In addition to many of the other sites listed I searched here -
http://www.myfloridahomesmls.com/ We found our home though on here -
http://thevillages.com/homes/vls/index_new.asp I checked these daily and we flew down in September and bought one of the pre-owned through the villages. We did see one other home that we were really interested in that we missed out on because neither of us could travel down to see it. Guess it wasn't meant to be. We love the location and view that our villa has.
Before we bought, we had stayed in the model of the villa I thought we would like for a week. It gave me the ability to sit in it and visualize where our "stuff" would fit. When we had rented, I made sure I rented a Beauregard, as that was the 2 bedroom model I was most interested in. When we came down for a LSP we stayed in a model similar to the Grantham. Oh how I loved how spacious it was, but we couldn't find anything in our budget in that model that had a view/neighborhood we liked so we went with a 2 brm Beauregard model. Love my view from my lanai - I just wish I was there now instead of snowy NH!