Quote:
Originally Posted by karensue
Only 1 thought. Do not understimate the size of house you want or need. MANY of us move multiple times, because we fail to really know what we want. We bought a large courtyard villa, because we thought we would be here part time. The Villages is too great a place to be, and lots of cheap plane fares make it easy to get from Orlando to anyplace else (think Disney). We ended up with a large premier home and are so glad we did that move to stay here permanently.
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This is true!
On the other hand....
We saw both of our parents move to Florida and buy big houses with all the trimmings. After a few years they started downsizing. They didn't want to do (or pay people to do) all the work associated with a big house. After 3 'downsizing' moves for each set of parents, they each settled for much smaller houses.
We looked at how we used our big house in Utah and discovered that 90% of our time was spent in the kitchen, patio, family room and bedroom. We had 3 spare bedrooms & bathrooms that weren't being used except for visitors. The living room and the dining room were only used for entertaining and holidays. We took all this into consideration when we decided to skip the designer house and go straight to the 3 bedroom villa.
So far, after a year of living here, the little villa is working out OK. There's so much to do here in The Villages that we basically treat the villa like a 3-bedroom hotel with cooking and laundry facilities.
It seems that we come home from our daily activities and flop in front of the TV from exhaustion. Except for the recent cold snap, we're only inside late at night. We expanded the lanai and added a birdcage. That's our new family room and breakfast room. Bottom line for me: I don't want to reschedule my activities to take care of a house. Been there; done that.
* I wish we had a bigger garage, but that would mean we could accumulate more stuff. As it is, we have to clean out the junk as quickly as it accumulates, and that's OK with me.
* I wish we had another room that I could use only for painting, especially when houseguests are using the sofabed in 'my' room.
* It's a little tight when the house is full of visitors, but that's OK too. If we make it too nice for them, they'll never leave!
* After the guests leave I can clean the entire place, top to bottom, in under 2 hours.
* Mr. Judy can have all the yard work done in an hour -- and he's persnickety about his bush trimming.
I would suggest you take a look at how you use your current house, and make your decision based on that. Do you entertain at home a lot? Then maybe the designer is right for you. Do you enjoy meeting friends for dinner at a restaurant? Maybe you don't need all the extra 'entertaining' space? Only you can decide what's right for you.
Just adding my 2 cents,
Judy