We both love to golf. My wife loves the Executive courses in The Villages.
If my wife didn’t golf, We’d definitely be living in Stonecrest !!! (Much more house for the money in a beautiful fully-gated community close to The Villages on the north side of 441)

Over near Flagler and Ormond Beach, the traffic in February was fine. At Bradenton Beach in February, the traffic could get backed up pretty badly. Those are two areas outside of TV that I have experience with in February.

Some people think the traffic in TV in the winter is absolutely horrible. I have to laugh at that.

We get an alert on the cell phone that Traffic in your are may be heavy for the next 30 minutes. That means 12 cars instead of 8.

We liked Boca but it was a No Go because of the weather and the Money is Nuts compared to The Villages. The Close 2nd was OTOTW but the Non-Land Ownership Thing was a Small Problemo. It was the Stopper. We like it here just a little bit. :icon_wink:

Traffic on Longboat Key during the season is very heavy. Winterhaven, Auburndale and Lakeland not so much.

There was a place I loved. Placida, on the ICW. Todo expensivo. It was near to Boca Grande, wonderful restaurants. My friend who lives in Placida said the billionaires had edged out the millionaires. This was ten years ago. Oh my. But the traffic wasn't too bad, in case you're interested.

We are renting in the villages for a year to see if we really like it. One thing I can tell you is we are very disappointed that the only type of house you can design is the designer series. We would love to be able to design a courtyard or a veranda in our choice of finishes and colors because we have a large dog and need a fence (and fences are only allowed in courtyards and verandas) but that is not an option here. That is causing us to look other places to see if we have that option. And several other places do allow design and fences on all of properties if approved. We absolutely love the villages but for now, it’s just a little too restrictive for us to think about buying here unless we happen to stumble upon a spec home that is exactly what we want. :-(

We also looked at Latitudes over in Daytona- liked those homes very much but common areas were not yet completed.

I love that reply - hits the nail on the head. There is no other place offering the variety and frequency of activities as The Villages. It's a lifestyle decision.

Advice? Move out when you are inactive.

There are apparently 4 Latitude (Margaritaville) communities being developed (the one in Hilton Head looks really nice). They're not built around golf - in fact, it appears only TV is "truly" built around golf, sticking true to H. Schwartz's "free golf for life" concept. And you think snowbirds are thick here? Go to Naples in July, then go back to visit in January - Marco Island traffic is intense that time of year. Tampa, Sarasota, St. Pete, Clearwater - same deal. There's not much out there to really compare to TV - it is unique in the golf course/rec center sphere, but not so unique in the population shifts during summer/winter!

The Villages was my first and only choice
 

I'm here over 14 years from Brevard county on the east coast of FL where I'd lived since 1964. I researched on the web active retirement communities in FL in 2005. I cannot live in a cold
climate anymore.
Of all the places I found on the internet, The Villages was the only one with multiple activities and varying levels of homes. Coming here was the best decision I made for myself after being widowed and I made a lot of other mistakes. I still marvel that this beautiful, amazing place is available and that I can live here. It is a Geriatric Disneyland! Thank you for being!

On Top of the World was 2nd. We're still considering that 2nd choice since we seldom use most amenities, other than golf. TV seems to be more money hungry by neglecting the amenity we mostly moved here for, golf. Also the winter crown make us want to move to a smaller community where we can go to dinner without long waiting time...
In addition to a worthless code enforcement, many snowbirds don't care much about what their property looks like; and of course as we get older, we seem to care less once we can't do what is needed to do to keep our property in good condition. Which TV likes so we move to another village...

We are about to move to The Villages from southern California. We’ve spent many weeks in Florida checking out all sorts of 55+ communities. We are golfers and we found TV golf to be far superior to what’s offered at other communities. The vast choices in golf are amazing and nobody should ever be bored from playing the same course over and over which is what would happen at most other developments. Also, with the shopping and medical care all available within the bubble, as we age we won’t have to be driving miles to shop and see doctors. In fact, we can reach both via golf carts. We have this funny theory that when the kids take the car keys away, we’ll still be able to drive our golf carts. Naturally coming from CA the so called “heavy traffic” created by the snowbirds makes us laugh. We were in TV in January and a traffic jam meant we had to wait a minute rather than 30 seconds to drive across Powell Rd. Of course we also have the option of turning right and using the next round about to put us going in the opposite direction. As for waiting to eat dinner when the snowbirds are in, that’s certainly true if you’ve joined the senior dinner schedule of eating early. But in our experience, eating out the end of January was a breeze because we didn’t try until 7pm. Having no Costco is a bit of a bummer but we are finding that Sams Club has pretty much the same stuff. We did see some home designs that we like better so we photographed them and will bring some of those concepts with us to TV. Bottom line - we can’t wait to get moved.

...

Dell Web and Dell Web Spruce Creek. No Bond and Amenity fee a lot less. Just outside The Villages towards Ocala on Hwy 441 past Walmart.

Nope, only Here. Our friends lived down in Bonita Springs and left there to come here. They told us about the oteher aress but said TV was best.