Good point. Some could be making New York wages but live in The Villages.

Every day in the U.S., 10,000 people turn 65, and the number of older adults will more than double over the next several decades to top 88 million people and represent over 20 percent of the population by 2050.

United States | arc.aarpinternational.org.

That's a lot of seniors competing for homes in retirement communities.

Values have increased over time just like the stock market. Sure, there are dips, but history shows you better move here now or pay more later. No, I am not a realtor, just a 19 year Villager that purchased our first 1500 Sq foot home here in TV for $124,000.00 and bought a second for $155,000. Don't snooze.

We closed almost a year ago in Poinciana. While Poinciana wasn't specifically the village we wanted, it was among the areas considered. We wanted to be between the "6s", preferably near or inside the Bailey Trail-Odell Circle loop. It fit the bill. We were nervous. We still have a lake house in NY. If we hadn't done it when we did, with the escalation in prices that has occurred since we bought, I don't think we'd be comfortable doing it now. Not because the houses are "overpriced", whatever that means, just that the increase in expenses in the monthly budget might have dissuades us altogether.
We feel very fortunate we did it when we did it. Just blind dumb luck.
However, who is to say for sure that if you pulled the trigger in this market, in 5 years you wouldn't feel the same way?
A smart uncle told me years ago not to buy a 2nd home if success relied upon a rosy prediction of price appreciation, but rather to look at what you wanted, what you could afford comfortably, and if you could survive a downturn. I think that advice still applies in this market.

If you can wait until April/May. Prices in high season always seem to go up, then right size over the summer.

It’s for real
 

You’re competing with a massive wave of new buyers from NY & California. Low inventory & high demand.

old homes?? what about the new homes? Off the charts!!

Sometimes I ponder if there will be an inevitable crash or severe drop in TV home prices. I’d guess that the supply/demand matter will limit any serious cracks for a long time.

Don't feel bad, that's what we said about you when you purchased below 44.
:a040::a040::a040:

We have lost sight of the value of the villages.......it has been undervalued for so long...don't value the house, value the environment, plenty to do, a lot of sunshine,
happy people, and most importantly its a safe place, priceless. No where in the country
do all of these things exist, nowhere. The houses inside of Disney, a safe place with lots to do, cost 3-8 million, hmmm, if you are lucky enough to get in, you are blessed, it ain't totally about the money.....buy what you can afford to enjoy the only place like this in America.

It's a Canadian company. A quick search on the (obviously Canadian) address leads to:
APM MacLean – Offering 95 Years of Combined Experience | PEI

What??

The price is irrelevant if you plan on holding until you expire

You must be looking at a Gardenia model. Location and timing is everything. In addition, you have to look at the extra’s. Some houses have more then others. The baby boomers are retiring and The Villages has it all. It’s all about supply and demand. Yes I agree $345 to $700 in a year is a little much. Sounds like the people don’t want to sell unless they get a crazy offer. The homes have gone up an average of 40% to 45%.
Best of luck, I think The Villages is a great place to live.

Oh yes and don’t forget your not just buying a home. Your buying a Life Style.

We thought that when we bought in May of 2017 but found that the year before there were more homes sold here in both May and July than any other month of the year. We were very fortunate to get in on the ground floor south of 44 when the real bargains were available.

Check some listings in the Bay Area of CA. Now they are unreal. Market forces

And as a bonus double taxes will be included with your home's new assessment.

That’s right, what’s the point. Buy somewhere where you can afford. They sound like they want to live in a well to do neighborhood on a very minimal wage! So don’t move to TV.

Asset inflation, everywhere, which is much different than consumables living CPI inflation, is everywhere. In the chart below, you will see that the liquidity from the FED has pushed assets to redonkulous levels, housing prices are not CPI, but owners equivalent rent is, so there will be increases in CPI but that will level off as well and fall back to near normal records. .

The interest rate increases will change this asset valuation levels, so for those looking, best to just wait, as the prices will return to about the 2019 ending levels, there about. . just have your cash ready and please have patience. . . check on your FOMO, (Fear Of Missing Out) you haven't in any way, just wait.

Chart is price to sales ratio of SP500 historical ratio. . . truest measure of valuation as revenue is most scrutinized for fraud.

This makes sense to me. What I see is rapid asset inflation not wage inflation. Hopefully a housing crash does come. If not we will have a whole generation of people that won't be able to afford to buy a house. That will cause unrest. If a new home is in your near future then:
- Don't sell high and buy high now
- Don't sit and do nothing (your present house value will also go down)
- Sell now and rent (anywhere) until the crash comes then buy

:a040: :a040:

:bigbow:

Correct!
:mademyday:

You can't buy a house low without selling your current house high first!

The typical response is to hold onto high prices but investing being counter intuitive, you have to sell high prices in order to afford low prices later. . . of course there is effort to do so, some inconvenience, and the people in the villages with the high asking prices are properly following the rule above.

finance guy

I don't see a "crash" coming anytime soon. The current real estate market is nothing like 2008. Will it level off at some point or even back down a bit? Yes. But right now demand far out paces supply, and not just in Florida.
And even though interest rates will go up some, I don't see going from 3% to even as high as 4.5% being much of a deterrent. That's still historically low.

Waitng out the market has it's own downside. Who knows when it will cool off? What if it's 5 years? That's a crapshoot in itself. In the meantime we'd be putting off our dream, and that's something we don't want to do.

Even though my wife and I are very fit and healthy, who knows what tomorrow brings. Everyday is a gift for us. So we went a ahead bought a place. You can argue whether it's a good move or not until the cows come home. Everyone's life situation is different, and nobody truly knows what will happen tomorrow.

We have many more years behind us than ahead of us. So we live accordingly. Worrying about whether our home in TV will appreciate or depriciate is something we could care less about at this point. For us it's about enjoying the years we have left. Our kids can deal with our home when we're gone. I'm sure they'll come out just fine.

All that said, it's just my opinion. lol

Unless you have something special it doesn’t matter. Most houses will go up and down lockstep with the others. The price of your last house is irrelevant if you stay to your expiration

This is exactly what we did. We sold at the peak when there was a frenzy. House had some big ticket repairs/replacements coming in the next year or so and buyers waived all inspections. Crazy! We took the money and got a two year lease on a rental in TV. We're looking to buy our home, but are in no rush.

:bigbow:

:clap2:

that's the way to do it. . we thought about it, but want to experience TV full time first. . getting closer

Interesting BUT.......... When to buy and when to sell THAT IS THE QUESTION.
The S&P year to date has fallen nine percent. The Russell 2000 has fallen 14% year to date. The CPI consumer price index has hit 8%. Assuming you are AVERAGE and lost 9% in the market. We ALL are paying 8% more for goods some of which we can decide not to buy at this price others like food and gasoline will get painful for those who cannot afford to pay more, NET loss not sure how the math works is it 9 plus 14 average 9+14=23 divided by 2= 11.5%. No it is not as the same stocks are in both indexes. So using the S&P as average normal and CPI as average effect on all it is like anything else FUZZY MATH 9+8%=9.72% lost. In REAL MONEY almost 10% has DISAPPEARD.

However only 55%of Americans are invested in the stock market. Just a hunch retirees are invested much higher in bonds than equities thus the "AVERAGE" of 9% bis not accurate across the entire population. The fuzzy math needs to get fuzzier.

HUH? Sell now and buy later? Then, rather than betting on the stock market and real estate, you are betting on the fiat dollar which I read somewhere or other has lost 12% this past year. Oh and add to that you will likely pay TAX on what you sell.

Everyone has their own financial reality. For those who own a home and want to sell it and buy in the villages, the home they own is also INFLATED in value so it is a wash or partial wash.

As far as people not being able to buy homes. Under CAPITALISM, if people can't afford to pay the price the price will either drop or the goods will not be produced.

Turn up the violin music. When first married I owed 13,000 in college loans. In today's dollars that is roughly 7x so 91,000. We lived in a dive and I worked 6 and 7 days a week. I PAID MY LOAN. We SAVED money to buy a home. A truly strange concept for many. We need to live and be happy with what is not with what we think should be.
Should be is a moving target and thus will never be.

CPI isn't asset inflation. . .
apples and oranges

nothing to do with this point to be perfectly blunt

Some on this site are saying TV housing has appreciated as much 100% in a year. Certainly the dollar has not deflated by 50%.

Footnote - today's stock market was invented in Amsterdam in 1611. The first commodity bubble was tulips. Owning tulips bulbs was a status symbol for the rich and famous. The demand for bulbs went crazy. Investors buying and selling without ever taking procession of a tulip bulb. One particular kind of bulb sold $76000. In 1630 people started to loose interest in tulip bulbs plus the horticulturists were developing bulbs as fast as possible (increase supply). In 1630 it took a mere 6 weeks for the tulip market to crash and loose 90%. Suddenly tulips were no longer accepted as a financial instrument.

So why the story - I'm tired of these 10 cent millionaires here in TV brag about the value of their IRIS, GARDENIA, Etc. It is meaningless and like tulips they don't take houses in the supermarket in exchange for food.

We LIVE by the choices WE make. As far as bonds, in the old days people would could build a treasury bond ladder. Treasuries were secure and paid the rate of inflation plus 2%. You paid federal tax on the interest so you had zero risk and were mostly even after paying the federal tax. Those days, that option does not exist for us. CPI is 8% treasuries are paying. last time I looked 1.7% and that is before TAX

Everyone's finances are different. Truth, REALITY, many do not understand what they have, what they need and their level of risk. Average? You can look up the national debt clock. TRUTH I need to collect my courage to look. As I recall the average American has 10,000 in savings and owes 85,000. That is actually OLD, As stated I've not look in along time. People in the Villages are not AVERAGE.

As far as BONDS. A bond fund that pays more than, normal investment grade bonds,
is invested in some lower grade bonds, some bond that mature in 100 years and are leveraged-they borrow against bonds they hold to buy more bonds. Far more risk than many realize they have taken on.

As said, we live with the choices we have made. Sale of a stock, a bond, a home etc, you are buying it from someone who has chosen to sell it. The Villages started as a trailer park. Homes are now selling on a regular basis for half a million. No one is right all the time. You increase your money, your wealth by being right more often than being wrong.

So tell these nice people that they don't know what they are doing.
https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...8-post145.html

There are people who can manage the scenario quite nicely, pocketing the excess premium and sitting and waiting for better prices. .

your history is irrelevant to the point of excessively high valuation currently

Yes, and then the bottom fell out in 2008. People walked away from their homes because they now were worth less than what they purchased it for. I couldn’t believe that wouldn’t just wait until the market came back around, which it always did. I bought in 2000 because the prices were going up so fast. I couldn’t afford to pay any higher so I took the plunge and sold my condo and bought a single family again. That was up north.

It's not just here the prices going beyond what we thought was possible....Cape Cod(MA.) is seeing the same thing.....something purchased in 2019 and add $200K to the price and not because someone added a pool or even painted a room....just what is happening. In the case of Cape Cod prices had always been lower than other towns nearer Boston.....maybe it was time for them to catch up....another place to retire to....opps....not so much now.

During the housing bubble burst starting in 2006 I was living in Newport Beach, CA and driving a Porsche. The same dealer also sold and serviced Bentleys. I remember taking my vehicle in for service and seeing a dozen or more Bentley convertibles sitting out front in their overflowing lot. Although I had noticed one or two Bentley convertibles in the lot before there had never been nearly this many. I asked my service manager why there were so many. He said "Oh, those are the mortgage brokers' cars." Mortgage brokers back then in CA were raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and of course their income dried up so they were forced to turn in their leased Bentleys. lol

In October 2009 I first visited The Villages. Prices had come down some off their peak. I heard tales about how a few years before The Villages had set up a couple of tents to accommodate all the prospective buyers as a feeding frenzy was on. If this source is correct TV sold 4,263 new homes in 2005. That translates to almost 12 house a day, a new house every 2 hours 24/7. The Villages New Home Sales: 2003-Present | Inside The Bubble

That was due to the "sub-prime" mortgage fiasco. People with zero credit history were being given mortgages and when prices went up, they took the equity out of their homes and were SHOCKED when they couldn't pay it back...

Most people who were simply "under water" just waited it out, paid their mortgage and were fine...

15-16 years ago was also the beginning of the huge wave of "Baby Boomer" retirements...

Some houses have appreciated almost 100% in the last few years. That is how much I was offered for my house, but it is a moot point as I don’t plan to sell for some time. Your house is worth what people are willing to pay for it.

They lowered the price to $688,500.