Just looked at Properties of the Villages website. Yes they have changed the site but you can still get all of the listings of all homes, by village, type house, price range etc. Look at the site carefully and you too will be able to find all the stuff you say is no longer available.

I am an IT guy by trade and I did like the old way because you could view the newest of the pre-owned in a convenient manner if you were just browsing. That said, the new consolodated listings have a far superior query capability and while it does take a few more steps to do the query you get more precise results and the actual information on the individual property is more detailed. I do think each property should have the village listed before having to drill down to the detail but maybe they can do that or else it might be a design decision to draw the customer into the detail on the property.

Sorry about my sassy comment about techies, Blue Jay. I am just jealous.

Thank you for that clarification.:clap2:

Gracie, the blonde.

The new website is indeed difficult to use.... I tried it once, and definitely prefer the way it used to be. I won't bother using that site again.

I look everyday. Takes some getting used to but it works.

This website change was a major mistake. I had been planning to list my house with The Villages Realty. Now, I'm not too sure. Will any of the MLS brokers take a 5% commission?

Yes.

It was explained to me by a Villages agent that years and years ago, pre-owned homes were indeed listed on MLS. However due to conflicts between agents, The Villages developed their own VLS (Villages Listing System.)

Ohh figured it out...Besides the ""Show on map" option, there is another map options if you click on "View Flyer" you can see both aerial and street views

I noticed that VLS doesn't show taxes, age of resale, total days listed and price reductions.

You can get this information on the resales that use MLS.

Have a happy day everyone

Having spent many hours on the "old" pro owned listings before buying our home, I gotta say I like the new layout. I find it easier to navigate with more information options. I found it very annoying in the old version when you would get page after page of Pendings instead currently active properties. BTW, we did not end up buying from TV, but used a local Realtor who did a great job for us!

The villages main objective is to SELL HOMES, new or pre-owned. So...why don't they just do away with having TV sell pre-owned....give them all to MLS, who will sell them faster anyway, and TV can only concentrate on selling new. It would be so much easier and a whole lot less confusing. My brother (who just happens to be a realtor) is looking for a home here. He found it so strange that he has to have a TV sales rep and MLS rep. He never did go with a TV rep.

Then tell me how to get only the new listings listed numerically by VLS number. Before you could click on new listings daily and there usually were 5-12 homes listed for the day in VLS numerical number. Last time I could pull this up was 9/22 and the last home shown was VLS#214325 and these were all preowned homes. Now you pull up new listings and they show homes in the 213??? range and only a couple I have seen posted with higher number than 214325. I think it very improbable that all of a sudden there are only 1 or none new listings except for new homes. The push is on to sell new homes and they dropped the ball for us looking for preowned homes.

oh, I don't like that change at all! I don't think it's fair to those who are listing their homes for sale with The Villages Real Estate team. Sometimes people are selling to buy another home, even new homes. The real estate agents are making money on both transactions and it only benefits the agents and the buyers and the sellers.

What could possibly be the reasoning? I might have to make a couple phone calls.

It's also very interesting that since this new website appeared on Monday, there has not been one manufactured home listed in new listings, but if you go to Country Club Hills or Silver Lake you will see new listings.

Anybody who just listed a manufactured home with VLS should be concerned, as it appears The Villages Sales Office wants to pretend these listings don't exist.

Just curious why you would expect an MLS REALTOR to accept less commission than a Village sales rep???

Just looked on the Villages website. If you click on search homes under the first heading homes and villas you can refine your search to see the pre owned homes etc. looks like you can actually refine your search of pre owned homes even better than before, and when I click return to search results everything works fine. I look at pre owned home listings all the time and think this is actually an improvement.

I never said that I expected it.

I asked if anyone had negotiated it. All commissions are negotiable, and I generally have been able, outside The Villages, to negotiate a commission less than the ostensible "standard" 6%. Given the bargaining power of The Villages Realty, I am almost certain that I won't get less than 6% from them, however, I am not sure about the independent realtors--thus my question.

In fact, given the access that The Villages Realty has to potential buyers, I am not sure why anybody would use an MLS realtor in the absence of a lower commission. Of course, the new screwed-up website of The Villages Realty could change my view in that regard.

When we sold our first house, we were quoted a lower real estate commission rate by more than one MLS company. We decided to list with a Villages VLS agent at a higher commission rate because we felt The Villages had superior marketing tools in the Lifestyle Visits, the gorgeous Sales Centers, the daily open houses, the trolley rides, and their online user-friendly listing system.

Bad
 

Bad thing this new system , we also looked on a daily base to see what new pre-owned properties were listed, it was fast and easy and in a glance you could have an idea about what was new listed.
To bad they changed this , i say ...never change a winning team , but unfortunatly , i think TV is going to loose customers now
Fox & Tania ( TV fans from overseas )

I sent a critical e-mail to The Villages Realty, rather than just bitch here. No acknowledgement and no change to the website.

Pre home search looks good to me
 

Checked out what everyone was saying in this thread. Site has changed but I had no problem searching pre owned homes. I have been viewing the pre owned homes for months and still am able to do it. Site has changed a little but I think it's even better not worse. First heading is homes and Villas. Select search homes under that and you can narrow your search of pre owned homes even better than before and I had no problems returning to search results as an earlier poster had. You can still see listings as they appeared by clicking on view flyer . Maybe they have corrected what previous posters were reporting, but looks great to me.

Has anyone found a feed-back form on the Villages Homes website?

No, and I would also appreciate an email address to use to voice my opinion. Anybody got one?

I don't understand. I was just in the web site and pre-owned homes were there. It even looks like it has been improved.

Great news. Looks like they fixed the problem today. If you click on pre-owned and our newest homes it still shows a few that are not new today, but they do show 8 new ones today. 214240-214351. So they must be working on the problem. Thanks to any of you that contacted the people and complained.

maybe it's been tweaked, or maybe we're just getting used to it
 

I think it's just hard for us to change - anything! I discovered that if you put an individual village in the "keyword" section, you get all the listings in that village.

i don't mind change but hate to waste my time....yes today you could put in preowned and new listed...so lets hope our phone calls work

I think the way the changed the web site to look at homes is a bomb. I'm being kind.

the site seems to be fixed for the new listed preowned...but they are juggled up if there is an open house..but still an improvment of the first days...thank you the the sales reps who listened to our plea

I just went on their web sit again, yes you can search for pre-owned. What I had been searching for is a "courtyard villa" that they don't even list as a type of home anymore. They have "patio villa's" listed. Not a user friendly site anymore. MLS is the best way to go, you can bargain the price, not so with VLS.

Yes you can. Try, Try, Try.............it works:posting:

back on web this am web is freezing when you ask for certain things...:Screen_of_Death:

With a lot of patience, you can find the preowned that your are looking for. But the new design, as a marketing tool, is a disaster.

Agree, agree, agree. If you want to spend an inordinate amount of time searching for a home, this is the website for you. If you just want to make a quick check from time to time, not so much.

The internet is supposed to be quick, easy and give pertinent information. This website does none of the above. To know what village a listing is in, one would have to know every street in The Villages.

Whoever designed this website should have market tested it on 60, 70 and 80 year olds. They are the ones using it, not computer wizards.

now I will go to MLS. Can somebody explain this abbreviation to this site Please? Need another site to window shop till I get close enough to buy cause the villages sit sucks and takes too long even when it will load right. Rc.

Agree that the redesign of The Villages homes for sale web site is not designed for a quick check as was so easy to do in the past. This may be a planned move, not an accident, as the longer a newbie may have to stay on the sight, the more houses the newbie may have to look at and want to inquire about. Also agree that the TV sales office would be smart to put the name of the village after each address -- that would seem to be a no brainer. If I see or talk to my sales agent during my upcoming LSV in October, I will mention this to him for what it's worth.

I will continue to look at The Villages web site for preowned homes, but wish the redesign could be tweaked a little more.

I think the web designer thought the same search criteria and search results that work for new homes would work for resales. It could, but needs some tweaking. For instance, there are a lot more resale villages than new villages, making it much more important to include the village name in the search results. It also would be great if the user could make a choice as to the order of the search results. It looks like they may add that feature because they have a box for it, just no choices yet. We can hope there isore tweaking coming.

If you want MLS sites to check homes for sale in The Villages, here are a few to try: realtor.com, trulia.com, zillow.com, lylesellsfla.com, Bev Shive and Micki Morrison, Your Villages Professional Realtors

Hope that helps.

try using this site with your cell...battery life had better be 100% before you start...

It is certainly not as easy as it used to be, but you can select "pre-owned" and there is a drop-down menu that allows you to select by price and other criteria. Don't get me wrong, I loved the other way, but since this is all we have for noq, we can make it work. You can select the newest listings for new and pre-owned.