A Gulf-front Siesta Key residence at 4011 Shell Road, featured in a 2015 episode of HGTV’s Amazing Water Homes, has sold for $5,675,000. It’s the third highest residential sale this year in Sarasota County, after $9.45 million for an equestrian ranch in Venice and $7,399,000 for a home on New Pass in Lido Shores.

“I am excited so see that the ultra-luxury market continues to outpace the prior year,” says listing agent Joel Schemmel of Premiere Sotheby’s International Realty. “We have seen a 67 percent increase in sales over $5 million in Sarasota and Manatee counties this year compared to the same period last year.”

The 9,000-square-foot Mediterranean Revival-style home overlooking Big Pass had been on the market off and on since 2010. In an April 2015 article in Sarasota Magazine, the pool was described as a fantasy lagoon with its own rock grotto. Adventurers climb a set of rock steps, then plunge down the adjoining slide, or jump off a diving rock above the grotto. On top of it all is a stage. “I was at a Christmas party that [the then-owner] had, and there was a fire breather up there; it was pretty incredible,” Schemmel told us at the time.

The buyers are a Canadian couple who sold their vacation home on Clearwater Beach. “They were looking for a destination place, found Siesta Key and fell in love,” he says. Dania Perry of Century 21 in Tampa was their agent.

Because the interior is very taste specific, the new owners plan to do quite a bit of renovations, Schemmel says, “making it more modern.”