Life style preview or free style
 

My wife and I are coming down the first week in May for three days to see if we like the Villages enough to retire there. The place seems incredible from what we have seen and read so far. I have checked and the Lifestyle Preview plan is limited to no less than four days. So, my question is should I simply book four days and stay three or do a three day free style visit. Staying longer this trip is not possible. Cost is no object and the Preview Plan appears to make for a much better presentation than doing the tour on our own. What do you suggest? Thank you all in advance for any help and guidance you could give us.

Call the sales office and tell them the circumstances. They'll work with you. Definitely do the preview plan with a sales rep. You see more and get much more valuable information.

Thanks that's what I thought. In your opinion what questions would you ask that would not normally be answered in the general sales tour/presentation?

When you are here and are out and about, talk to as many people as you can. I have met so many nice people here, and there is a wealth of information and opinions that can help. Much luck to you. We absolutely love it here.

We actually did it both ways. The first time we came the Lifestyles was all booked up so we stayed at a hotel and toured around on our own. A kindly person from the boards met us and took us to Katie Bells and we went out with a Realtor and viewed some properties. Went to the music at night and had a good time.
Then last summer we came again and stayed for 5 days at one of the Villas. It was great! It was fun having a golf cart and going to the pool every day. Every morning we went out to breakfast an we would open our map to go look at open houses and our table would instantly be surrounded by 5-6 people asking if we needed help and telling us their stories. It was great but on the last day we both said..."leave the map home!" We had a wonderful visit and we are actually putting our house on the market next week to move there.

We actually did it both ways. The first time we came the Lifestyles was all booked up so we stayed at a hotel and toured around on our own. A kindly person from the boards met us and took us to Katie Bells and we went out with a Realtor and viewed some properties. Went to the music at night and had a good time.
Then last summer we came again and stayed for 5 days at one of the Villas. It was great! It was fun having a golf cart and going to the pool every day. Every morning we went out to breakfast an we would open our map to go look at open houses and our table would instantly be surrounded by 5-6 people asking if we needed help and telling us their stories. It was great but on the last day we both said..."leave the map home!" We had a wonderful visit and we are actually putting our house on the market next week to move there.

MissyPie is right. Talk to as many people as you can and get their stories. Go to the town squares for evening entertainment and watch the people have a great time. Whichever route you go for life style or free style - get a rental golf cart and spend time driving it on the multi-modal trails to see how easy it is to get places without getting in your car. That is the part that sold my wife on The Villages - 5 years ago. We are full time residents and love every minute here.

As far as homes - I would suggest looking at resale homes also. It can be a much better deal. First, the price is negotiable on a resale. The infrastructure bond can be much lower or even paid off. The landscaping is mature. No construction going on around you for months. Established neighborhoods so you will not be surprized by what goes up nearby.

Villages Properties agents cannot show MLS listings and vice versa. It is a good idea to get input from both agents. ERA Tom Grizzard is a good MLS agent. It is not a sneaky thing to do. Both agents basically expect their clients to look at both.

We did the Lifestyle Preview Tour in August; bought in November. This was after looking at least a hundred house plans for our lot we owned in Bella Vista, AR. We compared Bella Vista against The Villages - there was no comparison. My advice is, STAY AWAY FROM THE KOOL-AID. We drank it.:laugh:

We did the Preview last February. Just to look and see. My husband and I made a vow that we were not going to jump in and buy. Just to look.. We closed in April!
An agent will bring you to your "rental" for your preview and believe me..you have to ask to see houses. They are not pushy in the least, which surprised me.
Good luck! You'll love it! We can't wait to come back full time. We were 50 and 53 years old when we bought. This is a young retirement community... Young at heart, that's for sure!!!

1. Take the trolley tour.
2. Talk to anyone and everyone.
3. You will be blown away by the beauty of TV and it's people.
4.. Bring your checkbook!!!

There is no doubt you will be impressed with the amenities and wealth of info you will get from residents, rather than just listening to the canned propaganda. One thing you may also want to factor in is the time of year you are here. It is much less crowded in May than in the winter. Many people are put off by the crowded conditions and the driving habits of people here. Without a doubt the worst drivers I have ever seen. An appropriate joke may be the ad for a used car which said...'car has 300,000 miles on it but the turn signals have never been used'.

Check out our listing on airbnb. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2374407?alsm=1&s=8z_l. We have had many future Villagers stay with us.

Use this link if you are not a member, and get a $25 discount on your first booking. www.airbnb.com/c/tblair?s=8

If need be, pay for 4 and stay for 3. I also would call their office.

Rent a car from the airport. A cart is fun for dinner for and the squares but you will cover more ground in a car.

Buy the GPS App advertised on this site. It's too easy to get lost.

Take the trolley ASAP to see the scope.

Get a video camera and video tape each house address, up and down the street and around the outside of the house and then go inside and narrate your first impression of each room. Ask the model name if its a new house. If it's a resale ask the rep if the model was renamed. Bring a cable so you can connect the camera to the TV later.

Take the paperwork advertisement and have the other person number the pages in the order of each house that was shown. They will give you a map and write down the number to each address on the map. Bring a 3 hole punch and small binder to keep things organized.

The new home price when we bought was not negotiable. This surprised us.

It can be confusing later, when you are at home if you are only taking photos.

Most people do move 3 times in the villages. This surprised us too.

You only get the life style visit once, why waste it with three days, which IMO not enough time to get it all in. I would stay or plan trip when I could stay the full 6 or 7 days offered.

The best advice is to talk to people here. Let them know you are new and you will find just about everyone is helpful. We bought in 09 and love it here. Never want to leave! Good luck.

I too would stay the 6 pr 7 days. It goes by so fast and there is so much to do.

You won't want to leave after three days.

And you will be back.

Welcome home. This is in every way the most beautiful and wonderful place on earth.

And you will leave with an overwhelming desire, to put your house up for sale. :D

Thank you one and all. We are looking forward to our stay even more now as the welcoming replies we have received have made it seem like we're going home. We hope to speak with some of you during our stay. Please feel free to give us any additional information about TV you think would be helpful.

I think you can still do the Life Style Visit more than once, but the length of time offered changes. At least that is how it was for us a few years ago. "Come On Down", you will be so glad you did.

Call property of the Villages, ask for Beth Pope. a fantastic agent...she's patient, thorough and not at all pushy, you absolutely wont be sorry about using her. I bought a house, my daughter bought a house and is now moving to a larger house here all through Beth

We did it both ways as well. The first visit was a "lifestyle visit" and lasted four days. It went by incredibly fast and we were mostly lost. The second time our fabulous estate agent, Colleen Ginn-Wotring, lent us her rental villa and we stayed a week. Between visits one and two, I absolutely memorized the map from top to bottom and front to back. I also memorized all the house plans. My husband and I got on the website every night checking the models and houses for sale. Hey, it was a fun way to spend winter evenings! That second visit really jelled things for us. We looked at quite a few homes, and narrowed in on what we really wanted. Colleen called us a few months later and told us "our perfect house in our perfect location" was going on the market the next day. We bought it sight unseen.

PS -- I agree with everything Tomwed said. I didn't do all that but I have superpowers. Just kidding. I wish I'd done all that.

thank-you
I didn't do all that either. I'm just monday morning quarterbacking.

do the lifestyle! They throw in some nice things like a golf cart, bicycles, full kitchen, not sure if you still get a free movie and golf. After you are acclimated cruise around on your own. Go on a tour with a Village Realtor. The one that took us around four years ago is the one we bought from in October. Go online and look at properties from the villages.com site, zillow and foxfire. Also become familiar with the bond and maintenance fees. Also read reviews from various online sources. A book called Leisureville will give you a glimpse at some of the warts associated with the Villages. It is a biased view but most of the authors negative points were not negative to me. We looked and researched for four years before buying....have loved it now for four months even with all the damn snowbirds.

yes one lifestyle but we stayed two more times at the villas through our Realtor. we just didn't get the movie and golf the second and third time.

We did the lifestyle twice and it was wonderful. The second time we got the villa but not the golf or movies...no biggie.

Now we are looking to move there!

We booked the lifestyle plan for Dec 2014. We never made it down because we bought a house online in Oct 2014. I have no regrets!

This place will sell itself, and I am so happy we are here. But a little advice that is meant to be helpful, because I wish someone had advised me to do the same--if at all possible, before you buy, try to spend some time here during the months of Jan-March. It is a totally different world here during that time than in May. In May, the crowd has dropped A LOT, less trafic and easier to get tee times if you golf. Make sure to visit the new Fruitland Park area that they are building. There will be 2000 more houses there when completed, and you may find something there that is worth the wait. Just some things to consider. If you are not quite ready to buy, don't bring your checkbook, because it is very hard to say no to a place like this.

If you have a specific price limit on a house make that very clear to your Villages rep. You don't want to be shown a house priced at your limit and then after you've fallen in love with and are ready to close the deal hear "oh... and then with the bond added..."
If the rep says "Publix is just down the block" ask how big the "block" is. Some of the flyers at the open houses imply you could walk when Publix could actually be 3 miles away.
That said... there's nothing not to like here. My second day of the life style visit my thought was "this is nice... but..." The third day the Kool-Aid kicked in and we bought on the 4th day.

Like everyone has said, I did the lifestyle for a week and loved it. I'm going down again in May for a week and staying at a furnished house. We're putting our house here in Maryland on the market at the end of March and with any luck will move permanently by September. We're planning to sell everything we have here so we don't have to move it and pay storage, rent a furnished house for a year and then decide if we want to buy. We'll buy new stuff on the that end because our furniture just wouldn't look good in a Florida home. Many others have done the same thing.

Doing the Lifestyle
 

Well we booked the Lifestyle preview for May 9-13. We are really looking forward to our visit. I have read reviews and the Leisureville book and watched a lot of YouTube videos. And it looks like this trip will be more a vacation than retirement location search. We have a red-eye out of LAX on Friday May 8 arriving in Orlando at 6am. I figure we will arrive at TV around nine or so. We need to "check-in" and start looking around right away as I am told these few days will fly by. So if you wouldn't mind give me your best "first weekend" plan if you could do it now knowing what you know now. Sort of a "top five-ish things to do" at the Villages. Thanks.

I would recommend staying at a hotel this visit if it is only 3 days. Get a look around then book a Lifestyle visit for a week. They only let you use the Lifestyle visit one time and using it for a week makes more sense because you will be able to look around more with the use of the golf cart. This place is so big you will not get to see most of it in 3 days time. You really need a week or more for a tour of the entire place. Just my thoughts. Best thing we ever did was move here!

When we go on our Lifestyle visit, will the villa have linens (towels, washcloths, sheets), pillows, toilet paper, pots/pans, dishes, cups and utensils? Forgot to ask the reservation lady. Don't want any surprises!

A version of this question comes up quite a bit. I think it depends on your wants and needs.
For me I wanted to see what the free golf courses looked like. I was thrilled that I can get to 15 newer free courses in 10 minutes. I hardly go to the squares.

For my brother he wanted to see where he could live that was 1 mile away from the Lake Sumter Restaurant named the Lighthouse. He takes a 1 mile walk after dinner everyday and thinks it's a great place to hang out. He doesn't golf at all.

Try to figure out what you are looking for. Everything is here but some things take a bit of traveling.

I noticed today (3-17-15) that there is (now) a fee per night for the Lifestyle Preview. I would swear that before today it was free. Am I wrong about the fee being new? Thanks so much in advance.

Send me the link for the fee per night charge you saw.
What did you think was free? room, board, golf?

I sent you a PM, tomwed. I am so new to the forum that I can not post a link. We were told by my MIL that the LP was free for either 3 or 7 days. I also have read many posts here that would lead someone to think the accommodations were free. In fact, today is the first time that I have ever seen any reference to any fees for the LP.
Thanks

yes, they have all of these things....if you are staying at creekside it's only a five minute cart ride to the grocery store

Five years ago the LP was $100 per night. I think now it is $200 per night. Contact the Villages sales office to get the exact details and a list of what it includes. Even at $200 per night, it is well worth it, and a great way to check out The Villages. And keep in mind, any decent hotel anywhere these days usually start at $125-$150 per night and up.

When we stayed it was $120 a night. That was 3 years ago I think. Of course The Villages will be happy to sell you a home but they don't need to give away very much because it sells itself.
At first I thought it was like timeshare and there would be all kinds of comps, poor value and high pressure to buy. It was just the opposite.
Read up on The Villages. There is a lot online.