SARASOTA - Counting the Lexuses, BMWs and Mercedes on U.S. 41? This might save you time.
One out of eight of the people keeping you company at the stoplights have a household net worth of $1 million or more, not counting their main home.
If you think that is a good thing, stick around.
By the year 2009, the ratio is going to be one out of six.
Millionaires will account for 54,267 households, an increase of 58 percent from the present level, projections made available to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune by U.S. Trust Co. show.
Financial firms like U.S. Trust - soon to become part of Bank of America - are being drawn to the region's abundance of fat stock, bond and real estate portfolios, not to mention a spate of high-end retailers hungrily eyeing Southwest Florida as a potential shopping mecca for the affluent.
It is the kind of statistic that makes even some of the most skeptical players in the real estate game confident that Southwest Florida is going to have a healthy share of the millions of well-heeled baby boomers retiring during the next 20 years.
U.S. Trust - a firm founded in 1853 with the sole purpose of wealth management - just got around to opening a Sarasota office last year.
The move put the company in direct competition with Northern Trust, the Chicago-based company that has cultivated Sarasota snowbirds' fields of green since 1977.
For both, data on wealth per household is like a thermometer, refreshing itself outside the window on a continuing basis, confirming what they already felt in their hearts - that they are in the right place.
"From St. Pete down through Sarasota is the 10th-wealthiest corridor in the United States," said Scott Merritt, U.S. Trust's Sarasota president as he sat in the firm's 11th-floor conference room. "It just shouted that Sarasota and this whole region should be a place for U.S. Trust to come and be."
The 2005 wealth per household data as well as the 2009 projections come from TNS, a global database firm whose affluent market research program is run out of Chicago by Jeanette Luhr.
She does the projections when clients request them and does not like their getting out into the public view.
"It is a very, very loose projection," said Luhr, whose firm charges $45,000 just for its basic yearly report and database on wealth by household throughout the nation.
On the other hand, she is quite confident about the current number of millionaire households.
Her outfit also figures out half-millionaire households and penta-millionaire households (a millionaire five times over) for every single metro area in the nation.
Out of a total of 292,363 households in Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, 51,662, or 18 percent, could be considered at least well-fixed, with net worth of $500,000 or more, not counting their principal residence.
While the number of households in the Sarasota-Bradenton metropolitan area is expected to grow 12 percent to 314,677 from 2004 to 2009, the number of million-dollar households is expected to grow 17 percent to 54,267.
Even more dramatic were the TNS projections for Port Charlotte-Punta Gorda.
During the same time period, the firm's data shows the population growing by 11 percent to 77,839 while the number of million-dollar households grows 67 percent to 12,247.
Based on per-capita spendable income, three of the top 25 markets in the nation are on the Southwest Florida coast.
Naples is fourth at $29,181 per person per year. Sarasota sits at 18th with per-capita spending power of $24,649 per year.
Rounding out the regional grouping is Cape Coral, with spendable income of $23,979 per person and a 21st-place ranking
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