Sea Place Homes for Sale in St. Augustine, FL

Sea Place is a 1985 beachfront condominium community of 78 units at 1733 Sea Fair Drive, off A1A South just past Dondanville Road on the mid-island oceanfront near Butler Beach. The buildings are three-level masonry walk-ups with no elevator, set directly on the dune line with a private walkover to the sand. The wider Sea Place community along Sea Fair Drive also includes later patio-home phases developed from the early 1990s to about 1996, under their own associations, so the first thing to settle is exactly which Sea Place you are buying.

Within the beachfront condo, there are three floor plans: a two-level two-bedroom townhouse, a single-level two-bedroom flat, and a three-bedroom flat, commonly cited at roughly 1,057 to 1,315 square feet. Value here is not driven by lot or square footage so much as by the water tier and the floor: a direct-oceanfront unit, an ocean-view unit, and an interior position can carry very different prices for the same plan. Recent closings have run in the mid $400s for interior and ocean-view two-bedroom flats, with oceanfront and ocean-view asking prices reaching into the $600s. Turnover is low, so any single snapshot goes stale quickly, and the only honest pricing tool is closed comps matched to the exact water tier, plan, and floor.

Because every unit is a resale in a 40-year-old oceanfront building, condition and renovation level are the second big variable. An updated kitchen-and-bath unit and an original-condition one can list close yet represent very different true costs once you price the work honestly. Read the water tier and the floor first, then the condition.

The pitch is direct oceanfront living on a quiet stretch of Anastasia Island, with amenities built in. The community carries two pools, a jacuzzi, tennis and racquetball courts, a gatehouse entry off A1A, and the private dune walkover that is the whole point of an oceanfront address. This is the recreational package you are paying for in the condo fee, and it is the reason the amenity-and-fee math matters more here than the floor plan.

Day to day, Frank Butler Park and Butler Beach access sit two to three minutes away, the island Publix is five to seven, and the St. Augustine Beach pier district with its restaurants and Wednesday farmers market is seven to ten. Historic downtown St. Augustine, over the Bridge of Lions, is fifteen to twenty minutes. Mid-island is genuinely quieter than the pier district, which is either the property's best feature or its loneliest depending on what you want; the community swells in summer and holiday weeks, since vacation rentals operate here with weekly Saturday-to-Saturday summer stays.

Two quiet truths shape value. First, the rental income is real but seasonal and unit-dependent, and the honest math nets out management commissions, cleaning, the condo fee, taxes, insurance, utilities, and reserves before any mortgage, so most units pencil as lifestyle-plus-offset rather than pure cash flow. Second, on a 1985 oceanfront association the insurance and reserve posture, not the view, is the biggest financial variable in the deal.

This is a direct-oceanfront, barrier-island condo, so the diligence is different from an inland resale. Florida's structural-integrity reserve study (SIRS) and milestone-inspection framework applies to condominium buildings three habitable stories or higher, regardless of age, and Sea Place's beachfront buildings are three-level structures from 1985 on the dune line. Ask the association in writing for its milestone-inspection status, the completed SIRS, the latest reserve study, and any planned or pending special assessments. Under the current law, owners can no longer waive reserve funding for SIRS components, so an underfunded older association can face real assessments; get all of it before you offer.

Insurance is the other big number. The association carries master building coverage through the fee while owners carry HO-6 interior policies. Pull the flood-zone determination for the specific building, since flood risk varies by position on an oceanfront site, and get a real HO-6 quote and read the master-policy declarations during your inspection period so the full carrying cost is in your math before you commit, not after.

Map the association layers, because they decide which documents and which fees apply: the beachfront condos sit in their own condominium association, the later patio-home phases have their own homeowners associations, and a Sea Place Master Association covers shared elements of the wider community. Confirm the current condo fee, the inclusion list, and the budget in writing, since published sources do not state a reliable amount. Finally, financing can be tighter in any older coastal association with a rental mix, so line up condo-experienced lenders and pull the lender questionnaire early rather than after you are under contract.

Most buyers weighing Sea Place are cross-shopping the other Anastasia Island and Crescent Beach oceanfront condo communities, where the trade-off is scale, fee inclusiveness, and unit selection. Here is the honest shorthand.

The honest verdict: if you want the smallest scale of the island oceanfront communities, a gatehouse, townhouse plans, and a quieter mid-island address with the beach at your door, Sea Place is a strong pick. If you want maximum fee inclusiveness, a high-rise view, or the widest unit selection, the peers above are the right field to shop, and we run that comparison with real numbers, water tier by water tier, for every buyer.