Sarasota County
Home Value Report

Where prices stand this month

Median single-family home prices and year-over-year change across the area's main markets, from recorded county sales (as of August 2026). Across the board, values have eased over the past year.

Sales volume and sale prices are two different measures, and right now they are moving in different directions. Homes keep closing through the summer, as the chart above shows, while the median sale price has come down compared with a year ago. Each year-over-year figure below compares the median of the past 12 months of recorded sales against the median of the 12 months before it.

Single-family homes only, to keep the comparison clean (blending in villas, condos, and manufactured homes would skew the numbers). Osprey is a small, high-end market where a few luxury sales swing the median, so its figure is more volatile than the others.

What a pool is actually worth here

Ask what a swimming pool adds to a Florida home and you will be told $30,000 to $50,000, or that it adds nothing at all. Both answers come from national articles. Neither is measured here.

So we measured it. Below are 204 recorded single-family resales across eight Sarasota County communities, from Sarasota County public records, over the twelve months ending August 3, 2026. Builder closings are excluded throughout, because a builder base price is not a comparable sale.

The usual objection to any pool figure is fair: pool homes tend to be bigger, so you end up measuring size rather than the pool. To remove that, each community below is narrowed to a single 500-square-foot size band containing both pool and no-pool sales. Within each band the homes are effectively interchangeable.

Every one of the eight communities shows a positive gap, and the median gap is $99,550, or 17 percent. The range runs from $65,000 in Palmero to $178,000 in Sarasota National. Even the smallest figure is above the top of the $30,000 to $50,000 range quoted nationally.

Why the gap is so much wider in some communities

The three widest — Sarasota National at 40 percent, Gran Paradiso at 30, IslandWalk at 28 — are the communities where a pool is closest to standard rather than optional. In Sarasota National 65 percent of single-family homes already have one. When most of your neighbors have a pool, the house without one is the exception, and it is priced as the exception.

The narrowest gaps come from communities where pools are less common and buyers are less conditioned to expect them.

An honest caveat: this is not purely the cost of the pool. Lot size is the obvious confounder, and the next section removes it. What public records still cannot see is the view — a buyer who paid for a pool very often paid for the preserve or water behind it, and no county field records that. Condition and interior upgrades are invisible too. Read the gap as what the market pays for a pool home, not as what installing a pool would return.

Answering the obvious objection: what about lot size?

The table above holds house size constant. A fair reader asks the next question, and one did: pool homes may also sit on better lots, so are we measuring the lot rather than the pool?

It is a real effect. Across these communities, pool homes sit on lots 6 to 25 percent larger than homes without one. So we ran it again, this time holding both house size and lot size constant — same size bands as above, but keeping only homes whose lots fall within 0.02 acres of each other. That leaves 150 sales.

The gap survives in all eight communities. Controlling for lot as well as size, the median falls from $99,550 to $86,275, and from 17 percent to 15 percent. So lot size accounts for roughly $13,000 of the difference. It is a real factor, and it is not the explanation.

Holding two variables at once thins the samples. Sarasota National, IslandWalk and Gran Paradiso still rest on 22 to 35 sales each and are the most reliable rows. Palmero (4 against 3), Talon Preserve (4 against 9) and Sunrise Preserve (5 against 8) are small enough that a single unusual sale moves them, so treat those three as directional rather than precise. The pattern holding across all eight is the finding; any one narrow row is not.

Two houses, facing each other, one day apart

Medians persuade nobody on their own. Public records occasionally produce something cleaner, and Palmero in Nokomis produced this.

5601 and 5604 Blue Reef Place sold one day apart in April 2026. Both are 2,410 square feet. They sit on the same street, facing each other.

The home with the pool sold for $31,000 more — while sitting on the smaller lot. Same size, same street, same week, and the lot advantage running against the pool home.

Two more pairs in the same community point the same way. 15316 Shady Palms (2,411 sqft, pool) sold $65,000 above 5612 Blue Reef (2,410 sqft, no pool) on effectively the same lot. And 5640 Blue Reef (2,410 sqft, pool) sold $68,000 above 15305 Isla Palma (2,403 sqft, no pool), where again the larger lot belonged to the home without a pool.

The number nobody mentions: villas do not have pools

Across these communities there are 1,082 villas and attached homes. Six of them have a private pool. Not six percent — six homes.

Renaissance: zero of 278. Grand Palm: zero of 462. Sunrise Preserve: zero of 106. Sunstone: zero of 120. Brightmore: zero of 50. Sarasota National: six of 66.

This matters because community-wide pool statistics get quoted constantly, and in a community that is 41 percent villas, that statistic describes a group that excludes almost half the homes. If you own a villa, neither the community pool share nor the premium above has anything to do with your home. Your value turns on location, condition and view instead.

Method: qualified owner-to-owner resales from Sarasota County public records, 12 months ending August 3, 2026 (24 months for Sunrise Preserve and Palmero, which trade too slowly for a single year). Single-family detached homes only in the premium table. Each community narrowed to one 500-square-foot band containing at least four sales on each side. Figures are for general market awareness, not appraisals.

Questions about this report

How much does a pool add to a home's value in Sarasota County?

Measured from 204 size-matched recorded resales across eight Sarasota County communities in the 12 months ending August 3, 2026, the median gap between a home with a pool and a comparable home without one is $99,550, or about 17 percent. Every one of the eight communities showed a positive gap, ranging from $65,000 in Palmero to $178,000 in Sarasota National. That is well above the $30,000 to $50,000 figure quoted in national articles. Each community was narrowed to a single 500-square-foot size band so the comparison is not simply measuring bigger homes. An honest caveat: a buyer who paid for a pool often paid for the preserve or water lot behind it too, and public records cannot separate the two.

Does the pool premium survive controlling for lot size?

Yes, in all eight communities. Pool homes do sit on larger lots, 6 to 25 percent larger depending on the community, so the study was re-run holding both house size and lot size constant, keeping only homes whose lots fall within 0.02 acres of each other. That leaves 150 sales. The median gap falls from $99,550 to $86,275, and from 17 percent to 15 percent, so lot size accounts for roughly $13,000 of the difference. The clearest single example is in Palmero: 5601 and 5604 Blue Reef Place sold one day apart in April 2026, both 2,410 square feet on the same street. The home with the pool sold for $680,000 on 0.18 acres; the home without sold for $649,000 on a larger 0.22-acre lot. The pool home sold for $31,000 more while sitting on the smaller lot.

Which Sarasota County communities have the biggest pool premium?

Sarasota National at 40 percent ($178,000 on 20 pool sales against 17 without, 1,800 to 2,300 square feet), Gran Paradiso at 30 percent ($150,000), and IslandWalk at 28 percent ($147,000). These are the communities where a pool is closest to standard rather than optional - 65 percent of single-family homes in Sarasota National already have one. When most neighbors have a pool, the house without one is the exception and is priced as the exception. The narrowest gaps were Palmero at 11 percent and Grand Palm at 14 percent.

Do villas in Sarasota County communities have pools?

Almost never. Across eight communities there are 1,082 villas and attached homes, and just six have a private pool. Renaissance has zero of 278, Grand Palm zero of 462, Sunrise Preserve zero of 106, Sunstone zero of 120, Brightmore zero of 50, and Sarasota National six of 66. This matters because community-wide pool statistics get quoted constantly, and in a community that is 41 percent villas that figure describes a group excluding almost half the homes. If you own a villa, the community pool share and the pool premium have nothing to do with your home.

Are Sarasota County home prices going up or down in 2026?

Down modestly, while sales volume holds up. Recorded county sales for the 12 months ending August 2026 show Venice at a median of $489,500 (down 6.8 percent), Nokomis $549,900 (down 6.8), Wellen Park $570,000 (down 6.5), North Port $322,500 (down 5.1) and Osprey $737,500 (down 8.6). Each figure compares the median of the past 12 months of recorded sales against the median of the 12 months before it. Volume and price move independently: June and July both closed more sales than January or February, so summer is not the slow season people assume.

By community

For a closer look at any market, including neighborhood-level detail: