The queen of Manasota Key

10/11/2005
The queen of Manasota Key
BY MICHAEL POLLICK

As soon as you cross the north drawbridge over Lemon Bay and roll onto this narrow spit of sand, you are in Nelda's World. Out of the 475 properties hiding among palmettos and oaks from the northern tip of the island down to the Charlotte County line, there are only 10 for sale. Nelda Thompson and Associates listed six of the 10, ranging in price from $650,000 (nice house but no direct views) to $2.75 million (a big one on a property that touches both coasts).

If Thompson's little company didn't list one of these pricey little getaways, there's a good chance that she or one of her four associates will bring the buyer to the table. If you think six out of 10 listings is a fluke, ask Marty Chappell, who joined his family's real estate business down at the south end of the island five years ago. "For the most part, we don't get the upper-end homes that Nelda Thompson gets," said Chappell. He says he doesn't know why.
"I've asked myself that before," he said. One of Nelda's competitors on the key is a longtime friend, Margaret Adorjan, who started her own Englewood business in late 2001 and is already chalking up $10 million months. "We raised our kids together," said Adorjan, who became a Realtor four years before Thompson did and covers a much wider territory than Thompson. "Nelda was a natural for it," Adorjan said. "Being a social figure, knowing a lot of people on the key, it has really been her domain, so to speak."

Being there Now 67, Nelda Thompson was forced into the real estate sales business in the mid-'80s when her husband, attorney James Thompson, became terminally ill. She became a Realtor in 1985 and opened her own office in 1990. Her husband died in 1995. "I became a Realtor because that's when I thought I might become the breadwinner in the family," Thompson said. The whole time, Thompson has simply done what all beginning Realtors are told to do. She has specialized in listing and selling the single-family homes that are close to her own bayfront home, which is roughly in the middle of the 11-mile-long key. "I'm just Nelda," she said. "I'm just a normal person who lives on Manasota Key." To lots of other people, though, she is practically a legend. Some, including Chappell, suppose that it is a background of family money that has given Nelda Thompson her extra, invisible edge within her tiny domain. . . .Thompson did donate the Englewood office building that her husband had used as his law office, so that Bon Secours Venice Hospital could operate it as a clinic. But what that meant in economic terms was that Thompson had to rent a less auspicious Englewood office for her staff of four. She maintains that office today, but does most of her own work from her home. Just as most of us would be, Thompson was thrilled to burn the mortgage on her home in a light-hearted beach ceremony during the July 4 weekend. "It was a nice feeling," she said. The sale of two land parcels by the same seller made the fire possible, she confided. "I closed on both parcels June 21 for $9.5 million," she said. The nerve center The nerve center of Thompson's real estate empire is a homey, wallpapered room just off the kitchen. The property itself is quintessential Manasota Key.

The view out of the front windows toward Manasota Key Road is dominated by a large cluster of twisted oaks. Her office is furnished with some watercolors of Boca Grande, a couple of chairs for guests, a desk, a credenza and some files. Her Yorkshire terrier, Oscar, watches alertly from a wicker basket just to the right of Thompson's credenza. He used to be a show dog. But now, in down-to-earth Manasota Key style, a rubber band holds some of his long locks out of his eyes. While Thompson and her associates show other waterfront properties, such as those on Casey Key, to their clients, they specialize in securing listings on Manasota Key. From the north bridge to the county line, she says without hesitation, there are 353 homes and 44 vacant lots. At the northernmost end, where a gravel road disappears behind a guard and a gate, there are another 66 homes and 12 vacant properties. The Englewood Florida Multiple Listing Service has designated this tiny but valuable strip of turf as area E-11.

Nelda has been inside most of these homes and knows a great deal about many of them. "I've sold some of them three times," she said. The south end of the island -- a four-mile-long V-shaped piece -- is part of Charlotte County and is designated E-12. There, other Realtors get the lion's share of the listings, which consist of both condominiums and single-family homes. Never low-rent Manasota Key has never been a low-rent district. A couple of families whose ancestors were wealthy industrialists put . . island on the map in the 1950s. The best-known settlers were William H. Vanderbilt and Sam Auchincloss. What makes Manasota Key different is that there is only one street, and it is bounded on both sides by beautiful waterfront views.

"In a general historical perspective, the properties on the keys have always been more expensive than inland properties," said David Dunkin, an Englewood attorney who has overseen many Manasota Key closings. "In the older days there probably was less difference than there is now." These days, none of the waterfront homes on the island change hands for less than $1 million, and many sell for two to three times that. Almost sheepishly, Thompson explains that the homes weren't always this expensive. One of her newest associates just sold her first home on nearby Casey Key for just under $3 million. "I said 'Debi, do you realize how long it took me before all my sales added up to $3 million?'" Her first year in the business, 1986, her highest priced sale was $230,000. In 1987, she had a sale for $1.25 million, the Auchincloss property with 500 feet on the Gulf and bay. But it wasn't until 1990 that she had another million-dollar deal.

The market started getting crazy in early 2001. "Casey Key was out of inventory. So was Siesta Key and Boca Grande. Everybody honed in on Manasota Key. We were getting asking prices on everything." "When the inventory shrinks, people get that panicky feeling of 'I'm never going to be able to buy,'" she said. Like many other aspects of economic life in the United States, the market for Manasota Key resort homes came to a standstill after the 9/11 attacks. During the hiatus, the inventory of waterfront homes grew, but hardly anybody cut their price. They just sat tight.

When the market picked up again three months after the attacks, the inventory disappeared quickly, and prices on new listings went into overdrive. The north end of the island has almost no commercial buildings and retains a sleepy old-time feeling. So it's ironic to witness the speed at which these little beach cottages now change hands when they become available. There simply is not much inventory and a continuing demand. "When anything does come up with a good price it's gone almost immediately. There are really no more deals available," said fellow Realtor Chappell. "The waterfront out here has been appreciating at right around . . 20 percent for the last three, four years, and anything interior is right around 15 percent. So we've been experiencing a tremendous amount of appreciation. "There are no Gulf-front condominiums available, and you can't get a Gulf-front house for less than $1.39 million." The eight-hour contract On a Friday in July, Thompson set her own personal record for a fast sale with nothing set up in advance.

She listed a home at the northernmost end of the key for $2.5 million at 10 a.m. and sold it by the end of the day. She didn't have a client in her pocket, but the home appealed to another agent's client who was already looking in the neighborhood. "The client said, 'While I'm here can I see it? After looking at it for 15 minutes, he said 'I will pay full price.'" "We wrote a full-price offer that was accepted by 6 p.m.," she said. The standard real estate commission in Southwest Florida is 7 percent. In 2002, with prices hovering well over a million dollars, Thompson felt that 7 percent had become too much to ask, and she dropped her commissions to 6 percent. "When I felt the commissions had gotten so large I was embarrassed to tell the sellers, I changed them across the board, even on listings I already had," she said. "And that's the way I do business." Still, 6 percent of $2.5 million is $150,000, putting Nelda's half of the deal at $75,000.
Not a bad day's work, if you can get it.
Release Date: 10/10/2005