Will this happen in The Villages?
 

Our lifestyle tour realtor said that price declines elsewhere in Florida don't significantly impact the home values in The Villages. What has been your experience?


Florida Housing Market Facing 'Widespread Price Declines' - Newsweek

The top ten commandments in the training for a Village realtor are Thou shall not say anything negative about the TV. Also, it is a Jedi mind trick these are the homes you're looking for. These issues matter twice before you buy and when you sell. Enjoy the Middle.

Only 20%--25% decline over the last 2 years. Not bad.

Prices have gone down all over after going up about 50% in a few years.

Shhh. You are not a Village realtor...LOL

Yes that is my experience by TV salespeople for the past 20 years - I suggest you research 2008 sales.

Really? Are you being facetious?

I can't find a graph that goes that far back.

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I am wondering the same thing. Homes for sale in our Village. (Bridgeport at Laurel Valley) have sold quickly and for much more than they were purchased for.

Sometimes I think that outside realtors who can't sell the new homes are jealous of the Village realtors. I haven't heard or seen any drop in prices.

I have lived in my home in TV since purchasing it in 2016. Nothing less than the value going up each year and more than doubling the purchase price. Just stay away from Condos

[QUOTE=SoCalGal;2402545]Our lifestyle tour realtor said that price declines elsewhere in Florida don't significantly impact the home values in The Villages. What has been your experience?

Like the nation, not just Florida, homes here have declined some in price. Why would a sales agent say otherwise ? A few meticulous agents out there that even though it might effect their income probably exist and will tell you the absolute truth, but, use your head not your emotions, you KNOW that prices go up and they decline, always have throughout history. I've found overall, after the ups and downs here, and in other locations, the overall effect is most homes will appreciate over time. Of course there are some examples, especially in large cities where economic collapse has been catastrophic, where homes have gone to nearly no value. Not likely in Florida would be my guess, but only one opinion among many. As an aside, I think many folks that might be the fate of the original portion of the villages. Once a community of manufactured homes, then some site built homes, it's now in a renaissance stage, homes sites completely razed, beautiful brand new site built homes on many lots, many other updates to rec centers, parks, etc. and one of the most beautiful country clubs in the Villages. It's always a good sign to observe what happens to the very first areas of a development even if it's not the area you are considering. It at least gives a clue as to if the area will be maintained, improved, or ignored in the future.

Looking at the sales data from the Sumter Property Appraiser through the end of November certainly doesn't support a reported drop in sale prices.

Looking strictly at homes that sold after 1/1/23 and were again re-sold in 2024, the average price increase was over 18%. True, this is a decline from the wild increases we were seeing before 2023, but if you can re-sell your home after a year and make 18%, I'd say you're doing pretty well.

Apples to oranges within the Villages. You live in a premium Village in the northern golfing mecca part of the Bubble where everything is built out, mature, and golf cart accessible. The supply of those types of homes is very limited compared to the thousands of homes being mass built in the relative golfing desert, where limited infrastructure is built out and golf cart accessible. Then there is the whole bond thing in the newer areas versus the little to no outstanding bond balance in the northern areas.

They have dropped in past year since interest rates went up. Having said that we are here 5 years and our house worth substantially more than we paid for it.

It does not matter that much as we have no intention of leaving this great place.

Both Zillow & Redfin estimate resale homes in The Villages have declined in Selling Price, between 12-15% since the peak 3 years ago. In a huge % of cases, Zillow won't provide a Zestimate of current value, because of a lack of sales data and the volatility of the market.

If your home selling price depreciated by 15% in the last 2.5 years, when you add in a 5% Broker's Commission to sell it, you just lost 20% of your value.

lets see.... i paid 250k for my house ,10 years ago. and now its worth 500k , but i lost 20%.??? if i keep losing 20% like this ill be a millionaire.

The Villages is a different animal, Zillow and Redfin data is garbage given most sales are not MLS.

Historicaly, prices have risen proportional to new home prices. There is often 20+ people competing for premium lots on the new areas near Eastport.

https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...update-354295/

High-rise condos are declining fast because of the exorbitant HOA fees. Homes in West Palm Beach, which used to sell in 1 day are not selling even in 3 months.
Price Declines' are happening all over Florida. Migration to Florida from other states has dropped to 64,000 in 2024 after 322,000 in 2022 and 185,000 in 2023. Immigrants are still moving into Florida, 411,000 moved to Florida in 2024. But I don't know if these immigrants have the buying power to buy houses in Florida.

When judging price fluctuations on houses there are many factors to consider, and some are out of the control of the homeowner.
One of the main things that comes into play are you buying a house as an investment or as a home to live in.
The main difference is buying as an investment you are more aware of the market, when purchasing as a home you do not pay attention to the market as much since you are more committed for the long term.
A good example is to watch a movie titled The Big Short, it will give you a perspective of a home or a house.
I lived here 14 years, and the value of my home is about double, if I had bought this as an investment I would have not kept if 14 years and would been more a tuned year by year of the value.
The Village is different than most communities in what it offers which makes the ups and down of the housing market not compatible to the rest of the country. As long as there is a segment of the population interest in what The Villages is offering there will be more stability.

A house is worth what a buyer is willing to pay.

This is a fallacy! I have friends trying to buy new homes in the new section and they are placed is lottery with over a hundred other people vying for the same piece of property, spec home or lot to build on. I thought I heard 1 of them say the villages increased the cost of new homes x% early last year. So if you have this demand for new homes, why would TV lower the prices? They haven’t.
As for existing home prices, location location location. In the northern part, prices are soft according to the quarterly report. As for the southern part, not at all.
I have friends selling their 3 year old home for over 50% of the purchase price. I know of a house they are asking for 100% gain in 4 years but it is in a terrible location and hasn’t sold. So if this homeowner drops his price 15% does Zillow claim the sky is falling? In my mind, it was listed too high to begin with.
My buddy just built a new home in the new section that resembles ours for double the price we paid for ours 3.5 years ago, and we have major upgrades. So I would ask close to what my buddy paid for his for mine if I were to sell. TV real estate people claim used homes go for more money than new homes.

That's one way to think of it. Here's another...

You don't have that $250K in your pocket to spend, it's tied up in the value of your house. It doesn't put food on your table or get you on another cruise. All that $250K does is cost you additional money in your property taxes at the end of the year. You haven't put a penny into the bank but you are now taking $2,500 more out of the bank every year.

But you can sell your home and then you'll have the $250K in your pocket! Yes, but how many nights in a hotel will that buy? You no longer have a house to live in and you'll have to sleep somewhere. If you take the money and buy another house will you get twice the house you once purchased for $250K or will you find that you can afford exactly the same amount of house as you did 10 years ago?

The home you live in is not an investment unless you can truly do without it when you sell. I cannot, I need a roof over my head, the home I live in is a necessity, not an investment.

EDIT: I suppose where this is not true, where a home *can* be an investment, is if you purchase a new home in the Villages. After the sale you live in it, add upgrades to it, finish it, furnish it, put in landscaping, and then sell it after a year. There is probably some real profit to be made there.

So nice to see some common sense on one of these threads!

TV houses are NOT the same as the average 3BR/2B house in the outlying areas.

People from all over the map are not clamoring for DR Horton type tract housing as they are the TV lifestyle.

If we listed our home for 15% less than we bought it for last year, we'd probably have a line of people helping us pack so they can get into it!

Are you referring to the condos at Spanish Springs, Glenview or Tierra Del Sol? I don’t think TV has built condos in the last 20 years, but I may be wrong.

All depends, I suppose, on how one defines "significantly".

2-yr old homes in our Village are selling between 30-40% higher than the purchase price and in the market for a short period of time. Location, location, location, I think, is a key driver!

We put our home on the market three months ago, a three bedroom, two bath, three car garage with the largest and most private corner lot veranda at almost $50k more than where it is today either ZERO interest as a resale. We are in competition with the developer who continually floods the market with half million dollar fixer uppers that is impossible to compete with. No one has considered all the improvements one will find in a newer resale. Doubt this response will be published

I love my current home and I'm not worried about the value. I loved my last home in The Villages and it rewarded me with a nice profit.

Be aware: it is difficult to analyze. When new homes are purchased, they are relatively "bare," meaning, not many upgrades, if any. For example, if you want custom landscape, palm trees, solar tubes, generator, a pool, plantation shutters, customize driveway/garage, glassed in lanai, etc. I've heard a typical Villager puts $50K in upgrades in his/her house. Our first house, we put much, much more than $50K. So often it is hard to analyze because the house a homeowner is selling is much different than when he/she purchased.

I haven't seen that at all. We recently sold our home and had been contemplating selling for the last 2 years. I watched monthly for those 2 years at comparable homes and they continually increased in value and it sold within 3% of my calculated asking price and was sold to the second family that made an appointment to see it. That being said, our home was a model that there are very few available at any given time and it was on a premium lot. Other more common models on inside lots with no view, water, or golf course might be a different story.

I believe this to be true because the decrease in home values in Florida has been primarily due to the skyrocketing insurance rates caused by the recent hurricanes. Also many high rise condos near the beaches face mandatory remediation due to long term neglect.

Since The Villages has suffered very little damage from the weather, the rates of insurance have risen only modestly in line with the overall rate of inflation.

There are a lot of dynamics that go into the price of housing as of late, especially in Florida and the villages specifically since it is a retirement community and people move here for a very specific reason.

I don't think anyone can accurately predict where the housing market is going from here. It was ridiculously inflationary over the last handful of years and a correction is likely due at some point. To add to the uncertainty, the trend over the last couple decade towards viewing single-family housing as primarily an investment versus a place to live has made an even bigger mess of the market, i.e. housing crash of 2008 and the inflation over the last decade.

I probably overpaid a little for the place I bought a year and a half ago. However, I didn't overextend myself and in the end I'm satisfied with my purchase.

As the article you attached says, “The typical value of a home in Florida went up by roughly 60 percent over the past five years, according to data from Reventure App. In November 2019, the typical value of a home in the Sunshine State was $243,000; in November 2024, it was $389,000. At the same time, mortgage rates went up from 3.7 percent to 6.8 percent.”

I’d say that in The Villages, home prices went up much more than was to be expected for a couple years. When mortgage rates climbed, homes kept selling, but they took longer to sell, though sales prices haven’t dropped much. They have mostly stayed steady or climbed slower. I know that when I bought my first house here almost five years ago, my mortgage was 3.5%. At 6.8%, I wouldn’t have been buying a home. Someone is buying, though.

My first home here, 1600 sq ft with pool and on a golf course, I sold two years later and made $85,000 on it (before fees, which were a lot). I bought a 1200 courtyard Villa and was able to pay cash. I’m glad I made that profit on the first house, but it was just luck, really. At present, I would lose money on my current house after my improvements. I don’t think careful people buying here are likely to have to sell for less than they paid, but their home values are not likely to shoot up in the next few years the way mine did. Living here is worth it, though.

No. My home owner's policy has doubled in 10 years, which equates to about 7% per year and is much higher than the rate of inflation.

For mine, the increase from 2022 to 2023 was much greater than inflation.

I wonder how much of this in, even in the villages with its relative safety from hurricanes, also has to do with the cost of repairs/replacement going up due to inflation. I'm pretty sure they factored those costs into the price of insurance.

Zillow is the largest real estate database in the United States. It does not rely on "MLS" for data, but tracks real estate transactions from multiple sources, including Registry of Deeds activity.

On the other hand, The Villages Realty produces its own data, which represents somewhere between 40%-60% of the pre-owned sales in TV.

Zillow, Trulia (owned by Zillow) & RedFin all show a significant decrease in pre-owned home prices in TV, over the 2.5 years.

Any real estate salesperson who's telling potential buyers that prices don't go down in TV or any other area, should lose their license.

What I have noticed in my area resale houses aren’t selling very quickly. I think this due to decline in market and competition with all new homes being built. Also some are way over priced which pretty much alienates them to just set there. I also see decline in activity people looking at houses that are for sale and even on open house days. Now go back year and half ago they rarely lasted over month.

The challenge a buyer faces when considering the purchase of a single-family home in the Villages is that (most buyers) do not have the time, facts, and experience to perform an informed financial analysis of the transaction or prospective purchase.

We as a group are at the mercy of many sources of information some objective, and others for the most part bias. However, as someone that bought, sold and built five homes as time goes on the priorities have shifted. I observed the number of new and pre-owned homes in TV and it's clear that the developer (VLS) is able to restrict supply of new homes to maintain their profit margin or flood the market if they want given their financial leverage. The remaining open market is likely a better indicator of the trend which by all counts (MLS) shows 2X the number of listings on a YOY basis, and the listing time to sale time has increased by at least 50%.

For many of us we are in or moving into retirement/a new chapter of life, I suggest that it might be better to consider a home purchase in TV as "consumption" of our accumulated assets, e.g., "decumulation". Are we really going to be here in 20-yr to resell that home? [sure, I understand that many folks move 2x-3x] However, I suggest we focus on our ability to buy based on economic situation and what that purchase would mean to us based on our wants, needs and desires as the buyer.

So what if the value goes up 20% in 5-yr, or drops down 20% in the same timeframe, we as the owner were able to consume and enjoy TV lifestyle, isn't that the point? When it's all said and done, we can't take it with us, and for those that remain the time spent with them in a place we enjoy might far exceed and economic benefit.

Zillow displays 636 MLS homes for sale inside the villages today. 6 months ago that number was 498 listings.Inventory is becoming massive in size and should drive prices down further. Not to mention the interest rates are up. That’s a 28% increase and doesn’t even include new construction or the areas south east of the Sumter line. There is some shadowing coming to play in the new areas as well.