[Sidney Lanier]

In an effort to maintain sales during this general economic/real estate slowdown, The Villages management has been offering various kinds of incentives to buy, whether lowered prices or furniture/golf cart 'sweet deals' or whatever. When looking at these incentives, it's too easy to forget such things as closing costs, bonds, the need to purchase appliances mentioned earlier, landscaping, and so forth. When we came this past fall, the one thing we knew was that we wanted a resale; I had a house built forty years ago and vowed I'd NEVER do it again. We bought a resale, and even though there are various things that need to be done to make 'someone else's house' into 'our home,' we would have to do much of that in a new house as well, on top of which there is the opportunity to find a house with 'bond paid' (as was ours) and very, very small closing costs (where the seller pays most of it). From our experience, I feel that there are better opportunities in resales than in starting from scratch with new construction. IMHO....