PHOTO GALLERY: El Conquistador in Bradenton
El Conquistador, a well-established Bradenton country club community, gets its name from Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer who made landfall in Florida in 1539 on the shores of south Tampa Bay and became the first European to cross the Mississippi River.
An unusual shingle-sided house in The Woods at Conquistador in El Conquistador, Bradenton. )Staff photo / Harold Bubil)
Comprised of more than 20 neighborhoods interwoven with a scenic golf course, the area is bounded by 34th Street to the east, 47th Street to the west, and reaches from IMG Academy to the north all the way south to Sarasota Bay. Two upscale, waterfront enclaves — Esplanade and Legends Bay — extend west along the bay like a panhandle.
A favorite home to elite young athletes and their families, El Conquistador started with Nick Bollettieri moved his now world-famous tennis academy there from Longboat Key in 1981. At the time, the area was sparsely populated with a single housing complex and a gas station at the intersection of 43rd Street and 53rd Avenue. The rest was hundreds of acres of tomato fields. Today, much of the land to the west of the community is still vegetable farms.
When IMG bought the academy in 1987 and expanded it to include other sports, development in El Conquistador exploded. Most of the current 20 neighborhoods were started and built out, each with its own characteristics, architecture and atmosphere. Natural beauty — tall pines, majestic oaks and native foliage — abound throughout the community.
This house at 3904 Pinar Drive in El Conquistador is listed at $610,000 by William Chen Hsing Wu of Keller Williams. Built in 1979, it has four bedrooms and three baths in 3,493 square feet. The home, on a corner lot, overlooks the 12th fairway of the IMG golf course. (Staff photo / Harold Bubil)
Wild Oak Bay, Valencia and Palm Court both have villas and condominium buildings, while Cartagena offers condos only. The Fairways, The Greens and The Woods feature single-family homes, most of them with golf-course views.
Esplanade and Legends Bay, more recent developments, provide spectacular vistas of Sarasota Bay, with beautiful shoreline mangrove wetlands and attractive wooden docks and walkways. Legends Bay is still a work in progress, with D.R. Horton, a national builder, putting up homes in Spanish Revival and California Mesa-style architecture. New owners can use several local custom builders, as well.
Besides the convenience of being near a world famous, elite athletic training facility, what attracts prospective owners to El Conquistador is the multitude of buying options.
“You can get something for $100,000 or less, and all the way up to seven figure on the water,” says Adam Cuffaro, the Realtor with Michael Saunders & Co.
Cuffaro knows the area well, having started with IMG’s Academy Realty Group 10 years ago. When the Academy decided it didn’t want to be in the real estate business, it partnered with Michael Saunders to have an office on IMG property, and Cuffaro stayed on as the sole Realtor.
Most of his transactions involve families of students and IMG staff members with the condos and villas on academy grounds. “I also get many listings from outside places nearby that want to be shown on the board here,” he says.
“What people like is the nice diversity of product, both in type and price point,” Cuffaro continues with undisguised enthusiasm. “Want to look at golf and single-family homes? Got it! Golf and condo? Got it! Condo and water views? Got it!”
Residents of El Conquistador include a number of IMG-related owners and renters. Many famous tennis players who started with IMG continue to live there even after their careers have ended. There are links aficionados who like the IMG Academy golf club with its 18-hole championship layout, as well as snowbirds, retirees, working professionals and entrepreneurs - doctors at nearby hospitals, attorneys and restaurant owners.
There is also a brisk rental market for families of young athletes who come for camps or whose child is a senior about to graduate. A number of former resident owners have converted their domiciles into rental properties. “They do the math and realize that they are good,” Cuffaro explains.
They also like the many nearby amenities, like South Philly Cheesesteaks on 34th Street, Nick Bollettieri’s favorite lunchtime hangout. The De Soto Square Mall and shopping and restaurants along Cortez Road are 10 minutes away, as are the Gulf beaches on Anna Maria Island. Even downtown Sarasota is only a 15-minute drive down the Tamiami Trail.
For those pursuing and athletic lifestyle not associated with IMG, the United Tennis Academy, formerly the Racquet Club at El Conquistador, offers training and play on 15 courts and a clubhouse.
Real estate transactions have been steady. Over the past 12 months, there were 90 total sales. Twenty-three were single family homes, most of them in the $200,000 to $600,000s range, and two over $1 million in Esplanade and Legends Bay. The rest, 67 condos and villas, went from $70,000 to the $500,000s, with the higher-priced units overlooking Sarasota Bay.
The active market includes 15 houses ranging from $399,000 to $1.8 million and 25 condos/villas, ranging from the $80,000s to the $400,000s.
“Of the current listings, there are only four distressed properties,” says Cuffaro. “From a real estate perspective, it’s a very healthy area.”
