No Sinking Feeling Here!

Are you thinking about buying a house in Sarasota, Florida and becoming a snowbird or a full-time resident?  Maybe trading in your snow shovel for a beach umbrella to plant in the sugar sand on Siesta Key?  Or giving up skiing and trade that for boating along the West coast of Florida?  Whatever your goal, whether it be a full-time or part-time Florida resident, looking for a home in any new location requires that you become knowledgeable about your environment in very different ways.

When I meet with a new client who has never lived in Florida, they usually ask about things like hurricanes, alligators, sharks and the like. When you read about real estate in Florida, you may also worry about sinkholes and one of the good things about the Sarasota/Bradenton Area is that you don’t have much to worry about.

Look at the map of the sinkholes in Florida - notice the pink areas which indicate where the fewest sinkholes have been reported. On the West coast there are very few below Tampa.  This regional map depicts sinkhole locations that have been reported since 1954 by the Florida Geological Survey Series No. 110. It does not show all sinkhole activity in Florida, but you can get a pretty good idea of how widespread this problem…but not in our area!

So exactly what are sinkholes? For more than 60 million years, ancient shallow seas covered what is now Florida. Factors relating to the chemistry of the water and the chemistry of the plants and animals that lived here resulted in limestone being deposited beneath these ancient seas. Eventually, the seas lowered to where they are today, leaving a base of predominantly limestone bedrock covered with sand and clay for us to live upon.

Sinkholes are part of the slow, natural process of erosion in Florida’s limestone terrain that occur over thousands of years. These common geologic phenomena generally occur where the limestone is within a few hundred feet of the land’s surface. Sinkholes can form anywhere in Florida, but the highest activity level occurs in west central Florida because of the limestone environment. There are several influences that increase the risk of sinkhole activity such as long-term weather conditions, heavy acidic rains, and drought-like conditions.

It’s been almost 10 years since a notable sinkhole has occurred in Sarasota - this one was in Venice and prior to that one, another in 1989. Despite all the problems sinkholes produce, they are a natural part of the ecosystem. Historically, although not a guarantee, the Sarasota area has had a significantly lower occurrence of sinkholes than other parts of Florida, particularly in the Tampa and Orlando areas. Feel better?

I am a lifetime Sarasota resident and have never filed a claim for hurricane damage...or a sinkhole! So when you get tired of the cold weather and decide to head south, Sarasota, Florida is a great place to buy a home. Give me a call and I will help you stay on stable ground!