[Villages Kahuna]

I can't answer precisely. I simply counted the number of "new residents" listed once monthly in the Thursday "recreation insert" iof The Daily Sun. I'd guess that the number is the total of all home sales, new and pre-owned. I'd also guess that the number is not sensitive to who brokered the home sales.

Another of your questions was how long it takes to build a Villages home. At one point, the lead time from selection of a lot to closing was 45 days, as I recall. That was when they sold houses using the "lot selection-street of dreams-closing" sales approach. Now, however, they design and build homes and buyers purchase them like a new car, as-is, take-it-or-leave-it. But based on what I see around here every day, I'd guess that 45 days is awfully close to the time it takes to build a house from foundation pour to when it's released to the sales staff.

Tens of thousands of people who live in TV have purchased homes under the same "rules", one of which is no closing contingencies such as pre-sale of an exisiting home. That sounds tough and unusual compared to what happens in other real estate markets. But if you think about it, that's about the only way the developer of TV could be successful in designing-building-closing the sale of houses at the pace that they do. And like Frangyomory mentioned below, for us there's no other place we'd rather be. However rigid the rules appear, they're consistently applied and well-communicated to buyers up front. Once you're here all the trepidation regarding the process is forgotten very quickly.