From the Editor

OK, we admit it: We spent way too much time this winter watching House Hunters International reruns on HGTV. You know the show: An adventure-seeking couple sets out to buy a home in some fantastical locale - very often a tropical destination - and in just 30 minutes a realtor has oriented them to the best neighborhoods, taken them on tours of three terrific properties and signed them on the dotted line for their beautiful new homes.

Purchasing real estate in real life, of course, isn't quite so easy. But we're hard pressed to find any of those exotic House Hunters International locales that rival our area for beauty, sophistication and friendliness. And house hunters here have a tool more powerful than any half-hour TV show: the annual Parade of Homes, going on right now in new-home communities throughout our region. Sponsored by the Home Builders Association Manatee-Sarasota, it's your opportunity to open the doors to the finest new models by local home builders.

And you'll get quite an eyeful, says Alan Anderson, executive vice president of HBA Manatee-Sarasota: "A display of models by various new-home builders in new communities, everything from affordable housing in the $110,000 to $120,000 range to multimillion-dollar homes complete with lots of bells and whistles."

Sarasota Magazine's Homebuyer is proud to publish the official Parade of Homes guide, which you'll find here in these pages along with our handy, comprehensive roundup of new-home communities, our exclusive neighborhood guide, public and private school directories and a look at current building and design trends. ��

Still on the fence about purchasing your new Sarasota-Manatee home? If the extension of the historic federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers (and expansion of it to qualified repeat homebuyers who've owned and lived in their current residence for five or more years) hasn't swayed you, consider this: New York real estate doyenne Barbara Corcoran announced on The Today Show last fall that, of the 10 biggest markets across the nation where prices have dropped the most and values are the greatest, the No. 1 is Sarasota.

Now that's purchase power.

ILENE DENTON
EDITOR

Photo by Mary McCulley