Earlier today I had a really interesting conversation with a client she asked me Katrin
what are some of the things I should keep in mind when I moved to Sarasota so I have an easier time
to get acclimated to this new environment I'm about to move into. And I thought you know what
what if i just share this information with you in case you're in the process of moving
here or you're considering moving to Sarasota. So here's the top 10 things you need to keep in mind
before you move to Sarasota. Number 1. Sarasota is not Sarasota county in Sarasota county is not
Sarasota. I know this sounds obvious but a lot of people think of the two as kind of the same when
Sarasota is in Sarasota county but there's many other towns in Sarasota county including Venice,
Osprey, Northport and Englewood. Sarasota county sits between Manatee county which is to the north
of Sarasota county and Charlotte county which is to the south of Sarasota county. Number 2.
Sarasota is not a walkable place even though Sarasota is not big you're still going to need
some kind of a mode of transportation in order to get to these different points of interest.
Now if you were to live downtown yes you'd be able to just walk down to a restaurant or bar
or your local coffee shop but as soon as you wanted to go to the beaches or
shopping university for example and all these other points of interest you're going to need
to have a means of transportation. You can call an Uber, you can call a taxi but if you're somebody
that's going to be out and about all the time you do need to have a car. Number 3. Guns.
So here in Florida if you have the right license you could have a concealed weapon now you can't
openly carry it unless you use it for illegal activity such as hunting or going to a range. 35%
of people here in Florida have a concealed weapon and that's based on a 2020 article from CBS news
and now compared to New York for example in New York there's about 19% of the people that have
concealed weapons. When I first moved here a lot of my friends and co-workers would talk about the
guns that they had at home and to me it was kind of a weird conversation to have because I wasn't
used to having these kinds of conversations just know that having a gun here in Florida
is quite normal. Number 4. Snowbird season. So the snowbird season starts at around October and
goes up until April that's when people who stay here part of the time come in to basically take
advantage of the beautiful winter time that we have here. The majority of the snowbirds will come
in after the holiday season so somewhere around January up until April. That's when traffic gets
really hyped up here. It can get pretty dense the same with restaurants you'll see a lot more people
out and about. Number 5. The weather. So we've talked about the weather before in some of my
other videos and I'm sure you've seen yet other videos where the weather is usually one of the
first things you talk about when you talk about Florida but it's important to bring this up
again because you're going to be affected by the weather every day and so what you need to know is
that there's two seasons here. You have the dry season and the wet season. Right now we're in the
wet season. Summertime it can rain almost every day and you couple that with high temperatures
here in Sarasota the high is about 95 degrees along with humidity and the weather can seem
almost unbearable to some. Now what I tend to do is a lot of my activities are focused more on the
mornings and in the late afternoon because then it's a little cooler to be outside I absolutely
love the weather here even the summertime I've gotten used to it but it was kind of shocking
at first to see the amount of rain that we get here in the summertime now from about October to
may I would actually say the weather is perfect in the winter time it's extremely dry
you find some of the sunniest days. Number 6. Buy a car from windshield shade and this is really
much in line with the weather it gets so hot here if you're parking your car in a place where you
don't have a lot of shade let's just say you're going shopping and 10 minutes later you're back
in your car it can be so hot getting into that car that a lot of Floridians will have these
shields which they'll have for the windshield area in order to lower the temperature in the cabin.
Number 7. Know that we have an airport here in Sarasota a lot of you are actually surprised by
that. If you're somebody who's going to be flying frequently I think being able to fly out of an
airport that's really close to where you live in a smaller airport versus Tampa or Orlando is going
to make things far more efficient for you far less stressful because the airport is really well run
and it really never gets that crowded when I lived in New York City I would have to fly
out of JFK or La Guardia and I can tell you that Sarasota is a dream of an airport in comparison.
Number 8. Grocery stores. When you move here your main grocery store is going to be Publix depending
on where you move from you may have never even heard of Publix and that's because it's mainly a
Floridian grocery store chain. It's a really well run very clean grocery store. Outside of Publix
there's two Whole Foods. One in downtown Sarasota and one on University. There's also a choice of
Trader Joe's which is central Sarasota and then Aldi which is located on the southern side of
Sarasota. Aldi is a European chain I believe it's actually German and it's a great place to go to
to purchase European food. I don't know how many of you love chocolate but if you do love
chocolate just as much as I do try Aldi because they have some of the best German and Belgian
chocolates. Number 9. Meeting new people can be hard when you're moving from one place to another.
Because there's so many people moving to Sarasota those people are all looking to find friends. The
possibilities are great to make new friends when you move here and I would suggest that you join
a meetup group which is an online platform where you join groups based on these different
interests that you have to then meet offline or you can choose to meet people through activities.
So if you're somebody that likes tennis or riding your bike or pickleball and so just
join these different types of groups based on activities that you love to do now. If you're
somebody who's spiritual maybe you're religious go to a church go to a synagogue go to a temple
and I'm sure you're going to find your group who are going to help you get acclimated into this
new space into this new place that you just moved into. Number 10. There's more beaches
than just Siesta Key beach. A lot of the locals won't even go to Siesta Key beach anymore because
on the weekends it's just so crowded a lot of us choose to go to beaches such as Turtle beach
which is just down the road from Siesta Key or the beaches on Lido Key which are just beautiful. When
you move to Sarasota try all the beaches out and see which one you like the best. Now if you're
somebody that's sitting on the fence about moving to Sarasota maybe you just want to learn more make
sure you watch this video over here. If there's any other tips you want to share with all of us
leave it in the comment section. People actually read those comments and I read them myself. If
you're looking for a realtor to help you find a place here in Sarasota contact me anytime.
It would be my pleasure to work with you thank you so much for watching today and take care.