This is perhaps one of the most misunderstood items in The Villages. There are 3 things that are paid that are often confused, in a nutshell it looks like this:
The Amenity Fee – paid monthly with your water bill, about $145 + or – a month and will depend on when you purchased the home as there are annual CPI adjustments. This is paid perpetually. This pays for the pools, rec center, executive golf, etc. – this is the money for the fun stuff here in The Villages.
The Annual Maintenance Fee – paid annually in your county tax bill and will vary depending on type of home and district (see below) and the CDD annual budget – This is paid perpetually. This pays for the pretty and functional stuff like side walk maintenance, landscaping, cart paths, and building maintenance. A significant portion of this money is turned over to manage project wide things like irrigation of the common areas and general maintenance of the villages.
The Bond Fee – paid annually in your county tax bill and will also vary depending on type of home and district – This is a 30 year bond and once paid for a home is gone. This money paid for the infrastructure of the CDD during construction – roads, water and electrical distribution systems, retention ponds, etc. In the case of CDD-10 there are two bond, one for Phase 1 and one for Phase 2 but home owners only pay on the bond for the phase they are in. The bond can be paid off early if desired (see the district.gov web site). The older areas of The Villages are coming to the end of their bonds, I believe that District 1’s bonds are now paid. For some of the older homes you may sometimes see “low bond” when they are up for sale meaning they only have a few years left to pay and have a low remaining balance. The Villages uses this method for development costs for a variety of reasons while most developers simply roll the cost into the price of the home, either way you are still paying for it.
The basic method for calculating the Maintenance or Bond amount is as follows:
The amount of the bond or the annual maintenance fee
Divided by
The number of assessable acres in the CDD (home site acres?)
Multiply by
Number of acres of a subdivision/unit
Divided by
The number of homes in the subdivision/unit
This yields a dollar amount that each home is assessed in each subdivision/unit. Using this formula Premier home communities have larger bond amounts and annual maintenance fees because of the larger average lot sizes and Villa communities have much smaller bonds and maintenance fees. Everyone in a subdivision/unit pays the same fees, it doesn’t matter if you have a huge corner lot or a smaller inside lot, the fees are the same in that subdivision/unit.
This applies to the residential districts CDD-1 through CDD-11 and one could also assume to the soon to be CDD-12. The other 3 CDDs are business districts and have a different structure not relevant to this discussion.
You can find most of this and the budgets for each district on the district.gov web site.
Don Wiley
District Supervisor CDD-10/PWAC
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