The bond on our first home here—a Designer—had been paid off by the original owner, so we never gave it much thought. It was our understanding that the bond was the same amount for all homes in a neighborhood, no matter the size of the home, and that the one on our home had been about $12,000. We lived in that home for 2.5 years.
For our second home (built the same year as our first), we 'downgraded' to a Courtyard Villa which resulted in a larger home with features we learned in our first home we really wanted—a separate eat-in kitchen, an entry hall, a larger lanai, a larger master bedroom, generally lighter and brighter, and infinitely more privacy—the tradeoff being a smaller garage. The bond had NOT been paid off. This has turned out to be, as put earlier, our 'forever home,' but even not knowing that initially, we paid off the bond rather than have it running for another 25 or so years; the total payoff was about $5,500.
Doing so worked for us; I'm not saying it would work for everyone. Then too, we hear current bond figures are outrageously higher today than when we bought. Several years ago there was a big to-do about a 25% property tax increase. That didn't seem accurate for us, so we pulled out our tax bills for all the years we had lived here to find that our taxes had NEVER varied more than $20 up or down; that one year we actually did have an increase—of a total of 8%. Fiscally speaking, we have no complaints.
IMHO, the bond misleads enthusiastic homebuyers to overlook it as part of the price of the home they're buying. But that's a whole other story in itself....
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