Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainger99
I have been here about two years and my wife is talking about moving. When we got here, we both agreed that we didn't want to back up to a lanai so we back up to a wall. Now, she is talking about getting a house with a view.
The Villages website refers to Home Golf Front Site, Golf View Site, Water Front Site, Water View Site, View Site, and Preserve Site.
Can anyone explain the differences between a Golf Front Site and a Golf View Site and a Water Front Site and a Water View Site and a regular View Site? Why isn't there a preserve view site?
Any pros or cons for these various sites?
I have seen complaints from people that live on golf courses - noise and golf balls in their back yards. Do people with view sites think that it is worth the premium price?
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I’ve lived most of my life in forests with few or no other houses in sight. I bought a house here because it had a pool, then several shady trees, then a fairway, then more trees. When I sat in the living room, I could see no other houses. Few houses like mine have that much privacy. I loved the sense of openness. I have a friend who lives in a house with a kissing lanai. She and her neighbors get along, but she always has to close the curtains at night. If she steps onto her patio, neighbors come out for a chat. No privacy. I have another friend with a much nicer home than mine, corner lot, bare wall and no windows on one side, six foot plastic privacy fence on the other. She can’t see into her neighbors’ homes, but she would have loved a view like I had.
I sold the home with pool on a golf course a few months ago for $525. Now I am mortgage free and saving thousands a year on pool cleaning, mowing, fertilizing, etc. I bought a ten year old courtyard villa in a very attractive and quiet neighborhood. Yes, I can see houses and housetops out my windows, but no one can see in. I’ve only heard neighbors outside a couple times. I don’t need to close curtains, as no one can see in. If I felt like trimming the shrubs in the courtyard in the buff, no one else would know (but I don’t). It’s a very attractive, low maintenance courtyard. At the other place, it seemed like nearly every day there were lawn crews on the block cutting grass, or else on the golf course. Pretty loud. Here, the lawns are like postage stamps. They get mowed once a week, but the crews are gone in half an hour. Then it’s quiet again.
It’s a little like living in a monastery with a wall around it, but it is much better than kissing lanais. I enjoyed my previous view, and miss it, but not having it is saving me $2,500 a month. I do have a lot of beautiful paintings in my house, though, many of them landscapes and rivers, so that gives me something view-like to enjoy.
I lived right on a lake for ten years and loved it, but a lot of the “lakes” here are really man-made drainage for flood control, often essentially rectangles a hundred yards long. Or else, a sea of plants most of the time. Many golf course houses have views of other houses on the other side of the course.
One thing to note about a golf course lot is where is the cart path? If it is on the other side of the fairway, your yard will be much quieter. Another is whether the house is on an executive course or a country club course. I don’t have statistics, but I was on Tierra del Sol, and my sense was that often the course wasn’t very busy. There were busy times, but other times when there might be ten minutes or more between players. Executive courses might be much busier, especially with the shorter fairways.