There are NO HOA fees because we do not have a Homeowners Association. The amenities are managed by the resident elected Community Development District Board. Contractually, the CDD Amenities fees are used to pay for ALL the amenities, except the 14 Championship Golf courses. The annual district maintenance fee is determined by the individual CDD Boards and primarily covers landscaping and retention pond maintenance. It is a line item on your annual county tax bill. The water, sewer, irrigation maintenance is a part of your utility bill just like every where I have lived before.

PLEASE, do yourself a big favor while you are here and meet with a Village Realtor. They can answer your questions with correct information and NO sales pressure. Some outside MLS agents understand the Villages special purpose government and others don’t. Just like the people who post here.

Free golf
 

The executive courses are free if you walk and most are easy to walk. I think the trail fees should be tripled to encourage people to do the healthy thing and walk. The only people riding carts should be those who are physically unable to walk.

Somehow, I doubt that putting 80+ year olds who are able to walk out there in the 95-degree sun is the "healthy thing"

The easiest way to rent, in my opinion, is go to “Vacation Rental By Owner “ and put in “The Villages” as a destination. All fees are included in the price.

"End of May" - try July and August if you want to see if you can live with the heat. The last 8 years have been record heat in the world and the US. Fighting the heat and humidity of Florida's summer is NOT easy. SOME people can do it and enjoy it?

Stay away from realtors for as long as possible. Only talk to REAL RESIDENTS.

This shows the need to respect the Florida Sun, temp, and humidity in the summer. Which has laid many a healthy person LOW. Drink lots of water, pray a lot, and keep your will up to date.

Does the amenity fee pay for the gates and the workers who operate them?

a) not true

b) Even if it were true, we have 90 or 100 years of Florida weather records---so was it hotter in 1872??? 1645???? 1213??? 300BC??? YOU DON"T KNOW, and neither does anyone else.

Yes, the gates are amenities and the workers are employed by the Community Watch division of the District government, Community Watch is funded primarily by Amenity Fees collected.

I say primarily, because there are some additional funding sources for the services provided, the most significant of these is from the Developer for patrolling and keeping watch on the areas under construction, this is however a very small percentage of the overall Community Watch budget and responsibility.

The Community watch provides the gate attendants, roving patrols, home check service, wellness check services, and mans a 24 hour command/dispatch center. They also assist first responders during incidents with crowd and traffic control. Overall a significant resource providing a variety of services to the community that most people are unaware of.

A rose by any other name...or six of one and half a dozen of the other. It is all the same to your bank account.

The homes in Sumter County have a bond. No bonds in Lake county but only resales there.

Where did you get that idea?

See posts 35 and 41

Not true. The Villages of Pine Hills and Pine Ridge are in Lake County, and the houses all have bonds.

I apologize if I am adding incorrect information, but in addition to your excellent explanation of why the Villages advertises it has NO HOA fee, but does have a monthly "amenity fee" ( $189 would be an average, (just to give you a rough idea) and the added amount on your property tax bill is sometimes called a "bond", so people trying to negotiate all this (usually) have a very very difficult time understand how/why, if they pay off their "bond" at closing, that still does not totally mean no additional fees or extras. Recently friends who moved here (and were used to HOA fees of $540 a month) were confused also. They could not believe how LOW our "HOA" fee (actually our amenity fee bill we shared with them) was until they found out they had to mow their own lawn, trim their own bushes, and many other services their HOA fees paid, including the upkeep on the community pool, playgrounds, recreation center, waste pick up, and so on. It was difficult from the to merge the two terms: HOA fee, Amenity fee.