Condo News Highlights

Thirteen condo towers, some as high as 12 stories, will eventually rise above the mangroves lining the encircling shoreline. The plan is to sell the luxury homes for as much as $1 million.

If only they could find buyers more quickly.

Now well into a housing downturn, the developer has sold only nine condos since opening its sales office in May. In that time, it also has cut the price of some units by more than 22 percent.

Low-end prices were set at just under $700,000 when SevenShores' sales office opened in May. Those units now start at $534,000.

The slow sales are yet another indication of the effect the housing downturn is having on this region, especially when it comes to new condos, economists and real estate experts say.

They can point to other high-end condominium projects in the region, including the struggling Trump Tower plan in Tampa, as a sign of this softening market.

Hank Fishkind, an economist with Fishkind & Associates in Orlando, said he expects new condo sales in the area to suffer for at least the next two years.

The problem is a "dramatic over-supply," probably the worst in 25 years, he said.

"Anything currently in pre-sales will be long-delayed," Fishkind said. "You're not going to see construction anytime soon."

A good barometer of the local market will be Tidewater Preserve, another large condominium development going up on the opposite end of Manatee County, Fishkind said.

Also within the city limits of Bradenton, Tidewater Preserve will offer 993 units on both sides of Interstate 75 on the south shore of the Manatee River. Buildings there will range from single-story ones to 10-story condominium towers.

Single-family houses now for sale start at about $455,000. The first of the condo towers will offer units ranging from $740,000 to about $2.2 million.

A sales office has been open for nearly a year, but the project developer, WCI Communities, won't say how many homes have been reserved or sold.

Spokesman Steve Zenker would only say, "The market environment has certainly been more difficult than it was a year, year and a half ago."

SevenShores' developer, The St. Joe Co., says it is optimistic that sales of its condos will pick up soon.

In the meantime, the favorable bidding in construction contracts has helped soften the blow, said Joe Romanowski, St. Joe's vice president and sales manager for the project.