Quote:
Originally Posted by JerryLBell
My wife and I currently live near Raleigh, NC and thought we'd retire to North or South Carolina. We've looked at communities around Raleigh and Charlotte and down into the Myrtle Beach area. We saw a lot of nice but small and pretty quiet retirement communities. Friends told us about The Villages and we visited the next time we were down. We were blown away but then we're very activity-oriented. When we're on vacations, we want something to do every day. We don't know how to lay around a pool or on a beach while reading and having fancy drinks. So we wanted a retirement community that would be full of activities. Prior to visiting The Villages, our standards were set by Sun City West, where my mother-in-law lived. We wanted at least that but not in a desert area (we actually like some humidity). After visiting The Villages and several other active retirement communities in Florida (which seems to have a corner on that market), we decided there is just nowhere like The Villages and ended up buying this spring. We aren't living there yet (can't retire for another year or two) but we are hugely looking forward to the lifestyle there. Will the summers be hot? You bet, but I don't think they'll be much worse than around here (which seemed horrendously hot when we moved here from Michigan 16 year ago, but we quickly adjusted). Will there be mountains? Not in Florida, that's for sure. Will it get cold? Probably a bit on occasion, but none of the snow and ice that blueeagle65 mentioned that we definitely get here (though it's a tiny fraction of what we had in Michigan). I am done with snow and ice. Is The Villages for everyone? No, but I think we're the kind of people it is for. Whether you are or not is entirely up to you. You might want to try the "lifestyle preview" visit and see for yourselves. You might come to love what The Villages has to offer or you might come to totally appreciate your wife's desire to live in the hills of the Carolinas.
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I can't agree more. My son lives just outside Raleigh/Durham, and we stop for a few days when we drive down from NY. In the summer, NC was brutal---same temp as TV, same humidity, and NO breeze, and plenty of mosquitos. Next day in TV, I could sit on my lanai with the fans on and the breeze and be relatively comfortable. In February, the temps were 35-40 in NC, some days 45. Was playing golf in short sleeves the next day here. I'll take TV climate over EASTERN NC any day. I know it is cooler in western NC, but that is true in the winter as well.