[festusrules]

Trying to decide between a CY Villa and a Cottage. We will be snowbirds for the foreseeable future...7-8 months here and 4-5 in TV.

I prefer the Villas because of less yard to maintain.

Wife like the Cottages, with 2 car garages and indoor laundry.

How much do you snowbirds pay for lawn mtce?

[chuckinca]

Works out to be about $150/mo for St Augustine (Bermuda) grass (usually a weed up north).

60 - cutting
50 - water
40 - cinch bugs, spiders and other bugs, fertilize, weed removal, dead patch repairs, etc.


.

[elevatorman]

I have a designer home and spent $45 for cut, trim and weed the beds. Just got my water bill an it shows $19.17 for irrigation and I will be cutting the watering back for the winter this week. If you are buying new there is a seperate water system for irrigation (non-potable water). Fertalization and lawn pest control I do myself. My home has zoysia as I believe all the homes being built now are getting.

[Ohiogirl]

It's not just new construction that has the reclaimed water used for irrigation (and thus billed at a lower rate). Our CYV built in 2006 has it - your realtor or someone on this forum can probably tell you when they started doing that.

For our CYV with grass front and back, we pay $40/month to mow, edge, and occasionally spray for weeds in the planting beds. I do a lot of hand weeding every trip down. October bill for irrigation was about $25. Sprinklers set for twice a week, about 15-20 min. per zone (I think).

Fired Zoysia Green after about 3 years and started using Jeff at Sunscape who was supposed to fertilize and I think pest control for lawn and shrubs (can't remember for sure). He did one application in April of 2009 (if I'm remembering correctly) and never showed up again. We all know what happened with Sunscape (if you don't, do a search above).

Since then I've fertilized the lawn and shrubs myself but only about 2-3 times. Am sure it needs more, but honestly, doesn't look any different than when Zoysia Green did it. We will be down next weekend (hooray) for the winter and I plan to get into a regular routine with fertilizing, etc.

We still have Dean's for outside and inside pest control. I'm not very clear on whether or not they do anything pest control-wise for the shrubs or not. They do something quarterly. All my paperwork has been moved to TV and I need to get on all that stuff. Don't seem to have any pest issues.

Some CYV neighborhoods do not allow grass. Some do. If you buy in a CYV neighborhood that has grass, you can always remove it if you want. Not vice-versa. We like the look of grass and we have a dog. Everyone has different needs/wants.

And by the way, you can get an inside laundry room in 3 of the CYV models, but not, I believe, in a 2 bedroom one. Only some of the 3 bedroom models. There are some (very few) CYVs with 2 car garages. Really rare to find one with both a 2 car garage and an inside laundry - think I've seen one resale in the 4 years I've been keeping tabs on CYVs. Don't know if there have been any new ones like that built.