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Our very own Bill and Kelley Sarantis had the surprise of a lifetime several years ago, when the legend himself, Jimmy Buffett, showed up at their doorstep.

Bill and Kelley were #9 to move into Latitude Margaritaville and today Kelley is the #1 choice of realtor for residents buying and selling the community.

Click the photo before to watch the full video from the Daytona Beach News Journal.

It’s here!

Follow the picture below to view the the latest Barefoot Bulletin with all things Latitude Margaritaville!

Ready to pick out your new home?

Welcome to Jimmy Buffett Latitude Margaritaville in Watersound, Florida

You can look through these models, we are sure you will find a new home, where you can see yourself living!
Then, just fill out our form for one of our Realtors to answer your questions and schedule a VIP tour of the homes.

https://www.latitudemargaritaville.com/community-photos-watersound

   

Jimmy Buffett Latitude Margaritaville

Jimmy Buffett Latitude Margaritaville Barefoot Bulletin

Your May Barefoot Bulletin has arrived!

Your May Barefoot Bulletin has arrived!

https://barefootbulletin.latitudemargaritaville.com/barefoot-bulletin-may-2023/0787704001683832095

Want to see previous issues?

Check out more Jimmy Buffett Latitude Margaritaville Barefoot Bulletins

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A native of Pompano Beach, Florida, Tim Kelly has lived in Tallahassee since 1987, where he has been a Realtor® since 2003. He knows all of the ins and the outs of a real estate transaction, and the true meaning of customer service throughout the entire process.

Tim and Kelley have been great friends for many years, and after years of trying, she has finally convinced him to join her industry-leading team, taking the jump into selling homes in Watersound/Panama City’s Margaritaville.

Tim has been a musician and singer his entire life and has many fond memories to the tune of Jimmy Buffet ballads, making his new chapter helping people find their way to parrot-dise the perfect match.

You can contact Tim through email at tim@kelleysarantis.com or over the phone at (850) 445-1192.

Meet Cathy, an A.K.C. Certified Save Groomer who provides an amazing Pet Spa Service only to our residents of Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach. She specializes in extra gentle care with attention to detail. Pet safety and comfort is her foremost concern and she is one of our own residents.

Appointments can be made by calling 386-888-7870 or emailing Pooochadise@gmail.com

Latitude Margaritaville is growing, at home and abroad.

Minto Communities is in growth mode for the Latitude Margaritaville brand, with a growth strategy that will expand the company’s footprint in several states.

In April, it was announced that Latitude Margaritaville was expanding Mexico for the first time with new partner Levy Holding. Though Minto is not involved in the project, the brand’s international expansion is the culmination of years of red-hot demand stateside.

At Margaritaville’s communities in Daytona and Watersound, Florida, the company is logging 50 home sales a month and about 600 annual sales at both locations. At its Hilton Head and smaller market locations, those communities see about 40 monthly sales with a 480 annual sale mark, according to William Bullock, who is president of Latitude Margaritaville and Minto Communities USA.

Those figures were achieved last year and demand remains strong into 2023, as the company has projects teed up or underway in Texas and South Carolina.

“I do see in the near future the opportunity to expand our sales base, and ultimately our closing pace,” Bullock said.

While the Latitude Margaritaville brand only includes for-sale homes in master-planned developments, it reflects a deep well of demand in the U.S. for lifestyle-oriented offerings for older adults. Others in the space include entertainment giant The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), which is forging ahead with a new development concept that is planned to include senior housing.

“While a lot of home builders are cautiously optimistic on the market … we are as bullish as we’ve ever been,” Bullock said. “We couldn’t be happier with the space right now, and we’re in growth mode.”

Latitude Margaritaville wave gets bigger

Plans for the Latitude Margaritaville concept first surfaced in 2017. By 2023, what was once a burgeoning and unproven idea has blossomed into a hotspot for older adult “parrotheads” in search of sun and fun.

Margaritaville communities are typically designed to include resort-style amenities themed after the life and music of Jimmy Buffett, such as “Fins Up” fitness centers and “Barkaritaville” pet spas.

With demand for active adult senior living strong and supply chain issues moderating, Minto Communities is remaining proactive on new developments.

In Texas, Minto is expanding the Latitude Margaritaville brand to the Houston and Dallas markets, along with an expansion of its Hilton Head campus in Hardeeville, South Carolina.

“Everything’s bigger in Texas and you have to believe it,” Bullock said. “The opportunities in Texas are just incredible.”

The Houston-area location is ultimately planned to range between 3,000 units or more, with more details to follow on the Dallas-area project “in the next week or two,” Bullock said. The Hilton Head renovation project will add a new amenity center and 2,000 additional homes to the development.

That’s not to mention plans by Mexico-based development group Levy Holding for the Latitude Margaritaville International Lake Chapala project, about an hour south of Guadalajara, Mexico. As planned, the community will include 194 units, ranging from 430-square-foot studio apartments to one-story homes spanning nearly 1,300 square feet. The first units are slated to open sometime in 2024, as previously reported by Senior Housing News.

The Covid-19 pandemic caused disruption to various supply chain and labor aspects around new development, with its effects just now starting to improve. Bullock said it’s “never been more difficult” to build new homes than during the darkest days of the pandemic.

“Fast-forward to where we are today and the demand is constant and we’re limiting sales each month in our communities because we don’t want to sell more than we can build.”

In Houston, where Minto is planning a 3,000-plus unit community, Bullock said local competition hasn’t risen as quickly as it has in some comparable Florida markets. Latitude conducts surveys on its interest list to gain insight on design components to include for each new community.

Currently, Bullock said most of the brand’s challenges with expansion remain labor-related, with other remaining issues including supply chain variances. To combat supply issues, Latitude Margaritaville purchased large quantities of building materials in case of further disruptions.

“If you don’t get these materials stockpiled you’re not going to have a building without air conditioning in Florida and you’re not closing homes without AC units,” Bullock said. “We’re chasing those issues, but it’s getting better and where it used to be 10 pieces or parts its down to one or two part shortages.”

Bullock said there remained some “volatility” on margins, citing margin compression issues seen by many senior living operators, but the margins remained “much more stable.”

Changing preferences support more wellness

Bullock said the 55-plus senior housing space is rapidly evolving, especially as the demographics shift and new generations enter the marketplace. On the design and amenity side, that has necessitated a rethink of exactly what older adults want from their homes.

“We’re really seeing a transition from a golfe-based clubhouse community to wellness and aging in place,” Bullock said.

That is a trend also seen in the senior living industry, where operators are experimenting with a wide number of wellness-focused efforts to keep residents living happier and healthier for longer.

Latitude Margaritaville and Minto are evolving the product for the future in a few ways, including by planning to work with Florida State University (FSU) on an aging in-place research center that will lead to a prototype model of a home that will have the “latest and greatest” biomedical sensors available, according to Bullock.

“Being able to have real-time data that you can review or your doctor can review is only going to contribute to that whole wellness pursuit,” he said. “We’re advancing with the medical industry to really hone that whole wellness proposition.”

That is in addition to the amenities and services that Margaritaville communities already come with, including restaurants, entertainment venues, pool with beach entry, athletic courts and private shuttle service. Of note is the fact that each Margaritaville community has a relationship with a local hospital. The communities also have 10,000 square foot fitness centers that Bullock likened to any commercial-grade fitness club.

“We set aside space in our town center; where, through extension programs, the hospital has nurses and doctors come out — we do flu shots, but you can also get consultations,” Bullock said. “If there’s a specific workout regimen you want, they’ll help coach you, but they also do larger seminars where there will be 200 people in the audience [learning about] eating and healthy exercise.”

He added: “it’s fun, it’s friendship, it’s music, and it’s escapism. Those are the really the four characteristics our residents express that they enjoy the most about being in Latitude.”

Via Senior Housing News

From RV enthusiasts to Jimmy Buffett fans to yogis, there’s a niche retirement community for almost everyone.

Via Kiplinger.com

Moving famously like a pig-in-a-python through the economy for seven-plus decades, Baby Boomers have been shaping consumer goods and services since they were in onesies. Now, history’s most influential generation is fueling the growth of the next logical sector: the niche retirement community.

Niche retirement communities are exactly what they sound like. They’re residential developments, urban, suburban and even seafaring, designed to appeal to narrowly cast affinity groups–from Jimmy Buffett fans to yoga practitioners. And they come in almost every type of senior accommodation — from active to independent, assisted living through continuing care.

Niche projects account for a small percentage of the nation’s 50,000 or so senior communities and facilities. But they are “the segment to watch,” says Andrew Carle, an adjunct lecturer on aging and health issues at Georgetown University, and a consultant to the field. There are five to six dozen university-based retirement communities for retirees who want to return to the student and academic life. There are some two dozen properties focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors. There are retirement communities for retired postal workers, equestrians, environmentalists, RV enthusiasts and Parrot Head fans of singer Jimmy Buffett. Even Disney is getting in on the action; it’s about to launch Storyliving, a planned community in California “for the next chapter of your life” that includes a 55+ neighborhood.

Boomers, who are hitting 65 at the rate of 10,000 people a day, are buying in.

• In November 2017, when Buffett announced his first Latitude Margaritaville in Daytona Beach, Fla., an active-living property for people “55 and better,” more than 150 fans and other lovers of the flip-flop life camped out overnight at the sales-office for first dibs on 300 properties. Today, Latitude Daytona Beach is a planned community of 7,000 people and there is a waiting list for homes under construction. There is another Latitude in the Florida panhandle, one in North Carolina, and two or three planned for Texas.
• In 2016, when the Delaware-based Kendal Corp. announced Enso Village, a life-plan community devoted to Zen tradition in Northern California’s wine country, 1,194 people put down $1,000 for a priority reservation; when the 275 units went on the market in 2020, they sold out in four months; Kendal is now developing a second Enso Village in Southern California.
• Nalanda Estates near Sarasota, Fla., which describes itself as an Active Indian Retirement community of 83 homes, states on its website it is sold out.
• Florida’s The Villages–renown as a hotbed of conservative politics and libertine social lives–has sold some 70,000 houses.
  “A developer could open a Grateful Dead community and fill it quickly” says Carle. “I can virtually guarantee it.”

Read more: Kiplinger.com

Via Minto.com

TAMPA, FL – (January 10, 2023) – Minto Communities USA announces that four of their five master-planned communities have been named on the John Burns Real Estate Consulting list of Top 50 Master-Planned Communities in the United States for 2022. All four Minto communities were ranked among the top 25 on the list. Minto is the only master-planned community developer and home builder in the U.S. to achieve this result.

The Minto communities that ranked in the top 25 include Latitude Margaritaville communities in Daytona Beach, Florida, Watersound, Florida, and Hilton Head, South Carolina, along with Westlake in Palm Beach County, Florida. Latitude Margaritaville Watersound, the newest of the Latitude Margaritaville communities, made the list for the first time at number 14. The other three Minto communities made the Top 50 list last year and all moved up in the rankings for 2022. Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach is number 15, up from 19 in 2021. Latitude Margaritaville Hilton Head is number 25, up from 36 in 2021. Westlake is number 21, up from 33 in 2021.