I will admit that I do not know the Developer's pricing model but I would guess that it may be similar to several companies I worked for. We typically had a gross margin target we were trying to hit. If the cost went up, the price went up. We dropped products when we could not compete at the gross margins we needed. The average price of new homes is probably about $300K. Let us assume, for the moment because of the lack of any real data, the impact fee needed to go to $10K. That is an average increase of about 3%. I can't speak for everyone but that (a straight pass through of an increased impact fee) would not have been an impediment to us when deciding to buy a new home in The Villages. Can we agree that without any real numbers this thread is just a bunch of speculative nonsense?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Advogado
Concrete numbers will need to await the outcome of an impact study of the cost of non-road infrastructure necessitated by the massive expansion of The Villages. I have never claimed to have the numbers resulting from imposition of a non-sweetheart impact fee, and I don't think that they yet exist.
With respect to the question of how much of an increased impact fee the Developer will be able to pass on to new home buyers, I don't know and don't particularly care. I will point out though that IF the Developer could pass on your theoretical 10K impact to buyers without reducing sales and profits, he would have already increased his prices by 10K-- or he should fire his CFO for leaving money on the table. In any event, with an appropriate impact fee (whether or not it is all passed on to new-home buyers), you and I, the current residents, will not be paying for the new infrastructure.
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