another thought
 

I forgot to mention one other feature available to some cottage homes. If there is enough room on the lot, a golf car garage can be added on to the house, with an additional overhead door. Makes for a beautiful exterior look as well as being convenient.
I have seen a few corner lot CYV's that have enough space to do this, but they are not in abundance.

We like our courtyard villa for many reasons, but privacy in the back and side is hard to beat once you've had an open back yard that forces you to see Joe Weird over there with his obsessive-compulsive, oddball, ritual routines every single day without fail.

And it's also really nice to have nobody able to look at you while you are relaxing/reading etc in your back yard. When we rented a patio villa, one thing I didn't like was trying to have breakfast/morning coffee on the lanai in front, with a very nosy neighbor woman staring the whole time from her front lanai.

We live in a cottage-series (Sunkist) which we love since we down-sized from a home twice this size. A larger house is too much to care for---especially here where we want to be out and about. But then think of as we get older, will we want to care for a lot of house??

As for villas....I have friends who have the newer 3 bedroom, 2-car garage ones and they're lovely! A bit more expansive than the 2 bedroom ones. They can have an area for a larger lanai and even a birdcage added. One of my friends has a corner lot so hers has a bit of grass inside the walls---but not too much. She has quite a lot of follage as well which is tropical and lovely. I had not known of this style when we were house-hunting otherwise I might have been interested!

I had a cottage home and now I have a CYV. There are good and bad about each but there is one thing about the CYV that I find to be a slight inconvenience that you don't have with other types of homes. There is a wooden gate between the homes, usually with a lock on it. If I want to have my home pressure washed or I need to have the bug guy spray around my home, I need to check with my neighbor and get them to unlock their gate so that I can give the person access to that side of my home. Not a big deal, just different. Love the backyard so much, so it's well worth it.

Does anyone know if there are any CYVs with roman showers?

We really like the roman showers in the designer homes...does anyone know if any CYVs have them?