Bond questions
 

New owner/first time- closing at the end of June.

(using approx. numbers) $20,000 bond paid over 30 years @$1100 per month = $33,000... Ouch!

I assume this is why some people choose to pay the bond off in cash. I called the Development District and there is no creative way to reduce the interest payments- it's either pay it off in full or pay it monthly.

With this in mind what is the best way to pay this bond?

Thanks,
Bill

We moved two years ago and thought about paying off bond also about 20,000 at the time.

Two different real estate agents said do not expect to be able to add no bond to the value of your home. Since we are still not sure that we will stay in our first home here decided for now to make yearly payments/

We paid the bond at closing. The interest rate at that time was 7% or so and market rates were much lower so it was an easy decision. Do what's best for your wallet.

We paid ours off after a few years, interest rates was too high.

Bond
 

We heard the Villages refinanced the bond and its now about 3 percent. Anyone else heard that?

and yet, they ALWAYS include that in the sales description if it is paid off.

It's a selling point, but you don't get a price increase that is equal to the paid off bond.

Think of the bond as a (second) mortgage.

Then think of paying off the bond as something that probably can't be recovered in full if you decide to move/sell.

Realize that the touted number of moves within The Villages is around 3.

My advice is to not pay-off the bond, at least not until you are sure this is where you want to be and the house you picked is your forever house. We have owned our house for 7+ years and I still would not pay off the bond.

Other considerations are: You should be able to earn enough by investing the money (admittedly not this week) and by not paying off the bond you have access to that much cash.

JMHO

That they do. Figure we will give it another two years or so and if we still think we will be here for some years will pay it off.

I agree with not paying off the bond. But, when you pay off a second mortgage, you always get your money back, dollar for dollar. It has no effect on what the buyer pays you for the house. When you pay off the bond, you need to hope that you can sell the house for enough extra money to recover the amount of the bond that you paid off. That is why it makes sense to not pay off the bond.

Coming from a place without bonds the no bond meant nothing in bidding. It was put in the description like it was an afterthought.

I think each district has its own bond - The Villages doesn’t refinance it, the district does. Did your payment go down? I would think that is something you would be told via a letter, not the internet

For my unit, the interest is now down to 3.05% and my payment dropped from $1,474 to $1,288.

You can find the current information on districtgov.org. I happened to have saved a copy of the old information.

pay it off/ we have moved 6 times and if the bond is knot payed off we take it off the price

We paid off our bond. We calculated the break-even point to be about seven years (YMMV). We felt we would be in this house long enough that we would save money by not paying 8+ years of interest.

Some would argue that with a 3% interest rate you will be better off by investing the money. That's a good theory and sometimes it works to your advantage. However, if we had invested that $18,000 we would have something like $14,000 today and still have a bond payment due. Given what we are seeing today, we are happy with the choice we made.