Quote:
Originally Posted by Pairadocs
Pay attention to the advice people posted here ! There is no way you could come and rent for a week near Spanish Springs, and go home saying THAT's IT, that's where we want to be... by all the major department stores, by the major highway 441 (called Orange Blossom Trail), that's nearest the Atlantic side beaches. It's just way too large to even see all the areas in one week ! Maybe you'd find you like being closer to the west, Gulf, side and the beaches on that side ? Or you'd rather have easy access to the toll way ? I don't know how anyone could ever make those decisions without time to "live their own normal life routine" first. The mind boggling numbers of people who buy, only to sell when they find another area makes more sense for them... keeps the real estate agents doing very well here....LOL ! One tip we found, not wanting to appear to give the opinion one area or one villages is "better" than another, agents will tell you there is no difference. That is not true of course. Like in any area of the country that covers many counties, you have to do your own in person or on line research to get the tax mils, the retail taxes, compare the utilities you will have to use, etc.
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Actually that's exactly what convinced me to be WILLING to live in Florida again at all. We'd visited friends who live in the Villages, in a courtyard villa. One of the most non-neighborhoodly neighborhoods I'd ever seen in my life. All I could think of was "sardines in a can, SO glad I live in Connecticut, you couldn't pay me to move down here." Then hubby insisted we come for a vacation, and we rented through The Villages some patio villa somewhere off of Odell Circle near Mallory. I still felt like The Villages was 32 flavors of Stepford Wives, just not shoved into the sardine can this time.
The next time we stayed in whatever those homes are that aren't villas, but not as fancy as the Designer homes. Nice house. More Stepford. There was nothing that screamed "this is where I want to spend the rest of my life." No mature trees, no shade, no privacy between back yards, everyone's front yards looked the same - exactly three trees per property, two of which were palms, with all the same ugly ribbon cactuses in perfectly placed flower beds and not a single thing to show that "here lives someone with a personality and maybe a smidge of creative flair."
Everything was vanilla.
And then we checked the Historic Section, and spent a day in Spanish Springs. I thought - this is an actual neighborhood, with actual people who have real personalities and creativity, who don't think they're in Stepford. Yes there are some flamingo garden decorations. Most of them are sculptures and art, rather than mass produced kitch. People hanging out at each others' houses, pulling up chairs in the driveways for a cuppa, sitting on the porch or the lanai to watch the sunset or talk about the neighbor's hip replacement, getting to know the neighbors' grandkids when they come for Christmas vacation...
That's what convinced me to move to The Villages. If it weren't for this area, then yeah - I would miss my husband. But there's no way I would've come down with him.