“I am getting so many calls offering great deals in Florida,” says the owner of Marr International Ltd., a London-based real estate listing company that partners with real estate Web sites around the globe. “One offered a free new pool for the buyer. Another offered a free car.”

What’s triggering these transatlantic offers? British buyers have been very active in Florida over the past few years. Just three years ago, at the height of the real estate boom, with skyrocketing prices and a still-strong U.S. dollar, foreigners scooped up a hefty 15 percent of all real estate sold in Florida. Now, Florida properties are bargains in comparison. There’s a big choice of distressed properties, prices keep falling and the dollar is at an all-time low. So foreigners—especially Brits—should be swarming toward Florida real estate like a herd of hungry grasshoppers, right?

Not quite.

“People buying just on exchange rate are few and far between,” says Frank Pointon of Changemaker Property Ltd., based in Stratford-upon-Avon. He manages a pool of British money that primarily buys distressed Florida properties to flip them in a matter of weeks.

Indeed, the main direction foreign buying has been going in Florida, and even more so in this region, is down. An analysis of property ownership data in Sarasota and Manatee counties by Biz941 shows that there were considerably fewer foreign owners in our area in 2007 than in 1999. While the total assessed value of properties owned by foreigners here rose from $693 million to $1.9 billion in the eight-year period—reflecting booming real estate values—the number of properties dropped 22 percent, from 9,289 to 7,250.

Canadians are the largest group of foreign property owners here, but they have been leaving the area in droves. The number of Canadian-owned properties dropped 35 percent since 1999, from 6,263 to 4,074.

The drop seems counterintuitive since the Canadian “loonie” is near a 33-year high against the U.S. dollar, and the Canadian real estate market is expected to remain stable in 2008. But Lawrence Barker, executive director of the Toronto-based Canadian Snowbird Association, contends that Canadian buying in the Sunshine State has been declining for years, and that the strong loonie won’t reverse that trend. The main reason, according to the Toronto-based snowbird association, is Florida’s Save Our Homes amendment that caps property taxes for primary residences, but frees taxes for all other properties. Canadians are spurning Florida and buying homes and condos in other U.S. markets such as Arizona.

“You may have a condo building in Florida, where one unit owner pays $3,000 in property taxes, and the guy in an identical apartment across the hallway pays $13,000. It’s a big issue for [Canadian] snowbirds. A lot of people have this misconception that snowbirds are fat, big cats. There are some millionaires, but the vast majority are modest middle-class people, or retirees living on a fixed income.”

Germans also have been running for the exit. From 1999 to 2007, the number of properties in Sarasota-Bradenton owned by Germans fell by nearly half. In 1999 Germans were the second-largest group of foreigners owning real estate here; now they’re third, far behind British owners who are the exception from the downward rule (see “German Exodus?” page X).

And the most recent available figures aren’t encouraging. As recently as 2006, Sarasota-Bradenton saw considerably higher declines in foreign buying than the overall state. According to the 2007 Profile of International Home Buyers in Florida study, published in May by the Florida Association of Realtors, existing home sales to foreigners in Florida in 2006 suffered a breathtaking 65-percent drop—to 28,900 from 81,900 in 2005—while overall sales declined only 27.6 percent. The share of foreign buyers in all transactions dropped from 15 percent in 2005 to 7.3 percent in 2006. Sarasota-Bradenton’s fall was even harder. In 2006, our area captured only 5 percent of all foreign homebuyers in the state in 2006, down from 13 percent in 2005.

Many owners of businesses catering to Germans and Canadian property owners believe that Sarasota and Manatee real estate has little chance of again attaining the buying levels the area enjoyed during the late 1990s, Florida’s golden age of foreign real estate investment. Pessimism is prevalent.

Take Fritz Mayr’s Overseas Realty, which builds entire subdivisions for mostly German buyers and then manages the homes for their absentee owners. The Bavarian entrepreneur, who has built, sold and managed real estate in Sarasota since 1980, says that—at least when it comes to German buyers—foreigners are staying away this time.