Finished and selling in downtown Sarasota, Sarasota, FL
Villa Ballada
430 Kumquat Court, Sarasota
Not villas: one five storey building of 22 residences over two retail bays, and 21 of its 24 units are still the developer's. It is occupiable on a temporary certificate of occupancy and no full certificate has issued. The whole record is below.
- Address
- 430 Kumquat Court
- Size
- 24 units, five storeys
- Unsold
- Twenty-one
- Tax rate
- 14.8815 mills
At a glance
Villa Ballada fast facts
Every figure below is read from the recorded declaration and deeds, the county clerk's index, both of the county appraiser's parcel layers scraped folio by folio, the city permit and development application file retrieved in full including every review track and the complete inspection log, the federal and county flood records queried by whole parcel as well as by point, or the county's hazard layers, with a control behind each result. Where two official records disagree we print both rather than choosing, and on this project even the two tax roll layers disagree.
- Record address
- 430 Kumquat Court, Sarasota, FL 34236
- Recorded as
- Villa Ballada, a Condominium
- What it actually is
- One five storey building over parking, not villas
- Unit count
- 24 units: 22 residential and two retail bays
- Certificate of occupancy
- None. A temporary one only, already near expiry
- Sold so far
- 3 of 24 ever conveyed. Two of 22 residential
- Still available
- 21 units, all developer held
- Prospectus owed to you
- Yes. 22 residential clears that threshold by two
- Association website required
- No, by exactly one unit
- Reserve study required
- Yes. Five storeys clears it outright
- Turnover
- Not started. The developer still holds the common elements
- Tax rate
- 14.8815 mills, the plain city code
- Flood
- Mapped outside the special flood hazard area
- Evacuation level
- C, a category three zone, 18 foot surge
- Application to occupancy
- 78 months and still running, a series record
- Current asking prices on the 21 left
- Not published yet
Not published yet
Location: see 430 Kumquat Court on the map. Get pricing on the units still available. Figures carry the dates shown and are subject to change.
Who built this, and what was here
Occupiable on a temporary certificate, and 21 of 24 units still unsold
Start with the name, because it sets the wrong expectation. This is not villas. The city's own permit fields read one building, five storeys, fire-resistive non-combustible construction, with unit numbers running from 102 to 510 across five levels. The 22 residences sit on levels two through five above a ground floor holding the lobby, two retail bays and a parking deck. On a court address, the word villa does a lot of work it has not earned.
Then the unit count, where the state and the city are both right about different things. The state records 22 units. The city's master permit records 24, and its own work description says the building contains two retail spaces. The tax roll carries 24 folios, with the two retail bays distinguishable on every field because they were delivered as unfinished shells. So it is 22 residential plus two commercial, and the state's figure is a residential count.
That is not a quirk of this building. A downtown Sarasota condominium described as an N-unit building routinely means N residential units plus commercial bays nobody counts. One comparable two blocks away is described as 18 units and carries four commercial besides; another carries 22 residential alongside six commercial. Here the distinction decides two statutory questions, and it sends them opposite ways.
Now the occupancy position, which is the most important operational fact on this page. There is no certificate of occupancy. A temporary certificate issued in mid September 2026 with a one month expiry, and the field for the full certificate is blank. The permit remains open with an expiry in spring 2027. The building is legally occupiable today on a temporary instrument, conditioned on all permit conditions being met.
The inspection record shows why the full certificate has not followed. The building final passed in July 2026, but the mechanical and electrical finals cycled through repeated failures and passes across the whole year and were still being worked in the week this record was pulled. An elevated spa permit is pending inspection, and a right of way permit expired without ever being completed. None of that is unusual at this stage. All of it is worth a written answer.
Two open items are named in the permit's own conditions as prerequisites to the certificate. An encroachment agreement is required to be recorded in the county records before the certificate issues. The application for it was filed in February 2026 and is still pending, and nothing of the kind appears in the recorded file. Separately, an amendment to the approved development application was filed a month before the temporary certificate and is also still open.
On absorption, the contrast with the street is stark. Three of the 24 units have ever been deeded out of the developer, and only two of the 22 residential ones. Twenty-one units remain with the developer, eight months after the declaration recorded. At a comparable downtown building of the same vintage and shape, 21 of 22 units are already in third party hands. One unit here has already resold, at twenty per cent above its first price within three months.
And there is no association yet, in any record we can reach. The common element parcel is still titled to the developer, where both comparables' common folios already sit in their associations' names, and no condominium association for this project appears in the clerk's index or on the tax roll under any spelling we tried. Turnover has not begun.
Two record oddities worth carrying into any search you run yourself. The state misspells the street, which is Kumquat rather than Kumqual. And the county's own address file makes the opposite error: it still codes this parcel as the single family house that was demolished in 2020 and carries no unit level address points at all. On the roll's ownership field the record is accurate, with one gap: a jointly owned unit shows only one of its two titleholders.
Take these four to the sales office: when the full certificate of occupancy is expected and what is outstanding; whether the encroachment agreement has been recorded; when turnover is expected, since the developer still holds the common elements and no association appears anywhere; and which of the 21 remaining units are available and at what price.
What this actually costs
Two official tax rolls that disagree, and a cap worth nothing twice over
Before any number, a warning about which record you are reading. The county publishes two parcel layers and they disagree about this building by design. The certified roll shows all 24 folios as unbuilt at $40,000 each. The working roll shows 22 of them built, with a 2026 year and market values from about $597,300 to $1,268,000. Neither is wrong; they are different roll vintages. A reader consulting only the published parcel pages would conclude the building does not exist.
The rate itself is the ordinary city rate with no surcharge on this block. Every folio sits in the plain City of Sarasota code at 14.8815 mills across thirteen separate levy lines, outside the downtown improvement district and its flat two mill surcharge, and there is no community development district anywhere in this county. On the working roll the whole project carries roughly $279,700 of ad valorem a year.
Unit by unit that is knowable rather than guessed. The smallest residence runs about $8,900 a year and the largest about $18,900, while each of the two unfinished retail shells carries about $595 until it is built out. One of those shells is in plan review for fit-out as an art studio; the other has no buildout application at all.
On the ten per cent cap that limits how fast a non homesteaded assessment can rise, this project shows two of the three structural reasons it can be worth nothing, on one site at once. On the 22 residential folios it is worth nothing because a new improvement is assessed at full market value and the cap only runs from the following year. On the two retail shells it is worth nothing because their value is unchanged year over year. Total cap saving across the project: zero.
Homestead is a live but not yet effective question here, and the timing is worth understanding. Two folios carry a homestead flag, and neither is yet reducing taxable value. Both owners took title after the January assessment date, so an exemption granted on application first attaches to next year's roll. At the comparables the flat reduction lands at exactly $51,411 on every homesteaded folio, confirmed eleven more times this batch, so that is what to expect.
On value, the two residential developer sales sit squarely where they should. Both assess at about 67 per cent of their sale price, which is inside the established local band of roughly 63 to 95 per cent. One of those units then resold three months later for twenty per cent more, and its assessment ratio appears to fall to 56 per cent purely because the assessed figure is frozen at the January date while the price moved. That is an artefact, not a signal.
One ratio on this site should never be quoted at all. A retail shell that sold as a completed commercial unit is assessed as an unimproved $40,000 shell, which produces an apparent ratio under ten per cent. It is not an assessment ratio and it is not market evidence. Neither is a nominal transfer, and several appear at the comparables.
The practical version: check which roll layer you are reading before you quote a number, the rate is ordinary and computable, and the cap that will matter to you does not exist yet. Non ad valorem assessments in this county sit behind a tax collector that blocks automated retrieval, so every figure above is the ad valorem bill only and a real bill will be higher.
Where the leverage is
Owed a prospectus, one unit short of a website, and 21 units still to sell
Most pages in this series describe buildings that owe a buyer almost nothing. This one is the rare case that sits on the right side of the more important line, and the wrong side of the other by the narrowest margin the statute allows.
Here is the arithmetic that nobody puts in a brochure. A prospectus is owed above twenty residential units, and this building has 22, so you are entitled to the full offering package before you can be held to a contract. An association website publishing the budget, contracts, insurance, reserve studies and board materials is required at 25 or more units, and this building has 24. It misses that by one unit.
That margin is not theoretical. The permit file records an architectural revision that added a third retail space, which was never platted as a separate condominium unit. Had it been, the count would have reached 25 and the association would have owed a public website for as long as it exists. One unit is the difference between records you can look up and records you have to request.
The structural rules, meanwhile, do not count units at all. They count habitable storeys, and at five this building clears both the structural integrity reserve study requirement and the milestone inspection regime outright, with no small building exemption available to it. So the accurate description is: big enough to owe you the prospectus, one unit short of owing a website, and tall enough to owe both structural regimes.
On the milestone clock specifically, be careful what you accept. The first milestone inspection falls thirty years from the certificate of occupancy, and no certificate has issued. The clock has not started, and no date for it exists in the public record yet. Anyone quoting a year for it is quoting an assumption.
The market position is where a buyer has real room. Twenty-one of 24 units remain with the developer eight months after the declaration recorded, against a comparable of identical vintage and shape where only one unit of 22 is still the developer's. This building is not selling quickly. Whatever the reason, a developer holding seven eighths of a finished building through a second season is in a different negotiating posture from one with three units left.
That is precisely where representation earns its keep. Three recorded conveyances and one resale give you the only direct price evidence this building has, and the assessor's read on every unit is public alongside it, floor by floor with interior areas attached. An agent who has that table, and who knows the developer's position, can price one of the 21 remaining units without leaving money on the table. Nobody selling you the unit is going to hand you that table.
What to get in writing before you make an offer: the prospectus and every condominium document, which you are entitled to here; the expected date of the full certificate of occupancy and what is outstanding; the recorded encroachment agreement once it exists; the budget, insurance and reserve position, none of which has to be published at this size; whether a structural integrity reserve study has been commissioned; and the expected turnover date.
Twenty-one units left, and a developer holding most of the building
Ask what is available, and ask for the prospectus you are actually entitled to.
The area
High downtown ground, a county flood layer with a hole in it, and a surge that matches the grade
The flood answer here is good, and unusually it is good on both a point check and a whole parcel check. The federal hazard layer maps this entire parcel as minimal hazard, outside the special flood hazard area, and the centre point and whole parcel queries return the identical single answer. That is the opposite of a Gulf front parcel in this same batch, where the point returned one zone and the whole parcel returned five.
The county's own layer, though, cannot characterise this parcel at all. It returns nothing at the centre point, nothing across the whole parcel, and nothing out to twenty-five metres. The first polygon appears at fifty metres, and when it does it reads as the shaded five hundred year band rather than the unshaded minimal hazard the federal layer gives the parcel itself. So there is a coverage hole of roughly twenty-five to fifty metres over this block, and the two layers do not agree about the immediate vicinity.
A separate county model puts its own line close by. The county's 100 year model reaches to within about fifty metres of this site, in the Hudson Bayou watershed, and the nearest mapped base flood elevation two hundred and fifty metres away is 16.3 feet, which is below the ground measured on this parcel. The city agrees with the benign reading in its own paperwork: the permit left the flood zone field blank and required no finished floor certificate at either stage.
One methodological warning worth passing on, because it nearly produced a false all clear. A service that turns up in a search as a Sarasota County flood layer, with convincing sub-layers, returns zero at this site and zero at a known hazard control point too. It is a small clipped study extract for a different part of the county. Its silence is evidence of nothing, and only running a control catches that.
The ground is the reason the federal answer is what it is. Lidar across five points runs about 17.3 to 19.0 feet, falling gently from north east to south west. That is downtown high ground: the bayfront peninsula in this series runs about 4.2 feet and the ridge a few blocks east about 19 to 21.
Hold the surge figure against that, because they are effectively the same number. This address carries evacuation level C, a category three zone modelled for an 18 foot surge, against ground of 17.3 to 19.0 feet. The modelled surge is essentially equal to the grade. The building's answer is the conventional one and is the same as a nearby project's: every residence sits on levels two through five, with only the lobby and two retail bays at grade. Level C also means this address is called two categories later than the bayfront.
On the postcode claim record, one figure needs correcting and the rest confirms. This postcode has recorded about 1,179 federal flood insurance claims and roughly $108.4 million paid across the life of the programme, with 744 claims and about $100.2 million in 2024 alone, which is 92.5 per cent of every dollar ever paid. The single month of September 2024 accounts for 86.5 per cent of it, at 514 claims and about $93.7 million. The October storm that actually made landfall here produced 210 claims and about $5.0 million. Since then the record is empty: zero claims in 2025 and zero so far in 2026.
On schools this address returns the downtown pattern, point queried rather than assumed. A single kindergarten through eighth campus serves both elementary and middle grades, so a child here changes buildings once rather than twice, and the high school is a second school again. Confirm with the district before you contract, because boundaries move.
What you need to know
Buying from a developer with someone on your side
Representation costs you nothing and the timing is the catch: in a developer sales gallery your agent generally has to be with you or named at your very first contact for the registration to stand. Sort it out before you call.
The case for it here is that you are owed more than most buyers in this series and there is more still to ask for. At 22 residential units you are entitled to a prospectus, which is the single most useful document a Florida condominium buyer can hold. But at 24 total units this association will never have to publish its budget, its insurance, its contracts or its reserve study, and it does not appear to exist yet in any public record. Ask for all of it before your rescission period closes.
Know exactly what that window is. On a developer sale you are entitled to the prospectus and the condominium documents, and you have a rescission right measured in days from the later of signing or delivery of those documents. Here the declaration is already recorded and public, so there is no reason to wait for it. Have someone read the declaration, the budget and the reserve schedule inside that window, and read the recorded easements that already burden this land.
Two structural obligations apply and one clock has not started. The structural integrity reserve study is required now, at five storeys, with no small building exemption. The milestone inspection regime applies too, but its thirty year clock runs from a certificate of occupancy that has not issued, so no date for the first inspection exists yet. The twenty-five year milestone trigger needs a local determination that no jurisdiction in this county has made, and the familiar three mile test was repealed in 2022.
On deposits the protection is narrower than most buyers assume. The first ten per cent is held in escrow. Above ten per cent the statute permits the developer to use the money for construction once work has begun, and here the work is substantially finished. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, developer, contractor or land-holding entity, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean. Get an independent inspection of the specific unit before closing, use the warranty window while it lasts, and read the limited warranty before you sign.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Villa Ballada, any homebuilder, any developer of Villa Ballada, the City of Sarasota, or Sarasota County. The developer is identified here because it is the owner of record in the county property records and the declarant on the recorded declaration, which is a statement of fact and not a representation of any relationship. Community names and marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. Subdiview is operated by a real estate broker licensed in Illinois. We are not your agent, we do not represent you, and we perform no real estate brokerage services in this state. No one at Subdiview is licensed in this state. If you join an interest list, your information is referred to a real estate professional licensed in the state where the property is located, who will contact you directly. We are compensated by that professional's brokerage, not by you. Pricing, plans, inventory, district, tax, flood and approval details on this page carry the dates shown, are as published, proposed or reported rather than committed, and are subject to change without notice.
Questions and answers
Villa Ballada FAQ
Is Villa Ballada actually villas?
No. The name is marketing rather than morphology. The city's own permit fields read one building, five storeys, fire-resistive non-combustible construction, with unit numbers running from 102 up to 510 across five levels. The 22 residences sit on levels two through five, above a ground floor holding the lobby, two retail bays and a parking deck. That distinction is not cosmetic: every storey-triggered obligation in Florida condominium law turns on whether a building has three habitable storeys or more, and at five this one clears the test on any reading. Had it genuinely been two storeys of villas it would have escaped both the structural reserve study and the milestone inspection regime entirely.
How many units are there, and why do sources disagree?
There are 24 condominium units: 22 residential plus two ground-floor commercial bays. The state's record says 22, and that figure is correct as a count of residential units and wrong as a count of units. The city's master permit says 24 and its work description says the building contains two retail spaces; the staging permit spells it out as 22 residential plus two retail; and the county tax roll carries 24 unit folios, with the two retail bays distinguishable on every field because they were delivered as unfinished shells. This is normal downtown: a comparable two blocks away is described as 18 units and carries four commercial bays besides, and another carries 22 residential alongside six commercial. The distinction matters here more than usual, because the residential count and the total count answer two different statutory questions and they land on opposite sides.
Is it finished?
Occupiable, but not certificated. A temporary certificate of occupancy issued in mid September 2026 with a one month expiry, and the field for the full certificate is blank. The building final inspection passed in July 2026, but the mechanical and electrical finals cycled through repeated failures and passes across the year and were still being worked in the week the record was pulled. An elevated spa permit remains pending inspection, a right-of-way permit has expired without being completed, and an encroachment agreement that the permit conditions require to be recorded before the full certificate is still pending and does not appear in the recorded file. On top of that an amendment to the approved development application was filed a month before the temporary certificate and is still open.
How long has this taken?
Longer than anything else this series has measured. Seventy-eight months from the master permit application to the temporary certificate of occupancy, against eight prior local application-to-occupancy observations that top out at 72 months. The full certificate has not issued, so the real figure is unmeasurable and still running. Both halves are slow: nearly 27 months from application to permit issuance, then almost another year of silence after issuance before the first footing inspection, then just over 51 months of construction. There is no sign of abandonment in the file, though. Unlike a nearby project where the reviewer's notes record chasing the applicant for years, the transmittals here run continuously and the review comments are substantive and answered.
What do I get, and not get, at this size?
This is the sharpest thing on the page and the margins are tiny. At 22 residential units the building clears the prospectus threshold by two, so you are entitled to the full offering package before you can be held to a contract. At 24 total units it falls one unit short of the count that would compel the association to maintain a website publishing its budget, contracts, insurance, reserve studies and board materials, so none of that has to be published at all. One more unit and it would. The permit file even records an architectural revision adding a third retail space, which was never platted as a separate condominium unit; had it been, the obligation would have attached. Meanwhile the structural rules count storeys rather than units, so at five storeys the structural integrity reserve study is required outright.
What should I be most careful about here?
Three things. First, absorption: 21 of 24 units are still the developer's, eight months after the declaration recorded. At a comparable downtown building of the same vintage and shape, only one unit of 22 remains with its developer. Second, turnover has not begun and there is no sign of an association at all: the common element parcel is still in the developer's name, where both comparables' equivalents already sit in their associations' names, and no association for this project appears in the clerk's index or on the tax roll under any spelling. Third, the milestone inspection clock has not started, because it runs from the certificate of occupancy and no certificate exists. Anyone who tells you the first inspection falls in 2056 is quoting a date the public record does not yet contain.
Before you make an offer
Get your inside track on Villa Ballada
We will connect you with a real estate professional licensed in Florida who represents you rather than the seller, who can register you before your first contact with the sales gallery, and who will get you what this page could not: current asking prices on the units still available, the prospectus you are entitled to, the expected date of the full certificate of occupancy, the budget, insurance and reserve position that nobody here has to publish, the expected turnover date, and what the three units already conveyed actually traded at.
It costs nothing, creates no brokerage relationship by itself, and does not obligate you to anything.