round residents.

“Residents don’t get along with renters,” Starr said. “If you sit by the pool at a condo complex near the beach, you can see how they don’t get along. You can see it and you can feel it.”

But if residents do not grasp that the local economy is based on tourism and real estate, and that the two are inextricably linked, it will take a lot longer for the region to recover from the Great Recession.

“For the Southwest Region, tourism is critical to recovery,” Milo said. “Those towns that embrace it will start to recover immediately. But those that don’t won’t recover for decades.”

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Homeaway.com has the largest and most diverse selection of homes around the world, with nearly 180,000 properties across 120 countries.

HomeAway is funded by Austin Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures and Trident Capital.  The company is based in Austin, Texas and has offices in London and Ashtead, England; Kassel, Germany; and Paris and Marseille, France.

“We are happy we could get homeaway.com on board”, says Axel Weiss, founder of Weiss International Realty. “Our clients deserve the very best advertising for their precious properties and we are providing that. Buying a second home in Florida is still a dream for many vacationers from all over the world. Being able to reduce the burden of ownership by renting it part time can make your dream come true. The good thing is, you enjoy it for your vacation now and you are building equity for the future.”
 

About Weiss International Realty
Weiss International Realty is the international Florida Real Estate Company. Founded by Axel Weiss who has been an active Real Estate investor in Europe and North America for over 20 years, Weiss International Realty brings the international touch into Florida’s Real Estate market.

Weiss International Realty is headquartered in Bradenton / Sarasota, Florida and currently covers  8 of the most attractive areas for the international clientele in Florida from the Key West to Daytona Beach and from Sarasota to Cape Coral. In addition, Weiss International Realty has local representatives in the European cities of Munich and London. For more information, visit www.weissinternational.com.

Weiss International Realty
Axel Weiss, Broker
Bradenton, FL 34280
Ph. (941) 866 1666
www.weissinternational.com

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Some good news for first-time homebuyers:

As part of the Housing and Economy Recovery Act of 2008, the IRS authorizes a deduction of up to $7,500 for qualified first-time homebuyers. The tax credit is part of a recently enacted legislation to help people recover from the recent mortgage crisis.

The tax credit is basically an interest-free government loan that must be repaid over a 15 year period. You have to start repaying the credit in the second year after the tax year that the home was purchased.

Tax Credit Rules

• The home must be purchased as primary residence.
• The tax credit is available for first-time homebuyers only. However, you could qualify if you´ve owned a home before, but not as your principal residence during the 3 years prior to the purchase.
• The credit is equal to 10% of the home purchase price, up to a limit of $7,500.
• Single taxpayers with incomes up to $75,000 and married couples with incomes up to $150,000 qualify for the full credit.
• The home must be purchased on or after 04/09/08 and before 07/01/09.

If you are planning on buying your first home and need any assistance, please give us a call @ 941.866.1666. We will be glad to discuss any details.

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Weiss & Weiss International is the international Real Estate Company for Bradenton and Sarasota. Founded by Axel & Bea Weiss we specialize in luxury properties in Bradenton and Sarasota’s most exclusive neighborhoods including Anna Maria Island, Holmes Beach, Longboat Key and Siesta Key.

Weiss and Weiss International consists of a select group of high performing real estate professionals that achieve exceptional results and who are dedicated to servicing the pinnacle of the luxury home market. We are building the prototype international brokerage company through:

• Highest standard of education requirements for all Associates
• Excellent customer service
• A unique network of affiliated Real Estate companies in Great Britain, Germany and Russia
• A focused and disciplined business approach
• Frequent communication among all Associates
• Efficient operations
• Excellent customer service
• Cutting edge training and coaching
• Unsurpassed market knowledge
• Our global database of buyers and sellers
• Worldwide reputation
• Strategic alliances with complimentary businesses
• Innovative use of technology

We look forward to helping you with all your Real Estate needs.

Axel Weiss, M.B.A.
Lic. Real Estate Broker, Lic. Mortgage Broker

Bea Weiss, J.D.
Lic. Real Estate Consultant, Attorney at Law, Notary Public

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