[wlou]

Village Friends,
We have some friends coming to visit us again in TV, ( we are still PTimers and coming in w/them for a few weeks) and they have been somewhat interested in buying there. They have been waiting out the housing slide and I was wondering, what you guys thought the new prices were doing in TV these days..Down like everyone else, steady , or still going up? Any info./opinions will be passed along to interested friends, thanks!!

[jeffy]

I watch the market here on a very regular basis. Things like how many units are on the villages web site (resales) . As of today there are 427 active and pending . This is relatively low. I have seen it as high as the 490s. And other things like incentives and the price of the new homes in the daily open houses. I was expecting that this summer would be a great buying opportunity. We are full timers but have inlaws and a brother wanting to buy here. I thought that with the lack of winter visitors, the villages sales would continue to drop. They seem to be holding up rather well. According to the paper they are currently selling 7 and a half homes a day.

In my opinion the biggest thing holding the villages sales down is the lack of market up north. We know several couples that would buy here but have been unable to sell their current home. They are not willing to have two mortgage payments.

I personally am advising friends / relatives to wait a couple of more months to see how things progress unless they have a buyer for their home up north now.

/
jeffy

[thegreenerside]

I feel that the market in TV has bottomed out and things are on the upswing. I have started to see homes selling within 60 days of listing. Of course in this market that is real good, but at the height average time on market in TV was less than 20 days. As Jim Cramer would say BUY!BUY!BUY!.

[graciegirl]

I will sound like a real estate agent which I am not, but I think this is the time to buy. We saw an open house with a villa furnished (very nicely) yesterday for $150 K.( The villa with a front picket fence.) In Hadley. Brand new.

We returned back to Ohio today, and I don't know if this is home or I have left home. We settled into our partly furnished new home in Hadley, stayed ten days, and I didn't feel like leaving there. Met two couples who will be our neighbors if we ever get there at the same time, went to Bingo, which I hadn't done in a thousand years. It was fun! Sweetie, Helene and I set next to someone who was from Ohio, the very same area as us. The ice cream was yummy too, even if we didn't win. It was at the Odell Center. 100 yards from our house. What a good time we had.

Returned to a gorgeous display of blooming, as if this dear house is jealous of it's competition. A riot of roses, climatis, day lilies and snapdragons.

Life is confusing, but good.

[noleguy]

According to Mr Morse they have sold more homes in April and May of 2008 than they did in the same 2 months of 2007.

[villages07]

wlou,

My opinion, and it is strictly an opinion...is that TV new home prices took a pretty good drop in 2007 then leveled off for awhile and now seem to be ever so slightly creeping back up. Nowhere near where they were in 2006 but higher than 4 months ago. In my opinion, they have already hit their bottom.

[inda50]

I've been following the prices and they are going down. The econony is in a down turn, read any paper any day except for the daily sun and you will see a clear picture of what is going on. Job loses are up and airlines are cutting flights, about 4 have gone out of business, construction jobs are down, GM and Ford are closing plants, car dealers are suffering. Went out furniture shopping today and there are sales in many of them and I saw one going out of busines sale. I do think we here in the villages are faring better than some other parts of the country, we also have many empty stores ( yes i know there are other big chain stores opening , and thats a good thing ) just read some the articles in this forum that talk about empty stores. Unfortunatly alot of them are smaller operation. Who really need another Beals of Belks wouldn't a little more variety be better?

Perhaps things will improve after the presidential election--Hope so

sorry to be gloomy-but you asked

[samhass]

I agree with V07. They are blowing out Miona Shores, but other than that, I think prices are creeping up. They are showing markdowns on homes, but I think they bumped the prices up so they could put them "on sale". I think the prices on the villas and ranches are pretty high for homes of that size in the middle of Florida. This could be a great time to buy. I expect the demand will rise as usual this winter.
While the economy isn't stellar, there are still a lot of people with a lot of money. In our age group there is a lot of accumulated money. As Poromo said, a 1 BR in NYC can cost more than a premier here. Some of that accumulated money will be coming to TV, whether the "big house" up north sells or not.

[gfmucci]

Chatting with some folks in the closing department a couple of weeks ago, they said the number of new home closings have been averaging in the mid-200s per month compared with high 300's to 400's during the peak a couple of years ago.* But they said closing activity has been picking up a bit.

Check out www.Zillow.com and search The Villages.* Here is a link to one of the houses for sale just south of 466:* http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=70820910

Scroll down a bit and click on the "1-year" tab on the graph.* Compare sales in The Villages to sales in the 32162 zip code, Sumter County, and Florida.* Some interesting stuff.* After a few weeks of monitoring this site, you'll see some trends established.* It appears the prices have been trending upward over the past two or three months which supports what I was told in the closing department.* The Villages market is somewhat different than the surrounding area and most of Forida.* I expect it to recover sooner and prices rise higher than surrounding areas.

Put in your own address and city for whereever you now live and you will see the price trends for your own area.

[JohnN]

We bought a villa a few weeks back, so I guess we put our money where our mouth is!!!

We think prices are about as low as they're going to go and the timing was right for us.

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by gfmucci

Chatting with some folks in the closing department a couple of weeks ago, new home closings have been averaging in the mid-200s per month compared with high 300's to 400's during the peak a couple of years ago. But they said closing activity has been picking up a bit.

Check out www.Zillow.com and search The Villages. Here is a link to one of the houses for sale just south of 466: http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=70820910

Scroll down a bit and click on the "1-year" tab on the graph. Compare sales in The Villages to sales in the 32162 zip code, Sumter County, and Florida. Some interesting stuff. After a few weeks of monitoring this site, you'll see some trends established. It appears the prices have been trending upward over the past two or three months which supports what I was told in the closing department. The Villages market is somewhat different than the surrounding area and most of Forida. I expect it to recover sooner and prices rise higher than surrounding areas.

Put in your own address and city for whereever you now live and you will see the price trends for your own area.

Thank you GF. Very interesting and informative. I follow the prices closely in TV. You are right. Home sales in TV are NOT following the trend of other areas of Florida and the country.

[tucson]

I talked to a Villages realtor last wk. about buying a lot on a golf course and having the same house I have now built on it. In Dec., 2006, I also had an opportunity to buy the same style house on Truman Golf Course and (guess what?) it was the same exact price then as it is now. The realtor quoted that the Bond was approx.the same as it was in Dec.2006. So, really the prices of The Designers are basically still the same as in 2006, but I do think (at least)the Patio Villas are about $25,000 more than in 2006 (my sister bought a new one then for $125,000 and in a great location, I'm pretty sure the same style is now $150,000.

[wlou]

Thanks So much for all of the informative replies...I will pass all of that info along to our friends. I knew this was the place to get the answers! I think they should buy now but I am biased, we love TV...Take Care and thanks again!

[784caroline]

My opinion is that when you look at new houses for sale today it is difficult to compare apples to apples with previous year sale prices for so many options change. I think home prices have come down but the greatest reduction was in premium lot prices....not in the actual sturcture cost. To compenaste for the reduction in cost (or profit for the builder) its my feeling that the builder is putting less options into the new homes. SO you are getting a cheaper house today but this house even if it sits on a golf course, probably also has less options in the house than one built 2-3 yers ago.

I agree with what previous posters said in that once the housing market starts moving again up north, The Villlages will again "explode" in construction and value. He is not
doing bad selling 7.5 houses 7 days a week. I think any developer would cherish those statistics.

BUY now while you can at reasonable prices.

[Villages Kahuna]

Just for the heck of it, I visited several of the new construction models they've been advertising in The Daily Sun. I found the exact same model that we bought two years ago in Hadley with a sales price within $200 of what we paid. I thought that one would give me a good idea of what's happening to prices in TV.

How'd they compare? In my opinion we have a heckuva a lot more house in a better location than the models we looked at. Obviously, a Lantana is a Lantana is a Lantana. But when comparing the features and lot you get for today's price compared to two years ago, there's no doubt in my mind that I'd stay where we are.

Bottom line? Unlike other parts of the country where the prices of houses are plummeting, it looks to me like prices here have remained the same or maybe even ticked up a bit. Based on the "comp" of the models I looked at, I'm convinced that our house, as it sits now, would command a price of as much as 10% more than our total investment (original cost plus all the stuff we've added--landscaping, birdcage additions, cabinets, painting, pavers on the driveway, etc.). We closed on our house in Mallory Square two years ago today!

And it's pretty obvious that "the bottom" has been reached here in TV. It's going to be all "up" from here on out.