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Old 05-19-2019, 04:00 PM
JerryLBell JerryLBell is offline
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Our portion of The Villages is all electric. I was concerned about that when moving here as I'd never had electric heat. After two winters here, my concerns have long since vanished in that regard. Our annual electric bill is substantially lower than our combined annual gas and electric bills for our house back in North Carolina. Some people might complain about not having gas for cooking, but I'm not one of them. I've never been a big cook and the few times I had gas, I didn't see what the fuss was about. Some folks like the fact that gas doesn't gradually warm up but instead is 100% on. I didn't like the fact that I never seemed to be able to simmer as the gas flame seemed just too hot even when I had it turned low. Whatever floats your boat. I believe the newer parts of The Villages that are being built now and for the next several years have gas but you really need to check on a house-by-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis if that's important to you.

We no longer have a dog (or, as my wife puts it, "We are between dogs."), so the lack of a fence doesn't concern me either. I see fenced villas and even a handful of fenced designer homes going up in the new areas. Perhaps they or existing homes will be available when you do decided to make the move. What did concern me was the size of the lots. They are, like nearly every retirement community we have visited, pretty small. I was afraid that having neighbors right next door and right behind us would be intrusive. Instead, we're lucky enough to have great neighbors and have become extremely close to the neighbors right behind us. The small yard size is a plus in that I spend so little time having to work on it (I still prefer to mow my own, which is a bit of a rarity here). We also tend to think of the house kind of like a cabin on a cruise ship. You may think you need a huge one but when you get here and find you are out and about all the time enjoying the zillions of activities here, you wonder why you worried.