Sarasota's Condo Average Just Leapt. Lido Key's Newest Tower Helps Explain Why the Median Didn't.

In the second week of September 2026, closings began at Rosewood Residences Lido Key, The Ronto Group's 65-residence building on the Gulf side of Lido Key. Units there are priced from $6.8 million to $14.9 million, SRQ Daily reported.

A month later, the REALTOR® Association of Sarasota and Manatee published its September numbers. The average sale price for a Sarasota County condo or townhome was $1,082,129, up 157.9% from September 2025. The median was $335,000, up 6.3%.

Both numbers are accurate. Only one tells you about the condo market you would be buying into this season. The other was pulled up by a handful of top-end closings, in a month when a new Lido Key tower began closing contracts its buyers signed years ago.

Ten closings moved the county's average

In its Q3 2026 market report, RASM counted ten Sarasota County condo and townhome sales at $10 million or more during the quarter. A year earlier there were none. All ten closed in September. Fifteen more sold between $5 million and $10 million in Q3, up from one in Q3 2025.

The arithmetic follows from there. Ten sales at $10 million or more add up to at least $100 million, which is close to a third of September's $334.4 million in condo dollar volume. Spread across only 309 closings, sales that size pull the average far above the median. The median is the price of the middle sale, so ten sales at the very top barely move it. RASM's own report makes the same point, saying averages are "more sensitive than medians to a small number of very high-priced sales."

RASM doesn't say which buildings those ten closings came from. The timing does line up with Rosewood. Its closings began in the second week of September, it is the 65-unit Lido Key building whose top units are priced above $10 million, and September held every $10 million condo closing in the county that quarter.

A September closing on Lido Key can record a contract from 2021

New construction makes closing statistics harder to read. A resale condo usually closes within weeks or months of going under contract. A preconstruction unit closes when the building is finished, and that can come years after the buyer signed.

Rosewood's timeline, as local outlets reported it:

1. Fall 2021. Rosewood Residences Lido Key began selling units, and in February 2022 the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported nearly $150 million in reservations within the first few months.
2. Early September 2022. Your Observer reported 10 residences sold, about $100 million in sales volume.
3. January 2024. Construction began.
4. November 2024. The 11-story structure topped out, and by January 2025 Sarasota Magazine reported $239 million in sales to date.
5. Second week of September 2026. Closings began.

So whatever share of September's top-end condo closings came from Rosewood reflects buying decisions made between 2021 and early 2025. That window includes the years when Sarasota's older condo stock was losing ground. In the same January 2025 piece, Sarasota Magazine described a local condo market with rising inventory and falling prices after the Surfside collapse and the new safety-reserve requirements, while ultra-luxury new units stayed in demand.

Ronto Group president Anthony Solomon explained part of that demand in the same article: "People are starting to realize they want out of older homes and condos. People are looking for new."

A September 2026 average, then, partly records the price of new Gulf-front construction as buyers agreed to it years before. It does not show older Lido Key condos repricing this fall.

Expect the same effect again this season

Rosewood may not be the last tower to show up this way. On October 30, 2026, the developer of The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Sarasota Bay said first closings were anticipated in November 2026, with move-ins continuing into the winter season and a limited selection of Grand Residences and Penthouses still available.

When a new downtown tower closes a batch of high-end units in the same month, the county average can jump again. A buyer comparing Lido Key with downtown Sarasota this winter could see an average-price headline and conclude prices are running away. The better reading is that a building got its certificate and its owners finally closed.

The market underneath the average is recovering

The figures that ten top-end closings can't move show a condo market recovering at every price level.

Sarasota County recorded 908 condo and townhome closings in Q3 2026, up 26.8% from a year earlier. Months of supply fell from 6.8 to 4.9. Sellers received a median of 92.0% of their original list price, up from 88.4% in Q3 2025. Cash buyers made up 60.9% of purchases.

New pending sales are the best measure of what buyers are deciding right now, because a pending sale is a contract signed this season. In Sarasota County they rose 19.3% in September 2026, to 291. New listings rose 7.4% and active inventory still fell 12.0% to 1,601 units.

The local gain also stands apart from the state. In Sarasota Magazine's Q3 coverage, condo and townhome sales across Florida rose just 3.1% during the quarter.

The same article offers a reason. Greg Wood, broker and owner of Cerus Realty in Venice, told Sarasota Magazine that the initial sticker shock over large post-Surfside assessments has eased: "We've definitely come over a lot of that." He added that lenders are seeing buyers who qualify for the monthly payment but struggle to put together a down payment and closing costs, and a condo's lower purchase price helps with that.

This is a recovery, not a return to the old highs. Sarasota Magazine's five-year charts show the county's condo and townhome median still below levels recorded through much of 2022, 2023 and 2024. Condos are also still looser than houses, at 4.9 months of supply against 3.7 months for single-family homes at the end of Q3 2026.

What this means for a Lido Key condo search

For a buyer weighing an older Lido Key building against new construction, the useful figures are the ones that move with today's contracts:

• Median price shows the middle of the market without the effect of tower deliveries.
• New pending sales show contracts signed this season.
• Share of original list price received shows how much room sellers are giving. It was 93.0% in September 2026, compared with 88.3% a year earlier.
• Months of supply shows how much choice a buyer has, and condos still give buyers more choice than single-family homes.

A building's own finances also matter, because the law around them changed in 2025. Florida's HB 913, approved by the governor on June 23, 2025, lets a unit-owner-controlled association that is subject to a Structural Integrity Reserve Study fund reserves through a special assessment, line of credit or loan if a majority of voting interests approves. It also lets a unit-owner-controlled association that completed its milestone inspection within the previous two years pause or reduce reserve contributions for no more than two consecutive annual budgets adopted on or before December 31, 2028. That requires a vote of a majority of the total voting interests, the money must go to repairs the milestone inspection recommended, and the association must perform a SIRS before reserve contributions resume. For resale condos, the law extended the buyer's rescission period from three days to seven. The Florida Senate's bill summary lays out each provision.

How a given association has used those options affects what an owner pays after closing. This post is general information, not legal or financial advice, so confirm the specifics of any building and contract with a Florida real estate attorney or your lender.

Quick answers

Did Lido Key condo prices more than double this fall? No source shows that. The 157.9% jump in September 2026 is a countywide average for condos and townhomes, and RASM points to ten closings at $10 million or more as important context for it. The countywide median rose 6.3%.

Is RASM's data specific to Lido Key? No. The figures above cover all of Sarasota County and group condos with townhomes.

When will the October numbers show up? RASM released the September 2026 data on October 16, 2026, so the October report should follow on a similar monthly schedule. If The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Sarasota Bay closes in November as its developer expects, those closings would land in the November data.

If you're comparing a resale condo on Lido Key with a newer tower and want each one's numbers read for what they actually measure, The VanDuren Group will go through recent pending sales, list-price ratios and association documents with you, building by building. Request your white-glove consultation.