We rented our house on our own for 3 1/2 years before making it our permanent home. We used villagershomes4rent.com for advertising. The annual fee to use this site was $125. The site was user friendly and we had great success. We usually rented our home for 6-7 months per year. We visited and used it ourselves at other times during the year as we lived about 6 hours away at the time. By going this route, we were not restricted to certain requirements imposed by renting through The Villages.
As far as minor repairs, if there were problems during the times that tenants were there, we were able to arrange for repairmen to schedule a time that tenant was available. This was never a problem as the tenant usually needed the repair completed (example, the freezer ice maker was leaking and not making ice correctly).
The Villages Community Watch provides good service. Personnel called us a couple of times when tenants went to bed and left the garage door open. We also had good neighbors who would contact us for unusual situations (such as when our sprinkler system had leaks).
Renting yourself can be done — it takes a little work because it basically becomes a business. If you go this route, the site I mentioned above has great information available to guide you through the process and requirements.
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