The Villages purchase another 900 acres
 

The Villages’ Buffalo Hide and Cattle Co. has reportedly paid $7 million for 900 acres near Mascotte.

By my calculation that puts us approx 30 miles from Disney. Come on monorail !

This purchase is not adjacent to any property the Villages currently owns and separated by a lot of individual properties that would have to be acquired in order to do so.

The Villages developer buys 900 acres in Mascotte – GrowthSpotter

The Villages developer buys 900 acres in Mascotte

By Katie Sartoris
Growthspotter
Mar 23, 2023 at 11:12 am

The Villages could be planning another major expansion into Lake County — this time in the City of Mascotte.

The mega-retirement community, under the LLC Buffalo Hide and Cattle Company, bought land from real estate firm Maury L. Carter & Associates for $7 million earlier this month, according to Lake County property records. The 900-acre property sits west of State Road 33, South of Austin Merritt Road and east of Honeycut Road.

The Villages’ land purchase in Mascotte comes as the community is expanding, but it is unclear at this point what is planned for the property, as no plans have been submitted yet, said Max Spann, the city’s planner.

Daryl Carter, president of Maury L. Carter and Associates, confirmed that the property was sold and that he represented the seller and was the broker. He said he could not comment on the buyer or their intentions with the property.

According to the firm’s website, the property is currently zoned as rural residential and allows for one dwelling per acre, which would mean around 900 homes could be built. A rezoning would be required to build more homes at a higher density.

Currently, The Villages spans three counties — Lake, Sumter and Marion — and several cities including Fruitland Park, Lady Lake, Leesburg, Wildwood and Coleman. It’s the nation’s largest and fastest growing retirement community, boasting a population of more than 138,000. And it continues to climb.

In 2018, Leesburg sold about 1,200 acres to The Villages to build The Villages of West Lake. Plans call for more than 3,200 homes and a $100 million, nearly 250-acre mixed-use district, complete with a regional hospital. Construction started in August 2022.

The Villages’ newly purchased property in Mascotte appears to be about a mile and a half southwest of the property it owns in Leesburg.

The Villages is also building in Coleman and expanding further into Wildwood.

RCLCO, a leading real estate consulting group, named The Villages No. 1 in its list of the country’s top 50 master-planned communities. In 2022, the group reported, 3,923 homes were sold in The Villages, the most of any master-planned community in the nation.

That No. 1 spot isn’t new for The Villages, either. The community topped the same list in 2021, 2020 and 2019, with 4,004, 2,453 and 2,429 homes sold, respectively.

This will be a game changer for those of us in TV's. The value of propertty/home values $$ are function of supply and demand. The supply side appears that it will not stop for many years.

Suspect there will not be a private egress physcial connection between the new purchase and TV's, other than public highway. The new purchased will be packaged as a new concept.
Suspect more land will be purchased to enable the new area to provide the growth (new homes) that supports $$ the family
Current parcel could support around 6,000 homes
Anticipate, guess, build out of TV (extraction of $'s for the family) to be completed ahead of the new concept as in the interim more land will be secured and infrastructure built out,

The game changer will be when the demand side of the equation dries up. Future generations are up to their eyeballs in debt, don’t have pensions, and many live paycheck to paycheck. At our ages, it will be our children’s issue to deal with.

very interesting and appreciated perspective

I'll wait for GoldWingNut's video.

Maybe an upmarket, real gated community.

Like the phases of Del Boca Vista. Being near booming Clermont is a positive

Just for perspective, north of SR 44 there’s approximately 37 square miles. From SR 44 to CR 470 there’s approximately 20 square miles. And maybe another 20 sq mi South of 470

900 acres is 1.4 sq mi., Not exactly a "game changer."

And the developer owns over 15,000 acres south of Middleton that hasn't even started yet.

Yep, 24 more sq mi., and they are kicking up dirt down there already.

This is all very exciting!

Not really surprising, given that Da Family is getting larger, with ever so many more mouths to feed - and palms stretched out. It wouldn't even surprise me to hear that at some point in the not to distant future, that a large portion (all?) of the existing sprawl gets sold and they start fresh somewhere else (like in the area of this new purchase?).

As anyone who made it to upper management in a previous life knows, the larger the entity/responsibility, the larger the headaches and time/effort/attention suck. It's not out of the realm of possibility, that the elder Morse children may have designs on wanting to totally retire themselves at some point and hand off what has proved to be a winning formula, to the younger generations...who can start all over in a different location.

As someone else mentioned previously though, makes no never mind to us as it will be our kids choice to sell or stay in what might be by that time, the 5th largest city in Florida. lol.

According to the article the property is about one and a half miles from the property owned in Lessburg!