Not sure why people always think about items like this as "the developer wants" or "the developer thinks".

Let's think about the furniture situation this way:

TV will have over 110K citizens very shortly. With the average household population at 1.87 (last census) per house that represents about 54K houses, villas.

Think about the town you came from up north. The average household size with kids etc is probably closer to 3.87 (guess). So if you had 54K houses how high is the population? The answer would be a town with over 200K people.

So if you had a town with 200K people who many furniture stores would there be to service that town?

There will always be a need for furniture stores regardless of who is running them. This is capitalism 101. If the business owner calculates a need and can provide the service they decide to locate there.

I see this furniture situation as nothing different.

You are right as usual Russ, but we old-er people come in and FURNISH the home as opposed to dib and dabs like we did younger and underfunded. Most of us move in, buy stuff we need and go out and play golf.

I think that the Morses, as usual, struck while the iron was hot, got most of the homes furnished with a nice couple of stores and have now decided to sell them to another company.

I am selfishly not personally worried about this. We just trotted over to Babbettes in Leesburg and got a nice new sleeper sofa and I am looking for a killer lamp like Swimdawg got at TJMaxx. If I can't find one, I may have to break into her home and steal hers..

Once the lamp is in this house, I am done with buying furniture.

I googled Southern Lifestyle Furniture they were only in TV. This must be part of a much larger furniture company. It all boils down to costs. Retail space is very expensive and furniture takes up a lot of space. I have roamed SLF many times and there were very few people in there. Their furniture is of very good quality but who in TV needs it to last 30 yrs. Fabrics get dated and THEY DO NOT COME WITH ARM COVERS. Just go to the consignment shops and see used, good quality furniture but DATED fabric and dirty, worn, arms. Needs slipcovers or to be upholstered. Most of the people going into SLF are getting ideas, picking the minds of the salespeople and then going elsewhere to purchase. They obviously can't stay in business when this happens.

Today we took delivery of the Flexsteel sleeper sofa which we ordered from Showcase Direct back in August. The sofa was delivered by "Mike and Nick", two very nice young gentleman, both of which will be out of a job when Southern Lifestyles closes it's doors. "Mike" said he just enlisted in the Navy and is hoping to ship out sooner than his expected date of June, 2014. "Nick" said he will look for another job within The Villages. We would like to wish these two nice young boys the best!

The sofa is beautiful and Mike said the warranty we purchased will be honored by City Furniture. Hopefully we will not have to find that out!

I went to the new City Furniture & was disappointed to see the Tropical prints that were so popular at Southern Lifestyles are no longer available...I've tried to find them on line with no luck at all. If anyone knows how to find out a brand name it would be helpful to me. I saw a set & was about to purchase it in Lake Sumter, but they closed the next day. And what about people who may have a problem with items purchased there??? how is anyone supposed to reach them??? please reply. Thanks, Sandy in OBG

When we purchased our furniture from Southern Lifestyles, we also purchased a protection service for our furniture. How is that going to work? It would have been nice to know this was going to happen so such questions could be asked.

Southern Lifestyles administrative office is still open. They called me about a balance I owed after a delivery last fall. They will remain open for several years. They can be called about warranty info and the (insurance-type) companies that issued the protection plan.

Their phone and address are here:
Southern Lifestyles in Wildwood, FL - 352-753-5303