Last week we talked about selling high end properties and the popularity of auctions as an alternative way to sell these luxury properties. This week we’re going to take another look at the increase in million dollar listings, not only in Florida as we have previously reported, but also around the country.

Call me crazy, but one afternoon as I was waiting for yet another set of houseguests, I started thinking again about the startling increase in $1 million and over home listings. So I decided to look at all of Manatee County, not just Anna Maria and the west side of the county.

I used Realtor.com for my research, which represents pretty much every property listed in the county’s multiple listing service, and sorted by zip code and $1 million or over. The total number for Manatee County properties listed at $1 million or over was 214. This does not include any of Longboat Key which as you know is split between Manatee and Sarasota counties. However, on Longboat there are 151 properties currently listed at or over a million dollars.

This was actually quite an interesting little exercise, and although the results were predictable, it gave me a real appreciation for Manatee County as a whole. The last time I updated my $1 million and over numbers for the three cities on Anna Maria, there were 72, which represented a 30 percent increase in seven months. That means there were approximately 142, $1 million and over listings in other parts of Manatee County. Most of the high end properties were of course on Anna Maria, northwest Bradenton, along Riverview Blvd. and in Lakewood Ranch.

According to Trulia, nationwide 4.6 percent of homes are priced at $1 million and above. However, some metro areas have a much higher percentage than that. The top two areas in the country that have the most $1 million and over property listings are San Francisco, at 43.5 percent of their listings, and Fairfield County, Conn. at 29.7 percent. Only 1 percent of the total United States home sales were comprised of $1 million and over during the last decade per Trulia.

As expected, regions along both coasts have more $1 million dollar properties than in the Midwest and South. After San Francisco and Fairfield County, the other top regions in the country with the most $1 million dollar and above listings are: San Jose, Calif., 25.7 percent; Orange County, Calif., 24.4 percent; Ventura County, Calif., 21.5 percent; New York City, 20.8 percent; Long Island, N. Y., 20.5 percent; Honolulu, Hawaii, 19.8 percent; Los Angeles, Calif., 18.4 percent; and San Diego, Calif., 18 percent.

The least number of million dollar listings according to Trulia are in the following metro areas: Springfield, Mass., 5 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 4 percent;Toledo, Ohio, 4 percent; Dayton, Ohio, 3 percent; and El Paso, Texas 3 percent.

The other interesting statistic that turned up in Trulia’s research is that some of the metro areas with the highest number of million dollar listings have properties with the least amount of square footage. For example, in San Francisco, the city with the highest share of million dollar properties, the median square footage reported was 1,774 as opposed to El Paso, Texas, with the smallest share of million dollar properties where the median square footage was 6,908.

I guess there are two common threads that run through all of these numbers. One is that there are a lot more million dollar properties available in the country as a whole and certainly on Anna Maria than ever before and that the coastal regions in the country remain the most valuable.

So crazy or not, I love sifting through data like this, which just goes to reconfirm that real estate continues to be on the upswing, and coastal Anna Maria Island is directly in the cross hairs of this good news.