In a double-whammy, pricey coincidence, Bird Key saw two of its highest sales ever happen on the same day. On June 1, one home fetched $9.75 million. The other, which closed just minutes later, beat that record and sold for $11.25 million. Both waterfront homes, which are located at the southern tip of the key, also happen to be right next door to each other, at 622 and 626 S. Owl Drive. Both homes were also cash deals.

Former 622 S. Owl Drive homeowner Julie McGue, an award-winning author, sold the home after becoming widowed after 37 years of marriage and having her daughter move out of state. 

McGue and her late husband moved to Sarasota in 2017 to spend time with their daughter, who worked for the City of Sarasota Planning Department at the time. The couple lived in a condo at L'Ambiance on Longboat Key but their unit, along with another six floors, was flooded due to issues with a neighbor’s water heater. To make matters worse, it happened during Covid, making a fix much more challenging to rectify quickly.

That's when the couple said, “I'm done with condos.” The McGues moved to Bird Key when they bought the home in 2021 for $6 million. It was built in 2003 by Perrone Construction, and the architect was Clifford Scholz.

Now, McGue no longer needs all that space–the 5,600 square-foot home is two stories perched on more than a half-acre lot. Plus, she can write from anywhere. She's the author of the book Twice a Daughter, a memoir about McGue and her twin sister, both adopted, and their five-year search for their birth family following a health-related matter. Two more books are on the way, with Belonging Matters due in November of this year and another in 2024.

Much of the writing for McGue's second and third books was done in one of the offices of her waterfront home. "It was good for breaks to look at the birds and take inspirational walks," she says. And, of course, there were the stunning views from home, spanning Big Pass, Lido and Siesta keys and beyond to the Gulf of Mexico. 

Her feelings have since pivoted about condo living, but it must be new construction, she says. That's why she's now headed for the DeMarcay on Palm Avenue, which is under construction as part of the ongoing downtown Sarasota luxury condo boom. It should be ready by fall. 

McGue and her late husband Stephen didn’t do too much to the Bird Key home after they bought it. The bones of the four bedrooms, two offices and four-and-a-half bathrooms stayed the same. But the couple did some updating, like replacing carpeted areas with hardwood floors, and gave the house "an overall facelift,” she says. A lot of less sexy work was done, too, to meet flood and wind codes to satisfy homeowners' insurance demands. Most of the furniture was included in the $9.75 million sale.

Realtor Bruce Myer of Coldwell Banker represented McGue in the sale. He also lives on Bird Key. He calls the area an "epicenter," since it’s so easy to get to everything Sarasota has to offer. 

Myer also highlights more similarities between the two homes that sold on the same day. In 2002, Myer represented the buyer of both 622 S. Owl Drive and the neighboring lot at 626 S. Owl Drive. 

This time around, John August of Michael Saunders Realty represented the buyer of 622 S. Owl Drive, who, like McGue, is also from Indiana. The new buyer declined to comment on the purchase, but their father lives nearby. The property is a second home for the buyer, but their first one in Sarasota.

Both 622 and 626 S. Owl Drive were most recently owned by Dawn and Henry Duques, who know their way around a multi-million dollar home (or two or three). Henry is a retired chairman and chief executive of credit-card processor First Data Corp. who also built and completed a 15,000-square-foot Casey Key home in 1999, at 712 N. Casey Key Road, that was featured in the Chicago Tribune in 2005 when it was the highest-priced listing in Sarasota County at $20 million. At the time, the never-before-seen price point pushed the area’s real estate scene toward an elite collection of U.S. communities. The Duques sold the Casey Key home in 2014 for $8 million, and it was yet again listed for $20 million in 2021. 

On Bird Key, the Duques built 626 S. Owl Drive in 2021 with help from the same builder and architect as the home next door, where they lived during construction.

Roger Pettingell of Coldwell Banker Realty represented the buyer of 626 S. Owl Drive, who also chose to remain anonymous. Another coincidence? Pettingell also represented the seller in 2018, who had bought both addresses for $8.6 million, making it the most expensive Bird Key sale at the time. She kept 626 S. Owl Drive vacant—as a sort of private park—while she lived next door. 

The home at 626 S. Owl Drive is 6,576 square feet and, on almost .7 acres, it's a little bigger and newer than the one next door. It has five bedrooms and eight bathrooms. The main suite has his-and-hers marble bathrooms that include a steam shower and steep self-cleaning bubble spa tub, fitted walk-in closets and an exercise room. There's a wine room, too, and all rooms open to the second-floor terrace overlooking the pool and bay views. Built in 2021, one hallmark of its new construction is that it has Tesla car chargers in the garage. 

Susan Fox of Compass Real Estate represented the sellers in this transaction. "A large number of people with deep pockets want to live here, and Bird Key is so close to everything. You can be downtown in a couple of minutes. I wasn't surprised it moved so fast,” she says.

In fact, Bird Key real estate in general is hot. There are just 511 lots, 291 waterfront homes and 220 off-water sites on the island. Pettingell says a Florida-style ranch that's not on the water might go for roughly $1.8 million right now, while something on a waterfront canal that needs a renovation or tear-down might list for $3.2 million—basically the lot price. Case in point: an empty, .3-acre lot just a little inland is on the market for almost $3 million.

"But all that would be twice as much in Naples," Pettingell says.