In Manatee County’s cooling real estate market—where homes are now taking around 98 days to sell—one tiny cottage in Braden Castle Park managed to go from listing to closing in just about 15 days. The price? Full asking: $187,500 in cash. It proved that, in real estate as in real life, personality trumps conformity.

 

 

 

 

 

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Located at 8 Desoto St. E. in Bradenton, the 756-square-foot home is impossible to miss. The exterior is bubblegum pink, the front door flanked by candy-striped trim, the porch tiled in black-and-white checks. Inside, bold greens, stripes and florals fill the living spaces. The fireplace—original, though no longer in use—features a modern take on cheetah print wallpaper. 

Angel and Bill Blaker, Michigan snowbirds and experienced house flippers, bought the cottage two years ago for $142,500 after a friend told them about it. They decided not to play it safe. “We usually go middle of the road [in terms of design] for the average person's taste,” Angel says. “But we thought, let’s have some fun with it.”

Fun, in this case, meant leaning all the way into what Angel calls her “Dorothy Draper–inspired” love of color.

Step inside, and the cottage reveals its full charm offensive. The Blakers' favorite spot, the living room, is oversized for the home’s footprint and layered with bright stripes, Chinoiserie ginger jars and cheerful florals. A rattan daybed is tucked beneath the bay window, while green-and-white cheetah-print wallpaper accents the bathroom. The kitchen pops with emerald-green cabinets; a hot pink console anchors the dining nook.

“I could keep going, but I don’t have another ounce of space,” Angel says of her decorating spree. “I never met a ginger jar I didn’t like.”

Plus, she notes, the local resale scene is "amazing."

At first, the home's pink exterior sparked a range of reactions. Some neighbors quipped that it looked like an ice cream shop. Others stopped by just to see what was going on.

“We met everyone [in the neighborhood] in the first two days of painting it pink,” Bill says. There were skeptics, sure—but just as many who loved it. “It was almost like a duel between the ‘we love it’ camp and the ‘we don’t’ camp."

But as social media response to this listing later proved, the house spoke to something people didn’t know they’d been missing: a bold, happy slice of Old Florida nostalgia. It's unafraid to stand out.

“You don’t try to change a property like that. You lean into what it is,” says the Blakers' realtor, Maryann Lawler Garcia of Wagner Realty.

When the listing hit the MLS, it quickly racked up 2,500 likes, 330 shares and 593 comments on the Zillow Gone Wild’s Facebook page. One commenter was concerned: “Someone is going to buy this house and make it so boring," they wrote.

But that won’t be the case. The buyers, represented by Tammy Pogar of Wagner Realty, fell for the property exactly as it was.

“[The new owners] wanted everything just the way it was,” says Garcia.

Braden Castle Park itself is as much a character as any of its cottages. Established in 1924 as a winter refuge for members of the Tin Can Tourists—an early RV and auto-camping club—it became a tight-knit community. 

Originally a sugar plantation developed back in the 1840s—and said to be the largest in the country—it was built by the Braden brothers using the labor of enslaved people. Named after the ruins of Dr. Joseph Braden’s 1850s sugar plantation “castle” nearby. After the Tin Can Tourists gradually abandoned their tents, cottages were built—many of which still exist. The neighborhood spans about 34 acres along the Manatee River. 

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1983, the cottages—many no larger than 800 square feet—were originally built as modest seasonal escapes and have since been passed down through generations of families found new life with owners like the Blakers, eager to put their stamp on a piece of history. Nearly 200 small lots line narrow lanes where porches brim with potted orchids, mailboxes take whimsical shapes and neighbors greet each other with a wave from their golf carts. Boating, shuffleboard, and community potlucks are still part of the rhythm of life there, along with the kind of neighborly spirit that makes a bold pink paint job a conversation starter rather than a faux pas.

The Blakers left everything behind but their clothes, and took with them a coffee-table book Garcia made of the cottage’s viral fame.

“She couldn’t have given us a better parting gift," Bill says. "This one’s gonna stick with us."