Graphic courtesy Pro Mover Reviews.

A new study on the best places for retirees fleeing winter weather to buy a home put eight Florida cities in its top 10 locales. Sarasota came in as the No. 4 market in the country for snowbirds, according to ProMoveReviews.com.

Kara Griffin of ProMoveReviews said Sarasota offers “another slice of paradise where you can enjoy boating, beaching, or touring art museums.” She said the study looked at three major areas — well being,affordability, and health and safety — as factors in spotlighting markets on the list. From there, 13 specific factors were studies in detail including snowfall levels, proximity to beaches and golf courses, hospitals per capita, and the average charge for professional movers setting up customers in a three-bedroom home.

Ultimately, Sarasota scored 68.8 on a 100-point scale in the study, behind only Fort Myers, Orlando and Naples.

The measures used on the study certainly favored Florida; the only markets outside the Sunshine State to crack the top 12 were Honolulu, Hawaii and McAllen, Texas. But the study informs one of the reasons the real estate market continues to boom in the greater Sarasota region. The Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee shows prices continued to rise in the region through the month of October as houses spent less and less time on the market.

The median price of single-family homes in Manatee County reached $425,000, and in Sarasota it reached $410,000, a record high. The median price on Sarasota condos for the month was $332,990 and in Manatee, it was $278,000.

Notably, about 61% of condo sales in the two-county area that closed in October were cash transactions. For home sales, cash deals represented 39% of closings. There’s also less than a month’s worth of inventory of any kind of homes throughout the market, with the average time between a listing and a closing hovering around a week.

“Buyers should be prepared to be patient,” said RASM President Alex Krumm, broker-owner of NextHome Excellence. “Competition will be fierce for the foreseeable future and there isn't a market correction around the corner.”

Graphic courtesy Pro Mover Reviews.