[graciegirl]

Arrived on Monday and as we drive around we see some For Sale Signs in yards in the sections north of 466..(I think) and some in windows south of 466.

My husband AKA Sweetie says that there doesn't appear to be many resales but I know that isn't right, I have been pouring over listings on the internet for months. I know there are hundreds, but can't find them, just driving around.

How does this work?

[SteveFromNY]

Given the many thousands of homes there, even if a few hundred are for sale you wouldn't see that many. As a percentage of the homes in TV, I'd bet only 5 to 10% are being sold at any given time. If that's true, you'd only see one sign in every 10 to 20 homes, and not all sellers use signs, so the number would go down.
Why don't you collect the addresses and look by village? You can get that on TV web site by selecting a particular village on the search page.

I just checked and there are 432 VLS listings as of now. Assume an equal number of MLS and FSBO's, that would be ~800 out of ~30,000, or less than 3%. So approximately only three in every hundred is for sale. That won't translate into many signs!

[graciegirl]

But I don't understand.

What is wrong with having a lot of signs? It appears to me, living where people post signs in their yards, that THAT would help to get the houses sold.

In our area, we have plenty of restrictions. One neighborhood/developement says that the for sale sign must be inserted into a nice dark green wrought iron filligree sign holder provided by the ?? Homeowners Association.

[redwitch]

Rules here prohibit for sale signs in many of the villages. I'm not sure exactly how it works. I know south of 466 is no way. Some sections north of 466 don't seem to allow for sale signs on the lawns. Some do. It really does seem to be hit and miss.

Originally, no signs were necessary since there was only one way to go -- the developer was the agent for all sales -- new and used. Obviously, that changed. This is strictly my opinion/theory but I think the developer deliberately made it as difficult as possible for outside realtors and FSBOs by banning all signs on properties wherever possible.

[SteveFromNY]

Originally Posted by redwitch

Rules here prohibit for sale signs in many of the villages. I'm not sure exactly how it works. I know south of 466 is no way. Some sections north of 466 don't seem to allow for sale signs on the lawns. Some do. It really does seem to be hit and miss.

Originally, no signs were necessary since there was only one way to go -- the developer was the agent for all sales -- new and used. Obviously, that changed. This is strictly my opinion/theory but I think the developer deliberately made it as difficult as possible for outside realtors and FSBOs by banning all signs on properties wherever possible.

RW, I gotta agree...it wouldn't surprise me if there were some ulterior motive to a sign ban. Even if it isn't competition on re-sales, but the simple fact that lots of signs would lead to folks thinking there was something wrong with the place if that many people want to leave.

That said though, if my earlier conclusion is even close, there would only be 1 sign for every 33 houses. Doesn't sound like a lot to me.

[Happy62]

The Deed restrictions control FOR SALE SIGNS. North of 466 you are allowed to have one sign in the yard, South of 466 you are allowed to have one 12" x12" sign inside the window.

Why.. Because The Villages says so..............

[TomW]

The restrictions seem a bit tight but immaterial. I wouldn't think someone living in a cul-de-sac off a side street would get many prospective buyers driving by anyway. It does force sellers to find other means (paper, MLS, Internet, etc.) to let people know the house is for sale. When I see a lot of for sale signs in a small area, I wonder if there may be a neighborhood or other community problem that the current residents find undesireable enough to want to leave.

[Sidney Lanier]

I absolutely agree, TomW: Signage does not sell a house. We are south of CR-466, meaning the only signs that we would see are small ones in windows, yet we bought privately without benefit of any signage at all. And in truth, on a percentage basis there are very few houses for sale throughout TV. When we came back to TV in the hopes of actually buying, we had our time pre-planned: a day with a VLS salesperson, a day with a MLS one, a day looking at FSBOs (found mainly in the Daily Sun listings), and a day to catch our breath and regroup. Ironically, we ended up buying not a FSBO but a listed house which we were fortunate enough to see privately, and in Florida a listed seller can phone the real estate office and end the listing with a call.

I remember once our going to a yard sale on a road not far from where we live, but in a different town, here in the Mid-Hudson Valley, where there were 'for sale' signs on very nearly every other house. We could come to no conclusion other than there was a problem there, and by asking it turned out that there was: A townwide reassessment hit harder those people in older homes who were still paying taxes based on property values from decades earlier, while those in newer houses of equal value had been paying disproportionately higher taxes, and New York State being known as 'Land of Taxes,' some were priced out of the market....

[SteveFromNY]

In the past I would agree that a lot of signs in a neighborhood could indicate some kind of local problem, but today I think it's more likely that they are an indicator of the huge inventory of unsold homes on the market. It's hard to find a block where I live in Staten Island that doesn't have more than one For Sale sign, and on many blocks there are many signs.
I also agree that signs don't sell houses. They generate leads for the realtors! Just like open houses are more for the realtor than the seller. If the houses are marketed right through the MLS (or VLS), they will eventually sell, with or without the sign.

[BarbinNH]

Well, this is kind of unusual for a first post, but what the heck...

graciegirl,

My husband and I are down here for the month of April and are also looking at houses. What we have done is:

Get a Village sales agent
Get an MLS realtor
Get the Village Sun everyday and look for and go to the open houses.
Use our laptop to look on the internet for listings.

When we have bought houses in the past, we have always driven around the neighborhoods that we were interested in. However, that hasn't worked as well for us as the above has.

Anyway, hope this helps. Who knows, maybe we'll be neighbors someday!

And "Hi!" to everyone else at the Villages. BTW I'm at the Hacienda rec center with the Mame rehearsal going on in another room. They sound GREAT! Too bad it's sold out :'(

Barb (soon to be from FL)

[jjdees]

I'm not convinced the sign issue is a Villages edict. I think it may be a county issue.

[Muncle]

It's part of the deed restrictions. Nothing to do wiith the county.

[Hancle704]

In areas north of 466 and on historic side (East of Hwy 441/27) governed by Village Center Community Development District or City of Lady Lake, one sign allowed per lot unless home backs up to golf course, then a sign in front and a sign in rear is permitted. Not sure of covenants south of CR 466 in area governed by Sumter Landing Center Community Development District. Yard Sale, or Political Signs are not allowed anywhere.

[graciegirl]

NO Signs? No Prob! Me and Sweetie and daughter drove around the new houses and cupped our hands and LOOKED in windows and tried doors and got in one or two and FELL IN LOVE with one in Hadley on Havana Trail and sought out our assigned Villages Rep who had taken a couple of days off, and after several tries we were given another person....and long story short, we bought the house day before yesterday. WE WERE NOT GOING TO BUY A HOUSE ON THIS TRIP. They SURE aren't pushy. You can hardly get in touch with anyone easily for answers.

My new complaint is, that it would have been SO much easier if they had all of the models in a row somewhere that you could walk through unaccompanied and a sheet as to where their duplicates were and how much.

What do you all think???

[JohnM]

Our rep took us somewhere and showed us five or six (?) of the current models which helped us decide on the model we wanted...do I remember where after looking at 50(?)homes...not a chance!

John