Thats just your opinion, not fact.

The FACT is, there's many ways to live your life successfully and happy. There's no right way. What works for you may not work for others.

If someone wants to move to TV and mortgage their house, go for it. If they can afford the payments it's all good, imo.

You only live once.

Interest rates
 

Maybe you recall supply and demand ? When American oil drilling was restricted , oil prices shot up from $30 a barrel to $130 a barrel overnight.

Tell that to the people priced out of buying a home . 60 % of Americans can’t afford to purchase a home . The huge massive amount of national debt ,
printing of money and shutting off the spigot of American 🇺🇸 oil is driving inflation and interest rates higher . .

Historically interest rates are not high they were simply artificially low for a few years and are now back to where they were for decades. Buyers will have to get used to looking at lower priced homes if they can't afford a mortgage on the home they want. There are a lot of new pre-fab communities being constructed by smart builders where zoning allows them. Today's prefabs are quality homes with all the amenities and are quite affordable and the developers doing this found themselves a gold mine.

So what is your point, that those that don't have 300-500K in cash when retired shouldn't be moving to the Villages?

I’ve owned numerous homes and condos since I retired including 6 , 5 new ,one preowned in the villages , I’ve never paid cash or have I paid the bond off on any of them ,it made no sense during these periods of low interest rates ,I bought my last one here a couple of years ago at 83, I know many others who do. the same thing . I realize many people like to have the peace of mind by paying off the mortgage and that’s fine , and there are many here that can’t afford to pay cash and others like me who don’t look at a house as a home but as an investment tool, there nothing wrong with debt , rich people use it all the time to get richer ( not me lol)FYI I do pay cash for my cars which I probably shouldn’t, but there’s that peace of mind thing I was talking about

Respectfully, the spigot of US oil has not been shut off, and this year, American oil production reached a record high of over 12.8 million barrels a day. This is simply a fact, and it can be verified easily.

In the last three weeks, the price of oil on the open market has fallen precipitously. On 9/18/2023, the price of a gallon of regular gas on the market was $2.70. On 10/6/2023, the price of a gallon of regular has plummeted to $2.19. That is a 19% loss in 3 weeks time. When the price of gasoline moves like this, it's obvious that the market is based on a lot more than American oil output. There is lots of speculation in that price. And estimates of future demand. A report came out that American gasoline demand is at its lowest point in 22 years. Another report showed crude oil stockpiles growing by 6.5 million barrels. Demand is way down. Since it's denominated in US dollars, part of the price is the strength of the American greenback, which has been increasing, not decreasing. That huge market decrease should start to show up at the pumps fairly soon....it takes some time but if gasoline futures stay here, we should see a significant drop in gas prices at the pump pretty soon. However, with the sad events this weekend in Israel, it is unknown how that will affect the markets.

I, for one, totally get what you are saying

Supply
 

Inventory is the key for the housing market too. National inventory is up to 7 months according to FRED. Anyone that tells you that doesn’t matter here in The Villages is a liar. Many want to sell before they buy etc. Another issue is the ever climbing inventory locally which likely won’t slow anytime soon.

Did you get that info from a government publication or by visiting your local gas station?

Don't forget about property taxes. Taxes on my 20 year old $410,00 are $6,000/year.

Not sure where you're getting your numbers. Gas here in southern Indiana hasn't been anywhere near that since Trump was in.
The cheapest around here is 3.29 and it hasn't been below $3 for a long time.

I'm not a big Trump guy, but I do know when he was in, gas was cheap and the economy was on fire.

Agree, as my mortgage that I took was 2.5%.

I sold a two year old home I built here in TV for almost twice what I paid for it in March this year. I’m in a new Village now of 1100 homes where’s there’s only 6 left. I think sales are going quite well here in TV.

It's not info from a government publication. It is the daily closing price on the publicly traded commodity market. RBOB, which is the trading symbol for regular gasoline (it actually stands for Reformulated Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending). This is the grade of gasoline used for futures contracts on the public traded commodity exchanges. If you were long on the futures of gasoline over the past month, you got clobbered and if you played it short, you made a big return in a short period of time.

It usually takes some time for the commodities price to work its way down to the pump. Unfortunately, it takes longer for price drops than when the price is going up.

As an aside, the entire oil market has gone down. I keep track of the guaranteed home heating price offered by my oil company. Gasoline is one thing, but we go through 850-900 gallons of home heating oil a year in CT and the price of home heating oil is far more impactful to us than gas prices. In the space of one week, there was substantial decline in the fixed price I could contract to buy oil for the remainder of the winter, going from $4.179 to $3.859. That's a 7.7% drop in five days, pretty significant. Even at the lower price, that's still close to $4,000 a year with the service contract included....I won't miss paying that if we ever move full-time to FL.

All of this could easily change this week due to the situation in Israel. The oil markets do not like geopolitical events or uncertainty, particularly in that region of the world. Oil could go right back up.

It's the commodity price per gallon on the futures market, not the price at the pumps. The gasoline still has to get transported, there is usually a distributor who has their profit built in, the gas station has to make their profit per gallon, and there are federal and state taxes that get added to the cost to make the price at the pump. However, when the underlying cost of gasoline decreases by 50 cents a gallon, a good portion of that will work it's way to the pumps.

As I said elsewhere, who knows where the oil markets go tomorrow, however....