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Realtor Dean Saunders Works to Protect the Natural Beauty of Property
THE LAND MAN
By Rachel Pleasant The Ledger
rachel.pleasant@theledger.com
LAKELAND, FL
 In extreme eastern Polk County, 4,863 acres called the Bombing Range Flatwoods won't ever become an apartment complex or shopping plaza. The land was sold to the state Oct. 14, forever protecting the vast expanse of land and its wildlife.
The bombing range purchase was also the latest in a long list of conservation deals made by Lakeland Realtor Dean Saunders, who brokered the bombing range sale. Saunders, of Saunders Real Estate, handles the usual residential and commercial transactions but he estimates 70 percent of his time is dedicated to conservation easement deals.
You could call it his pet project, considering he helped develop the program from the start. In 1994, Saunders, then a member of the state House of Representatives, was instrumental in establishing the Green Swamp Land Authority, the first state agency designed to purchase development rights from landowners.
And he's been working with conservation easements ever since, even after leaving the House in 1996. "A conservation easement is permanent protection and it pays the property owner," Saunders said. "With a conservation easement you have ensured that your property won't be developed."
His wealth of knowledge regarding conservation easements won Saunders two major awards last year. Saunders wrote a 21-page pamphlet called "We Create Solutions for Landowners" and the booklet took the golden prize in the 2002 Galaxy Awards and Mercury Awards, two marketing prizes.
Saunders, 43, grew up in Clermont and attended the University of Florida where he earned a degree in fruit crops and food and resource economics. At UF he was active in the College of Agriculture student council and participated in student government. He was also president of the student senate. Those activities might have paved the way for his future involvement with politics on the state level.
After graduation, he went to work for Golden Gem Growers, a fruit co-op in Umatilla. In the following years, though, Saunders, who'd gotten his real estate license as a college senior, would work as a lobbyist for the Florida Farm Bureau Federation and a director of external affairs for then-Gov. Lawton Chiles.
In 1992, Saunders won his own bid for office when he was elected to the state House of Representatives. "When I was in the Legislature, my background in real estate and agriculture made me a big property-rights proponent," Saunders said. "I'm always trying to think of ways to protect nature but at the same time protect the integrity of property rights." Thus, the idea for conservation easements was born.
Years later, he created his booklet out of his simple desire to give landowners a crash course in their options. Soon after Saunders left the political scene, he started receiving calls from landowners interested in conservation easements. It was clear leaving the House wouldn't mean leaving behind all the work he'd done there.
Saunders explains that with a property purchase comes a number of rights and when those rights are sold, compensation is due. After selling development rights, the landowner remains in control of the property and is assured that the property will be protected. For a parcel to be considered for an easement it has to meet certain criteria. Those include being home to endangered animals or plants or being adjacent to government land.
Saunders doesn't expect his workload to get any lighter because of Florida's tourism industry and population boom, making land even more valuable, as he explains in his booklet. Conservation easements are a win-win situation, Saunders explains, allowing land to be protected, all the while giving the landowner income. "A lot of times people come to me and say `I want to make sure that my grandkids don't get hold of this property and sell it to development.' But sometimes these people are asset rich and cash poor. They can do a whole lot of living on the money from a conservation easement."
Cary and Layne Lightsey are clients of Saunders's. About a year and a half ago they sold the development rights on 3,500 acres of ranch land in Lake Placid to The Nature Conservancy. The brothers employed the help of Saunders because, Lightsey said, the Realtor shared his same environmental concerns. "If we don't save this land for the future, they'll never know what it looked like," Cary Lightsey said of his great- and great-greatgrandchildren. "Dean's an environmentally sensitive person. He likes to see land saved for the future in its natural state. I've got so much faith in Dean that I've never signed an agreement with him. It's always just been with a handshake."
Rachel Pleasant can be reached at rachel.pleasant@theledger.com or 863-802-7592.
For more information on conservation easements, contact:
Coldwell Banker Commercial Saunders Real Estate
863-648-1528
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