Daytona Beach Latitude Margaritaville grows at red-hot pace

DAYTONA BEACH — Latitude Margaritaville helped propel housing starts in Volusia County last year to the highest level since 2005.

The Jimmy Buffett-themed "55-and-better" community in Daytona Beach, which welcomed its first residents in March 2018 sold an impressive 412 homes last year.

READ: Margaritaville named nation’s top 55+ community

The 373 building permits issued last year for new homes at Latitude Margaritaville accounted for one out every eight new homes started in Volusia County, according to Volusia Building Industry Association statistics.

Latitude Margaritaville is off to an even stronger pace so far this year.

Through the first two months of 2019, Minto Communities, Margaritaville's developer, has pulled 134 permits for new homes.

That's an average of 17 a week for Margaritaville — one out of every three permits issued countywide. 

"I would think that's unprecedented in Volusia County," said local observer Ronnie Bledsoe, an Ormond Beach developer who has worked in the local construction industry more than 40 years.

Helping drive the active adult community's growth in new home sales has been the national attention it has received since its launch, thanks to its connection to singer-songwriter Buffett, whose tunes about laidback living in the tropics serves as the inspiration for Latitude Margaritaville.  

The community's strong start has also earned it a number of industry awards.

After being named earlier this year by Chicago-based 55Places.com as the nation's top 55-plus community of 2018, Latitude Margaritaville in late February won several more awards from the National Association of Home Builders including "55+ Community of the Year."

The Washington, D.C.-based trade association also named Minto the nation's Builder of the Year and Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach won the NAHB's gold medal for best sales/welcome center as well as awards for home design, landscaping and marketing. 

Good for other builders

Mori Hosseini, the CEO of Daytona Beach-based ICI Homes, said there is no doubt in his mind that the presence of Latitude Margaritaville is having a positive ripple effect on other new home communities.

Many of the potential homebuyers that travel here to check out Latitude Margaritaville, Hosseini said, also visit other nearby communities, including the 1,200-home all-ages Mosaic "full life" community that ICI Homes is developing next door.

"Everyone benefits from it," he said. "Last month we sold eight homes at Mosaic, which is good."

ICI Homes was the second busiest homebuilder in Volusia County in February, taking out permits to build 15 new homes.

Minto, by contrast, was issued permits for 72 new homes last month, all in Margaritaville.

Bledsoe and partner Parker Mynchenberg who are teaming up to develop a 55-and-older community a few miles to the north on the east side of Interstate 95, called Plantation Oaks of Ormond Beach, also credit Latitude Margaritaville for helping to draw more potential homebuyers to the Daytona Beach area from around the country.

"Their (Minto's) marketing brings people to the area who otherwise might not come here," Mynchenberg said.

'Food, fun and music' 

Latitude Margaritaville's strong appeal comes as no surprise, according to NAHB officials.

“Minto Communities demonstrates innovative design, marketing and positioning with Latitude Margaritaville,” said Steve Moore, chair of the Washington, D.C.-based industry association's Best of 55+ Housing Awards subcommittee. “Out of the gate, the solid sales success is clearly a result of this end-to-end approach to lively, vibrant 55+ living.”

Bill Bullock, president of Minto's Latitude Margaritaville division, said he expects sales to pick up even more when the community's amenities center opens in May, which will include a community pool, Latitude Bar 'N Chill restaurant, the Fins Up fitness center, a bandshell stage and concert green for live music, and tennis and pickleball courts.

"People want to experience what it's all about," Bullock said. "Food, fun and music, that's what it's all about."

Bullock said he is hopeful that Latitude Margaritaville will match or possibly exceed last year's performance in terms of sales, but tempered expectations by adding that he expects sales to ebb and flow.

"It's all based on the timing of the releases (of new batches of house lots)," he said, explaining that some buyers prefer to wait for new sections to open so they can snap up a choice lot. "I wish it (sales) were a straight line, but that's the nature of the homebuilding business."

Since welcoming its first residents to Latitude Margaritaville in March 2018, Minto has completed more than 300 homes to date. The builder is entitled to build up to 3,400 homes in the community, which covers nearly 1,600 acres along the west side of I-95, along the north side of LPGA Boulevard.

Affordability is key

Until recently, Minto was under contract to buy another 1,600 acres from Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. which would have allowed the builder to expand Latitude Margaritaville north to State Road 40/West Granada Boulevard.

Minto officials say they let that contract expire because of the county's recent hike in builder impact fees for new developments, which rose on March 1. Bullock said his company also objected to the county's insistence on quadrupling its fees for off-site traffic mitigation as well as asking Minto to share in the cost on replacing the nearby two-lane Tomoka River Bridge with a new six-lane bridge that would allow LPGA Boulevard west of I-95 to also be widened from two to six lanes.

Rising building materials and construction labor costs also played a factor, in addition to increases in utility fees by the City of Daytona, he acknowledged.

Combined, those cost increases would have forced Minto to raise the price of homes at Latitude Margaritaville beyond what most buyers would be willing to pay, Bullock said.

"We're all about affordably priced homes," Bullock said. "We started at $225,000 and we're now at $250,000. With the impact fee and off-site traffic mitigation fee increases as well as the costs for widening the bridge, it would have raised our starting prices to $275,000. It was a meaningful increase. That's really what killed the deal."

[Minto walks away from deal to expand Latitude Margaritaville]

[Critics take issue with claim higher impact fees could halt Volusia growth]

What Margaritaville residents say

That increase in starting prices for homes at Latitude Margaritaville would have made living there too expensive for new residents Jeannie and Mike Lunney, both retired high school band directors who moved here from Abilene, Texas, last August.

"As two retired teachers that would have been a deal breaker," said Jeannie Lunney.

The couple bought a "villa" duplex unit that had a starting base price of $240,000, but with the upgrades they chose wound up costing $279,000.

"We didn't go overboard with upgrades, but we maxed out what we could afford," she said.

Latitude Margaritaville "is not just a community of wealthy people and that's what we like about it," Lunney said. "There's a lot of middle income, just good people. We don't put on airs."

Sally Trant and her mother Mary Trant moved into their villa duplex a few doors away from the Lunneys in February. Sally Trant, a retired U.S. postal worker, previously lived in Tampa, while her mother, 90, previously lived in Winter Haven.

The villa home they purchased had a base price of $276,000 and with upgrades and "premium" fees, wound up boosting the amount that Trant and her mother paid to just over $300,000.

Had the base price been $25,000 higher because of impact fees and other infrastructure costs, Trant said, "We may have gotten a smaller place (as opposed to the largest villa model offered), but it wouldn't have changed our decision to move here. ... You couldn't ask for a better place to live."

The Lunneys and Sally and Mary Trant also pay a monthly home owners association fee of $223, which includes lawn maintenance services, landscaping and watering.

Future expansion still possible

Doubling the size of Latitude Margaritaville would have allowed Minto to increase the number of homes to 6,650.

Bullock said he hasn't given up hope of reaching a compromise deal with the county that could allow his company to proceed with expanding Latitude Margaritaville.

"We remain hopeful and are staying in contact with the county and the municipalities," he said.

Unless another developer swoops in to buy the 1,600 acres from Consolidated-Tomoka, Minto should still have time to work out a deal while it continues to sell house lots in its initial 3,400-home phase, Bullock said. "We've got a solid six to eight years ahead of us," he said.

Bullock said his company expects to start construction this summer on its planned private Latitude Margaritaville residents-only oceanfront beach club in Ormond-by-the-Sea, and that Sutton Development appears to be on track to open late this year the first phase of its planned Publix-anchored Latitude Landings shopping center at the entrance to Latitude Margaritaville on the corner of LPGA Boulevard and the south fork of Tymber Creek Road.

Both developments should also provide a boost in home sales for Latitude Margaritaville.

"We feel very good where we are," Bullock said. 

Housing starts off to strong start

Number of building permits issued in Volusia County for new homes and the percentage change compared to year-ago levels:

February 2018: 167

February 2019: 201 +20%

1st 2 months of 2018: 353

1st 2 months of 2019: 411 +16%

Busiest homebuilders

Top 10 builders in Volusia County ranked by number of permits pulled in February 2019 for new homes:

1. Minto Communities: 72

2. ICI Homes: 15

3. D.R. Horton: 13

4. Kolter Signature Homes: 10

5. (tie) Paytas Homes: 9

5. (tie) JCH Construction: 9

7. Starlight Homes: 8

8. LGI Homes: 7

9. (tie) Maronda Homes: 5

9. (tie) Ryan Homes: 5

Margaritaville sales going up, up, up

Number of building permits issued for new homes at Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach since the start of 2018 (note: sales began in November 2017. The first residents moved in in March 2018. The total number of new homes started in 2018 was 412 but that included a handful of permits issued in late 2017 -- exact numbers per month not available)

January 2018: 7

February 2018: 35

March 2018: 7

April 2018: 24

May 2018: 32

June 2018: 41

July 2018: 43

August 2018: 58

September 2018: 9

October 2018: 29

November 2018: 42

December 2018: 46

2018 total: 373 (average of roughly 7 a week)

January 2019: 62

February 2019: 72

2019 year to date total (1st 2 months): 134 (average of roughly 15 a week)

SOURCE: Volusia Building Industry Association (courtesy HBW Inc.)