Yes. Nice to have the best of both worlds.

ABSOLUTELY NONE. Love it here.

No regrets about moving out of TV.

Yes, by far the biggest mistake people make when they move here is loading up that moving truck. So many people regret the cost of doing such a thing. But, the second hand stores love these people.

We had no reason to reconsider our decision to move to TV after living here the first 26 months. Most of the reasons people love this place applied. Then I got sick. The available medical care, and the quality of same, are quite frankly borderline awful in the immediate area. We counsel everyone we meet to put healthcare at the top of their list of things to explore in depth, prior to deciding whether or not to make the " move ".

As has been pointed out, there is going to be huge selection bias in the responses here. A more telling question might be: Do you know people who have moved away from TV and what their reasons were?

Uprooting & moving is a big life decision and people certainly want as many assurances as they can get that they're making a good choice (I do!). But one can only do so much research and must make a decision. A fear is that there's some big "gotcha!" lurking that you didn't think of and no one warned you about. I'm sure there are people who hit a "gotcha!" and moved out - or wish they could.

Wife and I from UK and have been Snowbirds for 20 years in TV.
Many many changes over that time, not all good in our eyes, but the basics have stayed the same.
Lots to do if you are so inclined, and plenty of time to contemplate your navel if that is also your want.
Never wanted to live here full time, but love the place when we are here.
People look a whole lot younger, driving is still exciting, and lets face it, you Yanks are never going to get the hang of roundabouts, however many times you survive going round them!!
We will be back again next winter, if we can keep avoiding the man with the scythe!

Where in the UK do you call home?

Voted most useful post ever. [emoji41]

Is it normal to have to go to a fitness class an hour ahead of time just to hold a spot?

Unfortunately Yes, sometimes the facilities are so overwhelmed that it can be very frustrating!

There was a discussion about how this problem might be solved last year.

Cotswolds, Gloucestershire.

Wonderful area, know it well. Just came back from 10 days in Moreton, The Redesdale Arms.

So Cotswolds and TV, great way to live.

I understand your standpoint, rivaridger, and I have had a life-threatening illness, over a decade ago. I decided to balance a short plane ride and/or drive to one of the noted healthcare facilities against the ability to live happily in a place I really like. Setting sudden tragic episodes aside, that we might not survive anywhere (stroke, heart attack), I feel that I could get to a place of notable health care in a short amount of time. I'm thinking mainly of cancer, I guess.

In the meantime, I plan to enjoy my time in TV and hope for the best, rather than live close to someplace not pleasing to me just in case I might get sick.

But again, I understand your point of view, and I may not be thinking of all the circumstances surrounding certain illnesses. Please don't take my point of view as a rejection of yours. I hope and pray you are doing well.

We have lived all over the world and for us, The Villages is hands down the best retirement location we have ever seen.

Our village is a ten minute drive from M.I.M. Our grandson goes to the Cotswold Academy in Bourton.
Yes we are very lucky to have both places in our lives.

I missed Ohio with my every fiber when we came here. I thought about my beautiful gardens continually and the evenings outside on the shores of Lake Erie. After, much thought and a bit of time, I realized that what I was missing I could never get back. It was my youth that I was missing. I still miss it but I put it in perspective and I have moved on.

15 years and no regrets.
I even acclimated to playing golf when it is 90 degrees.
While not a regret I will say there are some medical specialties and services that are lacking. However we have had no problem finding what we need within an hours ride from TV.
Key to complete satisfaction?
Avoid/mitigate surprises....do your home work choosing where your new home is located in TV.

Regrets
 

Can you give us more reason as to why you have regrets? I don't have regrets but often miss my previous life. After a period of adjustment I find TV to be a much better place with nicer people around.

Thank you. Do you know of a forum of people that have moved away? I would post my question there as well..

We had neighbors on our street leave The Villages and move to Sun City near Tampa. They were back in The Villages buying another house in less than a year. Very disappointed in Sun City. Things the Real Estate agent promised never happened, and golf was extremely expensive.

There's a website similar to this one. Talkofsuncity.com. There is not a lot of activity on it, but you might find some people that moved there from The Villages.

This is one of the ways I've been researching & evaluating other places: How active are the residents online?

For TV, there are multiple Facebook groups, this site, another forum site, YouTubers, and probably more I'm missing. For other places... There are a couple Sun City Tampa Facebook groups, the mentioned unused forum, and not much else. I just haven't found any other 55+ community that has near the resident activity & engagement online that TV has.

Sun City FL has about 10,000 residents and the Villages has about 130,000 residents. The lower use of a bulletin board or FaceBook alone doesn't really give a good picture of how active the residents are... you have to somehow factor in the population of the community.

There are very few, maybe none, other 55+ communities that have the scale of The Villages.

Have you checked nextdoor.com? It breaks things down into smaller sections than an entire development. That might be a better measure of resident activity.

I never realized Sun City was so small. I grew up in St. Petersburg and I've always heard about the place. It started in 1962 and is a short drive from either Tampa or Sarasota/Brandenton, and only 10,000, that alone would make me wonder.

I remember in 2010 back in Baltimore when I was getting ready to take a lifestyle visit here in TV, I was talking to the branch manager of my bank, who was in his 50's. He said he had just bought a house in Sun City. We talked some and he said he paid $300K, I thought to myself that seemed awful high nine years ago. He also said his HOA was $350 a month, which he was already paying, again I'm thinking to myself that is high.

In 2011 when TV broke ground south of 466A in Bonifay a majority of the new homes were selling in the $200's, many in the low 200's, and that's correct, every home south of 466A has been built since August 2011. In fact Pine Ridge which was built as late as 2015, we looked at several new homes the $210K to $230K range. We purchased a new masonry CYV in 2011 for $158K just north of 466A in Tamarind Grove. At that time, prices here were very good, especially when compared to Sun City. Unfortunately now for a buyer, supply and demand in the established villages has caused prices to really escalate.

Think about it, home construction in TV really didn't kick off until the late 80's when Gary Morse moved down here to help his father. You've 10,000 from 1962 and 130,000 from 1989. TV is basically in the middle of nowhere, not between Tampa and Sarasota. The only real geographic feature that helped was the closeness of I-75 and the Florida Turnpike. Otherwise, there's no big city, no beaches, no anything, so Gary Morse had to create an environment that buyers would see was of great value in their retirement years.

After 19 years here I have witnessed the rapid growth of The Villages. Despite the developer constantly tooting his own horn in the company propaganda rag, AKA The Daily Sun, this exponential growth is a negative for many retirees. Tomorrow I leave The Villages for good. I have found a much smaller version of The Villages, with actual SECURITY GATES, gof course, golf cart community, backed by a strong financial presence, Berkshire Hathaway, and more bang for the buck in the amenities fees. AND NO CDD! . The best part is it is almost built out, and no more land available to expand. About 5000 residents. Check out Soleil of Laurel Canyon in Canton, GA.

I went to college in Athens, GA, and student taught in Atlanta. Many moons ago, before climate change, we had some snow and some ice storms.

There may be smaller, better places than TV, and I'm not a gung-ho, this-is-heaven-on-earth person where TV is concerned, but you cannot, CAN NOT, beat the weather. Or the activities. So I put up with the sameness and largeness of the community--sea of roof tops, small lots, somewhat of a "fake paradise" look, developers' kids that yes, have taken away a bit of the stuff we enjoyed previously-- because it's WARM and active and friendly.

We left spring of 2018 and wondered if we would come back. There were some things that bothered us, and we looked at other places. But it's tough to beat what TV offers if you want to remain active, not to mention warm. I find the things that bothered me when we lived there full time don't bother me anymore because where we live the other half of the year is a complete opposite. (There's not one house the same; it's a village of 500 people in a countryside of other villages.)

Moving full time to Florida was not a good fit for us, but The Villages certainly is. What we found was it did not have to be an either-or situation.

Just my thoughts.

I was going to say something similar in reference to the weather. I lived in Cumming, Georgia in 1988, that just east of where your moving and we had 4" of snow and everything shut down for a week. They have no snow removal equipment, other than Starvin Marvin, everything was closed, even the malls.

Cumming is in Forsyth County, I really liked going over to Lake Lanier, huge lake and didn't have to worry about gators. It was pretty sparse living out there, but via GA 400 you could be in Atlanta in 30 minutes. I noticed the place you're moving homes are in the upper $300's to $500k, little too high for me.

One thing that was so unusual about Forsyth County was when I was there in '88, Oprah had just been on TV a couple of years and was trying to get noticed, so she brough her show down to the Holiday Inn in Cumming for a week. You see, Forsyth County doesn't have one black person in the entire county. I guess she saw a problem with that.

You could stayed in Florida, just 75 minutes away and gotten the same things you're going to get, plus nicer weather and saved a couple of $200K on your home by going to Pasco County. Here's a place I mentioned on another thread, Heritage Pines in Hudson, FL. It's also built out and truly gated entrance.

https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...ml#post1651572

I lived in knoxville TN for several years. Played golf every weekend in the winter. Didn't swelter in the summer. 4 seasons but nothing brutal. 4 inches of snow? OMG.

If only the health care were as good as where we moved from

Obviously Knoxville was prepared, Tennessee is a little further north. I also lived in Savannah for 8 years, one year of 4" of snow there had the same effect. When people are not accustomed to driving on snow covered roads, remember they have no plows or salt, everyone stays home and in most cases are ordered to by the local officials. Maybe Atlanta and surrounding areas have improved since 1988, that's just something to consider when moving there. BTW, the humidity in the Atlanta area is sweltering, I would say of all the places I've lived, Atlanta was my least favorite. One reason, it's the only place someone has attempted to steal my car where I lived. Of course we have that right here in Orlando, which is why I don't live there.

No regrets, but after a lifetime in the military, we get itchy feet after a few years. Moving to Pinehurst, NC in the coming year.

I did struggle for about 6 months to a year. It takes a while to build up friendships like you had at home.And left my entire family up north. I found a few activities that I enjoyed and gradually made some wonderful friends.
Everyone is in the same boat...moving to a new place and starting over.
I also found Allegiant airlines has some very reasonable airfares back home, so I’m able to visit often.
I have no regrets moving here, it’s just to beautiful!
I tried some brand new things like dragon boating and found groups for hobbies I enjoy. Now I feel more a part of the community. I would suggest giving it a year. I do know a fee people who moved back home to be closer to family. But not many! I wish you well!

My wife and I lived full time in The Villages from the end of 2010 through mid-2016. We were full time residents in Florida (and still are) since 2002 having originally moved from Chicago. We now live in Southwest Florida. The experience of living in The Villages was a great one that neither of us regrets, especially because of the new friendships we made. The activities and socialization were tremendous and we both would recommend The Villages as a great place to transition into retirement. However, the first reason we moved was because of the sense that we were "moving down a conveyor belt" as we watched people we knew age, get sick and/or require assistance and in some cases die. We all know this is a reality yet it stares you in the face the longer you live there. The second reason is that regardless of what you think, old people(and that includes us) can be very grumpy, stubborn, set in their ways and ridiculously cheap(using 2 for 1 coupons and only tipping on one meal). The contrast in friendliness and attitude is stark between waitstaff and other service workers in The Villages and outside The Villages such as Southwest Florida because of the previous reason. We enjoy being around all age groups(including children) because it exposes us to different ways of thinking and, in our opinion, keeps us more open-minded. The third reason we moved is because of the way everything begins to recycle in The Villages. How many times can you see Hemans Hermits, the parades etc. before you stop going? Finally, we started out in 2002 in Southwest Florida and like our friends there, the variety of restaurants and activities and the ocean nearby. You may feel. differently and we respect that.

We moved here almost 2 years ago from Maui and only regret not having done it sooner! There is so much to love here and lots to do. Give it some time and try new things to meet new people. Many people still spend summers up north but we are here year round to stay and LOVE it! Good luck!

What a good post this is. How very understandable and true. I would wish that everyone would be like you two. Wishing you happiness.

Give it time. What you are feeling is normal as change is not easy. When I was 20 I got in my car and drove cross country to California to go to school. I missed home (Virginia) like crazy until I went back for Christmas three and a half months later and felt like I didn't belong there anymore.

I moved here almost 10 years ago to the day and have never looked back or even gone back to visit. Yes, I miss my friends and certain aspects but I would never think of moving back there again. This is home and I love it.

Moved here a year and a half ago, and I miss home every day (didn't think I would). Variety of retailers, quality and variety of restaurants, ease of getting medical appointments. Thought it would be less expensive to live in FL, and it hasn't been. Car insurance, cost of food, utility bills are about the same as in the northeast. Everything here is beautiful and nice, but it's not home. I think about going back quite often, but for now we are not for a few reasons. Have met a few people who get homesick and plan a visit "home" every 3 months. We are not able to do that, but if you can, they say it helps.

No regrets at all. Should have moved here sooner.

I bought my home in The Villages as a long term investment in ocean front property.