I really liked Pelican Preserve near Ft Myers when we looked at it.

Historic section off of Paradise. No red button.

You can also get to WaWa (gas for the cart), Lowes, Cracker Barrell, and Walmart from this gate.

It's in the northern part of the "Historic" section, a few houses away from the Boone gate. There's no red button; this particular gate IS a security gate, not just a traffic control device. No pass, no entry.

I was surprised to see someone suggest that their new residence outside The Villages was more neighborly. We have lived here 12 1/2 years and have an active and caring neighborhood. When new neighbors move in, they are immediately welcomed. I recently broke my wrist and neighbors brought food for days and offered to help walk our dog. I would say "neighborly" is high on the list of positives for The Villages.

We bought in Monarch Grove. We wanted new house, new everything. People need to look all over. Don’t bas edit on what one person says. Turnpike noise isn’t bad for everyone and we are getting new stores and shopping and restaurants here by Monarch Grove. We don’t have flood issues. Now sure where that statement is coming from! Don’t knock down south of 44! It’s new and beautiful over here. I know of a few realtors in the villages buying over here cause of the new stuff.

Has anyone checked out Rotunda West. I have a friend who visited with me here in The Villages and visited many 55+ and settled in Rotunda West...built a beautiful home and I know more home for your buck but wondering what it's like and what is around them... haven't been to visit yet

We tried the Villages liked it owned a home for 2 years then decided based on a few factors including friends we made in Ocala 5 years ago it was time for a move. Yes it is more subdued in OTOW where we got a lot more house for the money. We purchased the same size home as our CYV in TV for less money than what we sold the CYV for this past November. We are on the 17th hole of one of the golf courses, corner lot. We pretty much lead a subdued life style anyway, so it fits our lifestyle. (different strokes for different folks).

We too know the backroads here and stay off SR200 when we can. Busy roads 441/27 is no bargain to drive either. Golf cart transportation? We can go to Publix, Walmart Food Store, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and restaurants on our golf cart. Granted TV has much more access to restaurants and stores via golf cart.

There's lots of new construction going on here at OTOW too. What has been an eye opener for us when welcome signs are put in front of homes about to be occupied by new residents there have been at least 7 signs that are welcoming families who are moving from The Villages.

It's all about personal preferences.

I think many if not most retirement communities offer better bang for the buck in terms of home and building lot quality/pricing compared to The Villages. That said, we liked the number and variety of activities in The Villages, so it was a trade-off for us. We've been able to explore new hobbies and activities that we would not have had the chance to be exposed to in other communities. And we were younger when we retired here. As we age, and decide we need a more subdued lifestyle we may move. Already we hate the increase in traffic in the Villages that came as a result of population growth.

Flood concerns came from a lot owner in Chitty Chatty. Much of the area South of 44 is filled in swamps.

Quote from New members forum below

"Surprise! The lot you bought and house you have planned are in a flood zone !
No one disclosed to us when we selected a pond lot in Chitty Chatty that this could be an issue. After our planning meetings, payment of 20 % we spoke with the bank about a mortgage and were told that we would have to carry flood insurance which DOUBLES our home insurance cost. We are very angry about this."

Where is that located? I have never heard of it. THANK YOU!

I believe it is in or near Port Charlotte...

I believe it is in or near Port Charlotte

Other communities
 

If you're a golfer and you like to be involved with other AAA personalities that speed too much then the village is perfect for you. If you want to overpay by 100% then the villages is for you. The fact is that the villages has 70,000 plus seniors having 70 square miles. That said the plus is they have 1200 clubs and activities if you're a people person. However off of route 27 and route 44 there are 10 much smaller communities with much friendlier people and housing they cost $100 or $200,000 less. If your parents want something to show off and they want to spend $700,000 they can certainly find it in the villages or if they want to spend $350,000 they can certainly find it in the villages also. You get what you don't pay for sometimes also by this I mean and if you would ask 90% of the people in any community do they swim in the pools they would say no. But they're there anyway

Other communities
 

If you're a golfer and you like to be involved with other AAA personalities that speed too much then the village is perfect for you. If you want to overpay by 100% then the villages is for you. The fact is that the villages has 70,000 plus seniors having 70 square miles. That said the plus is they have 1200 clubs and activities if you're a people person. However off of route 27 and route 44 there are 10 much smaller communities with much friendlier people and housing they cost $100 or $200,000 less. If your parents want something to show off and they want to spend $700,000 they can certainly find it in the villages or if they want to spend $350,000 they can certainly find it in the villages also. You get what you don't pay for sometimes also by this I mean and if you would ask 90% of the people in any community do they swim in the pools they would say no. But they're there anyway. The very main overriding advantage of the villages is that they have plenty of golf courses and that they have something called Court accessibility to virtually all shopping and medical offices where you don't need two cars or actually even one car but you do pay for it so again if your parents can afford it they'll probably like it but I find a lot of the people here are AAA personalities

I agree Coffeebean! I currently live in On Top of the World and hope to sell and move to TV. Life here is more geared towards the older folk. The sidewalks roll up at 8:00 and there is absolutely nothing to do or anything open after that time that's golf cart accessible.

Yeah, that extra hour until 9:00 really matters.

Not necessarily. We inherited a home from my aunt and uncle in OTOW we sold it made money on it. The next owner did some upgrades and sold it for more than she bought it from us for. We tried the Villages for 2 years and wanted a change, so we’re in OTOW> It’s a 100 year lease hold from the time the home was built on some of the homes here. Ours is 3 years old so we have 97 years left on it. We have no children and will leave the home to cousins but it won’t really matter they will profit from the sale of it.

You apparently have absolutely no idea what the Villages is, and are collecting obsolete information from limited resources, and filling in the blanks with stuff you make up.

1. The villages is over 125,000 people, a good chunk of whom are snowbirds, with many who rent the vacant homes owned by those snowbirds when the snowbirds are "up north."
2. There are over 3000 clubs, most of which are not exclusive to singles. There are a handful of clubs dedicated to singles.
3. There are homes for most budgets, including some in the low $100,000's. The lower end had prior owners, but they're available for sale. The person living in the $100,000 home will pay the same $164 (or whatever) amenity fee that the guy moving into the $2million home next week, each month, and be entitled to the same amenities that the guy in the mansion can access, for that monthly fee.
4. The Villages isn't a singular community. It is a series of smaller communities (why it's called the VillageS...not the Village), clustered together by a single Developer; a planned community of clusters. Basically, it's a small city or large suburban town (depending on your definition). Every town I've ever been in had neighborhoods. Each neighborhood had its own feel, its own personality. This is true for the Villages.
5. Rather than come here complaining about a place you obviously have NO actual knowledge of, maybe come visit. If you end up not liking it, at least it'll be because you actually discovered that you don't like it. Instead of not liking some fictional accounting of a place that isn't what the Villages actually is.

We'd visited The Villages once or twice but the year we decided to get serious, we made a list of the things we were looking for in a retirement community and broke it down into "must haves" and "nice to haves". We also decided on a general geographical area that we wanted to live in. Doing research online, we were able to eliminate quite a few retirement communities and boiled it down to 8 or 9 top contenders. We spent several days on vacation one year visiting all of them and checking off which items on our lists each location did or didn't manage to have plus our overall impressions of the communities. On the way home (we were driving back up to North Carolina, our home for 20 years), we rules out everybody but The Villages. During that last visit, we'd also dropped in on a few open house showings of new homes and had found a model we really liked. When we got home, we searched for houses of that model, took virtual tours of them all and narrowed it down to one. And we bought that one and have lived in it for nearly 5 years now.

Others will tell you that the only way to do it is to rent a house here for a month or two and spend your time while here investigating villages within The Villages. You of course could also visit other communities altogether. Each approach will work for some and not for others. Perhaps we were lucky. If so, we wish you the same luck, whether you decide on The Villages or on one of the other communities you mention or sometimes else!

Originally Posted by My Daily Run View Post
Has anyone checked out Rotunda West. I have a friend who visited with me here in The Villages and visited many 55+ and settled in Rotunda West...built a beautiful home and I know more home for your buck but wondering what it's liLongke and what is around them... haven't been to visit yet
Where is that located? I have never heard of it. THANK YOU!


Rotunda West is really isolated. A lot of driving to get services.

TV ... no comparison
 

We lived near Solovita for years and know it well. Nice, small, poor location in south Orlando and a few activities.
We fell in love with Margaritaville and went 3 times. In the end... it came down to, "what do you do after you do the beach for 6 months". Big city with big city crime around you in DB. Cant drive your golf cart to a golf course if that matters and just a few activities. If you are a boater 3 or more days a week, that is a great place. We moved to TV 1 year ago and it was the best decision for 20+ reasons!! We bought a pre-owned home near Sumter Landing for all the conveniences already built on 466 and Lady Lake. Established, no construction, and in the middle of everything!

We rented a new house in the Rotunda in 2007. We were the first tenants. It was the worse place we have ever been. In the middle of nowhere, nothing to do. The no see ums were so ferocious that we could not sit in the lanai by the pool. We could hardly wait to leave. We rented for the next two years in the Villages and bought in 2010. The rest is history. Now in Nova Scotia wondering when we will ever get back.

Too bad you hate Florida so much.I had no idea you hated this state with the passion of a thousand suns. Unlike you, OBB, I LOVE it here. After too many years fighting the cold winters of NY and NJ, shoveling snow and dodging black ice on the roads and my driveway, I'm happy as a pig in sh!t to be living in paradise which is Florida. Living in The Villages is just a bonus!

We checked out a number of 55+ communities along the coast from Pompano Beach up to West Palm when we decided to leave Ft Lauderdale...all were very nice, but not for us.

The Jimmy Buffet themed development "Latitudes" over by Daytona was still a concept at the time....I had heard mixed reviews about Del Webb communities, but we had never visited any because we were looking for something near the ocean....we came to visit a cousin in The Villages for a long weekend and put money down before we left. We knew what we were looking for and TV had most of it.

No place is ever going to have everything thing you want. For us, moving to a newly developed area worked...we are on a Cul de sac...we all came in together and have bonded...we do things with our neighbors

We visited "Latitudes" a year ago just to see how it was....very nice, it will only have 2500 homes, they have one of everything that we have in TV (except no golf on the property or polo) and they have a property on the beach that you will be bused to. The entertainment and the grounds in the Villages just can't be beat IMHO

We visited friends in The Villages who had looked at some other places. We did not because I could not imagine any other place having more miles of golf cart paths to drive around on.

Funny, I checked out all three plus Sun City Center south of Tampa and On Top of the World in Clearwater before deciding on the Villages. Activities were the most important criterion for me and nothing could compete with the Villages.

Solivita is very nice and the prices for what you get are incredibly low. Probably the best bargain in Florida. But it’s not in a good location, imo, and very hard to get into and out of.

Lakewood Ranch is new and rather sterile and overpriced. Not much going on there yet but that should change as they’re trying to be The Villages 2.

I had high hopes for Margaritaville outside of Daytona. They do a good job marketing it online but when I got there it was a big disappointment.

The Villages is the ONLY reason I agreed to move to Florida. My parents live down here, and that wasn't even enough to get me to want to live in this horrible state. I can always visit them. But now I'm stuck here for awhile. Glad I have the Villages. It would be intolerable, otherwise.

Not fond of Connecticut nor'easters either BTW. But the (humidity + heat waves) in Connecticut was pretty much the same as the (humidity + summer) in Florida, and I can't stand either of them. Humidity + heat = REALLY bad for arthritis. It's not healthy for me to be here, and if I'm going to spend a lot of time inside in air conditioning, I could've just stayed put, or move to a cheaper place in a different state like Kentucky.

No - it's the Villages that attracts me to the Villages. There's nothing about Florida weather that's attractive to me.

I’m confused...I thought the villages was a 55 and older community? And we don’t have a “HOA” it’s called something different, maintenance fee or something we pay $165 a month. That is kinda like a HOA.

I really sympathize with you and your arthritis. Had a relative like that and they moved to Arizona for the dry climate and fewer allergies. For the sake of your health a move to a healthier location might be a good New Years resolution.

I think the poster you reference was referring to a Home Owners Association, which is a quasi government run by members of the community. Often the people heading those HOAs are a little power hungry and nit picky. The amenity fee we pay goes to pay for many of the recreational, landscaping and maintenance features that make our lifestyle experience so great. Our governance is by the CDD system that is rather unique to Florida, and is not the typical HOA. The Villages is an age restricted community which means at least 80 per cent of homes are occupied by at least one person over the age of 55. I am pretty certain their are far greater than 80% of homes in TV that have at least one 55+ resident.

I was thinking more on the order of Albuquerque or Santa Fe, NM. But it's not an option. It was either the Villages, or some random non-community neighborhood with multiple acres of land in South Carolina, in areas where you need a shotgun to scare off the bears and Klan members.

Given those two options at the time of our forced retirement, I'll take the Villages any day. I just wish the Villages was in New Mexico. It'd be a win-win for me!

Albuquerque, NM was a great place to grow up in back in the 1940s and 1950s and that is where I spent most of my childhood. My grandmother lived in Santa Fe and an aunt was the first school nurse in Los Alamos during WWII. NM has changed over the years, and not for the better although Los Alamos is still a great town (I lived there nine years). Santa Fe is extremely expensive. In TV parking, dog poop and such gets everybody all worked up and I just have to chuckle. I feel as safe as I have ever felt anywhere in TV and that is important to me at my age.

"New Mexico has the second-highest violent crime rate in the country—8.6 vs. 3.7 nationwide. The violent crime rate in New Mexico is one of the highest in the country—8.6 incidents per 1,000 people, compared to 3.7 across the country.Aug 5, 2020"
New Mexico's 20 Safest Cities of 2020 | SafeWise

New Mexico is also a huge state. There are plenty of nice low-crime towns and areas-near-towns in the state.

Connecticut is considered somewhat idyllic, all things considered (other than high taxes). And yet, Hartford, the state capitol, has a higher crime rate than New Mexico - as of 2018 data, 1 in 93 people will become victim of a violent crime in Hartford, CT.

Compare with North Haven, CT (where I lived many years): less than one in 1000 will be victim to a violent crime.

Compare that "less than 1 in 1000" to the Villages - 22 out of every 1000 people in the Villages are victim to violent crime.

So it was safer to live in North Haven CT, than it is to live in the Villages.

Also, 20.7792% of all statistics are made up; the other 94.019977% are arbitrary.

I was in CT once during a spring break and had a wonderful time. Nice people.

I can't even remember the number of times I have experienced burglaries, thefts of anything literally not nailed down, and so on in Albuquerque, even when I was a child: bicycles, car tires, a letter sweater from my car, trailers, doors taken off my jeep and the light switch from its dashboard while it was parked in my driveway. My places of business there have been burglarized countless times. I have also been physically threatened, punched in the face, held at gunpoint and knifepoint in Albuquerque, as a child as well as an adult. Virtually everyone I know in Albuquerque and I know many people there has been a victim of crimes, predominantly multiple residential burglaries and vehicular theft over the years. I remember sitting down a few years ago, after I had lived elsewhere for perhaps twenty years, at a table of seven other lawyers at lunch during a continuing education class. They were all talking about the last time their car was stolen or their house broken into. What astounded me is they were so calm about it as it was not big news there.

My brother and his wife a couple years ago moved to a 55 and over community in Arizona called 'The Preserve at Saddlebrooke' and love it. I visited and found it way too remote and frankly boring but the weather is nice and the landscape beautiful. Luxury Retirement Communities for Active Adults and 55+ Seniors the-preserve- The Preserve

Can you elaborate? What specifically was lacking/not to your liking?

Thanks!

kathy

It's small, unattractive, no landscaping to speak of, not many activities. The "town center" and pool look great in the marketing materials, but when you see it, it's rather underwhelming. On the plus side, they do have their own private beach club, but of course you have to travel a good bit to get to it. A wide variety of activities, and lots of them, is what I was after, and nothing can compete with TV on that front.