Wanted – a home for my boat
You’ve heard the old adage, the happiest days in a boat owner’s life is the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it. But if you’re one of those boating diehards who never want to experience the day you sell your boat, then you may be looking for a home for your floating obsession.
Everyone who lives in Florida wants to live on the water. After all, that’s the reason most of us are here. However, purchasing a home on the Gulf of Mexico or Tampa Bay comes with a premium. If you also happen to be a boat owner, then that premium gets even more expensive. Since maintaining a permanent boat dock directly on the Gulf or the bay is not an option, you will have to pay separately for dock space away from your waterfront home.
Renting dock space in a marina in our area runs approximately $9 per foot per month for an annual rental and $11 per foot per month on a monthly basis. This translates to between $360 and $440 per month for a 40-foot boat. You also can purchase boat slips, which are setup as condos and usually include a monthly or annual maintenance fee. Condo slips can be bought and sold just like real property, and increase and decrease in value the same. At the Longboat Key Marina on Longboat Key, for example, slips are available to purchase between $330,000 and $59,000 for slips between 40 to 55 feet. As you can see, boating is not for the faint of financial heart.
However, there are other options, and Manatee County has plenty of them. Anna Maria Island is blessed with several canal-front residential areas, all of which either already have docks or at least have the ability to create one. Key Royale, as well as many other streets across from Key Royale off of Bimini Bay in Holmes Beach, are developed along canals and are a perfect choice for boaters. Anna Maria city also has several streets with canals that can be accessed from Tampa Bay through the Key Royale Pass, and although Bradenton Beach is short on canals, many property owners on the Intracoastal side of the Island do have boat docks. Anna Maria also has several condos with boat slips available to owners.
On the mainland, there are many housing communities on canals where boat docks are offered – Flamingo Cay, Coral Shores and San Remo Shores are three of them. Cortez has three condo complexes where boat slips are part of ownership – Mariners Cove, Smugglers Landing and The Pointe, as well as the communities of Harbour Landings that we talked about last week, Sunset Harbour and Cove Sound. And don’t forget the river. The Manatee River has beautiful waterfront homes where boats can be docked, as well as communities leading out to the river further east, like The Inlets.
There are others I’m missing, but you get the picture. If you have a boat and want to avoid high monthly and annual fees to find a home for it, considering a property with available boat dockage is an option.
According to the National Marine Manufacturers Association in 2013, new and used boat sales in the United States reached $36.7 billion. Based on that number, I don’t think boating is something that is going away any time soon.
If you’re like me, the happiest day of your life could be the day you buy a home for your boat, which just happens to come with a home for you as well.