Pleasure Doing Business: Sail Away Realty

Selling homes is selling the community, and Michael and Judy Baggs, proprietors of Sail Away Realty, began by selling themselves on Gulfport. Both are originally from other areas but have lived in town for more than 20 years. Their 7-year-old real estate business has weathered tough times with everyone else in their team of ten Realtors seeing rays of light on the horizon.

In addition to his family and business, Michael Baggs spends some of his free time serving local organizations including the Waterfront Redevelopment Advisory Board, and even brings his talents to the Hickman Theater stage.

“I have great agents that are out there in the community. They play here, they work here, they live here and that's a good thing,” he says, sitting in his Beach Blvd. office with his dog, Mickey. “We've been able to keep the doors open and we're seeing more sales. In the last few months we've seen a big difference in activity. It's a little bit harder for people to get mortgages and harder to close some of the properties but the phone calls have definitely increased.”

Sail Away Realty prides itself on offering a wide variety of homes, maintaining personalized service and being a good neighbor in the community. It covers surrounding cities in south Pinellas County in addition to Gulfport, and clients range from first-time home buyers to investors to those buying multi-million dollar homes.

While Baggs likes the small town charm of Gulfport, he's well aware that the city's economic and cultural diversity make it attractive to a broad spectrum of potential clients visiting from around the world.

“It's a very different feel compared to a lot of the other parts of Florida,” he explained. “Gulfport is in the most densely populated county in Florida, yet we're in between St. Pete and St. Pete Beach so it's kind of a throwback.”

He feels a number of factors make Gulfport a unique community to sell, including a progressive human rights ordinance that prohibits discrimination against race, color, creed or sexual preferences.

“Not many cities of this size have something like that written into the ordinances. That's pretty cool,” he says, “and the diversity of people. You have very interesting characters and a lot of local color.”

Is the real estate market on the way up?

“I would say our sales are increasing but prices aren't going to be going up anytime soon,” Baggs says. “The inventory's coming down. That being said there are a lot of bank-owned properties not on the market now that the banks will probably be releasing into the market. As they start to parcel those back in, I think we'll see more sales.”

Baggs points out that they can offer large homes and waterfront condos in a gated community such as Pasadena Yacht & Country Club while in other areas lot sizes can range from 45' by 160' next to 40' by 90' and so on.

“That's also what makes it so appealing is that nothing looks the same,” he says of the city. “You look around and there's a great amount of diversity in the architectural styles. You have Craftsman homes, Mediterranean and the whole gamut of things.”

Still, it comes down to the community, its services, the waterfront and of course, its people.

“It's one of those communities where if you're riding your bike or walking your dog, people are going to talk to you. They don't look the other way, they don't look down, it's like hey, how ya doing? What's your dog's name? Where are you from?”