I grew up a Floridian but lived in Maryland since 1989. I knew I wanted to return and if it hadn't been for TV I would of probably chosen Pensacola.
I saw the infomercial in 2003 and received the DVD and brochures. In 2008 I got another DVD packet but this time a Villages sales agent called later asking when I was retiring. That's the first time I started thinking of a date. In 2009 I began writing down the prices of every new courtyard villa and cottage for sale on the internet.
Now possessing several pages of new home prices in April 2011 we took a seven day LSV. With our salesman Tony Trussler we toured all the cottages, courtyard villas and patio villa models. We decided it was between a Cabot Cove patio villa or a Woodlawn courtyard villa, but now it was time to return to Baltimore and sell our home.
We listed our home for sale in May and it sold the next morning, 18 hours later. We hurriedly scheduled a second LSV and began seriously looking at the cottages, patio and courtyard villas for sale on their website. We selected a new Cabot Cove patio villa with vaulted ceilings, white cabinets in Bayport Villas in Buttonwood for $140,000.
I called Tony to see if we could skip the second trip and buy the home over the phone. As we were speaking I flipped over to the Woodlawn courtyard villas and noticed the price on the six available in Tamarind Grove had been discounted $6,000. This caught my attention because these are concrete constructed with privacy fenced yards. While I was still speaking with Tony I refreshed the page and the Woodlawn that we ended up buying was dropped another $6000. At this point I asked Tony if the price was for real on the Woodlawn on Nautilus Lane and he said yes, I gave him my credit card and with $2500 we made the purchase sight-unsight.
Unlike designer homes or cottages, villas have no choices available, what you see on the website and what it contains is what you can buy. As it turned out, we were very pleased with the colors, the cabinets and the neighborhood and had we come in person we would of made the same decision. However had I not done three years of homework, I can't imagine how things would of turned out.
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