Leisureville Takes A Look Inside The Villages

Lots of people who visit and read this blog regularly originally came here because of information I have posted about The Villages retirement community in central Florida.

Well, The Villages just got a little more famous. This past weekend the Wall Street Journal published a review of Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias.

One of the “utopias” chronicled happens to be The Villages. You can also read an excerpt of the book here.

Leisureville comes on the heels of another “ville” book called Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life by Barbara Corcoran.

I’ll have a review here and on Amazon.com after I’ve read Leisureville. If you’re looking for solid advice on buying a home and living in The Villages don’t forget to check out The Villages Florida Book.

The Problem With Nextville

Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life by Barbara Corcoran drops this month and I was given a copy by the publisher to review. You should also know that Barbara was kind enough to provide a quote for the advertising of my book, Florida for Boomers: A Guide to Real Estate.

Nextville is less “how-to” guide and more of a “find yourself” or “figure out whats right for you” guide. Barbara basically breaks boomers down into eight possible different lifestyle categories such as “following your passions”, “living green“, “losing yourself” for the soon to be ex-pat, as well as those who will choose to “stay put”.

While actual “how-to buy” advice isn’t as meaty as you might have hoped, there are plenty of checklists and quizzes to help guide the boomer who isn’t quite sure where they want to end up or what they want to do with the next quarter century. The main strength and value of the book is that it does a great job of exploring several out of the ordinary places to think about spending your time.

Which leads me to my only bone to pick with the book. In Chapter 1, “Forget Florida” Barbara is clearly highlighting what the media is making everyone “think” is the trend, that nobody is moving to Florida anymore. The media wants everyone to believe that Florida is dead as a destination. Forget it, it fell off the map!

However, and believe me, I hear it from people everyday, folks are still researching and moving to Florida more so than any other state. There’s even a book reviewed by the Wall Street Journal this weekend which chronicles the lives of folks who have moved to The Villages, located in, yup, you guessed it…Florida. (This book is called Leisureville…Leaving me wondering what’s with all the “villes”?)

For good measure how about some search engine stats to back me up (Data is from Wordtracker):

Estimated Daily Searches:

Florida retirement communities: 51
Georgia retirement communities: 12
South Carolina retirement communities: 9
North Carolina retirement communities: 11
Tennessee retirement communities: 4
Virginia retirement communities: 12
Texas retirement communities: 23
Arizona retirement communities: 26
Nevada retirement communities: 4
New Mexico retirement communities: 7

You can clearly see above that interest in Florida still out paces most other states by quite a wide margin.

Lastly, and then I’m done picking on this fantastic book (I promise), is that someone needs to tell the publisher that postcard book covers are sooooo 2007

How To Make Sure A Retirement Community Lifestyle Is Right For You

TopRetirements has a good article here that talks about the pros and cons of retirement community living.

A compilation of input gathered from boomers who have lived the community experience, the article does not try to scare you from exploring the active adult retirement options available to you, but it does give you some things to think about before making a decision.

As with anything there are good things and bad, and what is good for you may not be good for someone else. So when reading the article, don’t just rely on what someone else experienced, think about how the experience fits your ‘ideal’ lifestyle.

image credit: nickgraywfu at flickr

Mount Vintage Plantation Getaway Deal

I get several emails a week from different retirement communities and other developments offering deals to come and stay with them for a few nights to check the place out. I like to share some of the best deals here with my readers.

Today I got an email from Mount Vintage Plantation in North Augusta, South Carolina. Gorgeous place from the pictures on their website.

“We invite you to join us for the grand opening of the new nine at Mount Vintage. Designed by world-renowned golf course architect Tom Jackson, the new nine is a superb addition to the beautiful layout of the current 18-hole course also designed by Jackson.

Call 888-271-3330 to schedule your personal tour of the Mount Vintage community.”

The deal in the email was for 3 days/2 nights at $69. Looks like it might only be good for March. Give them a call and check it out if you’re interested.

Find Arizona Retirement Communities On Our New Site

In the last couple of years, as Florida has fallen out of favor a little bit because of high prices, high taxes, high insurance, and hurricanes, more and more boomers have been thinking about Arizona for their new retirement community.

I’ve talked to several boomers who have made the move from the Northeast to Arizona, and even some who went to Florida first, and they all love the climate and the Arizona retirement communities they found.

If you are also considering Arizona for your retirement plans, I’ve got great news. The next edition of the for Boomers book series will be Arizona for Boomers: Guide to Retirement Communities.

Feel free to click the link and check out the site. It’s a work in progress, and we’ll be adding more articles and resources each day to help you find an Arizona retirement community. I don’t have an ETA on the book yet, but rest assured we’ll keep you posted.

Sun City Center FL: A Complete Guide

Do you know what one of Florida’s first retirement communities was? Sun City Center, located near Tampa Florida began in the early 1960’s and is still under development today. The internet is loaded with information about Sun City Center but sometimes the information is very outdated, and searching online can just get overwhelming.

To solve this problem, and as a follow-up to my first e-book about The Villages, I’ve put together a complete 117 page guide for Sun City Center at: SunCityCenterFloridaBook.com

You’ll find a ton of great information including a complete detailed community overview, useful links, information about buying a home in Sun City Center, what it costs to live there, golf in Sun City Center, and much more. Check it out.

Be sure to watch this space for announcements on guides to other Sun City communities around the country.

Bankrupt Home Builders Break Dreams

What a scary time to be a buyer in the real estate market right now. While everyone knows it’s a buyers market, the deals are great, and prices are falling faster than a rock, you still have to be careful about taking that final leap and putting a contract on a new home someplace warm.

In November 2007, a popular builder of active adult retirement communities throughout the SunBelt, Levitt and Sons, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This has left buyers stranded with partially or wholly unfinished homes, not to mention unfinished community amenities. Deposits as high as $50k per, are also presumed lost.

Levitt and Sons is a “wholly owned subsidiary of Levitt Corporation (NYSE: LEV) whose other divisions include Core Communities and bluegreen Vacation Resorts. Levitt Corp. is apparently trying to sever its ties all together with Levitt and Sons so that they won’t have to pick up the tab for the unfinished homes, communities, and lost deposits. Merry Christmas have a nice day!

If it can happen to a development company the size of Levitt and Sons, assume that it can happen to anyone. What can be done to protect yourself, your money, and your dreams of owning a (completely finished) new home?

Thats a tough question to answer. To avoid having to put up such a large deposit (most new home builders require 10-20% or more) you could go the construction loan route where you will essentially pay the builder in different phases tied to the construction of the home. But as I’ve written before, this is not without it’s troubles.

Another option that this article says to try is to get the builder to agree to place your deposit in an escrow account held by a third party. If something happens, you’d at least be able to get your money back.

In my experience, I’d say good luck to this. While you might get the smallest of builders and developers to agree to this, most will not. Look…these guys have in-house counsel, out-house counsel, and every other which way of counsel you could think of protecting their (ass)ets first. They’re going to make sure that they are covered and protected before you are.

The best solution I can come up with? For now, in today’s real estate environment, buy a house that’s already built or almost complete (trust me…there’s plenty out there) and buy it in a community that is already somewhat established with completed amenities you are happy with. This way if something happens and the second community swimming pool you as a buyer were promised never gets built, you’ve got the amenities already there to fall back on.

Boomers Go Green With Cohousing

No doubt about it, green is in. And not just the color…the movement. And why shouldn’t it be baby boomers at the forefront?

Read about the Wolf Creek Lodge [via TreeHugger] in Grass Valley, California. The Wolf Creek Lodge is a “Cohousing” community for active adults. If you’ve never heard of cohousing, here’s a description from the Wolf Creek website:

“Cohousing communities are small-scale neighborhoods that provide a balance between personal privacy and living amidst people who know and care about each other. Individual dwelling units enjoy convenient access to shared space including a common house with facilities such as a gourmet kitchen, dining room, laundry facilities, guest rooms, library and sitting areas, and workshops. Each home is entirely self-sufficient, complete with a kitchen, but residents often prepare common meals together in the kitchen of the common house.”

The environmental benefits of cohousing are achieved through the sharing of resources and space.

While there are currently less than 100 cohousing communities in the United States, look for that number to grow as boomers look for ways to go green and also look for alternatives to the traditional retirement community concept.

Retirement Community Politics

Great article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune about the massive effect retirement communities can have on elections.

The article focuses on The Villages and the 2008 Republican primary.

A large majority of “Villagers” are republicans, and candidates regularly stump there.

Even this guy made a stop there leading up to the 2004 election.

Pet Showers, No Smoking HOA’s, Oh My!

Here is an article from RISMedia on the hottest homebuying trends for 2008. Two of them really caught my eye and I wanted to share them with you here.

Shower for Fido
The first is pet showers. Maybe you’ve heard of this before, or maybe you thought yes, I put my pet in the shower too, so what?

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about an dedicated shower JUST FOR your pet. In some cases these have marble tile and the highest level of shower fixtures. Pretty cool if you’re a pet lover.

No Smoking by Order of The HOA
The next trend for 2008 which we’re starting to hear more about is “Non-smoking HOA’s”. What like you mean I can’t smoke at the clubhouse? Ok, I’m used to not being able to smoke in public anyway.

Nope, I mean you can’t smoke in your own home. This rule was already upheld in one court case but I’m sure we’ll start seeing lots more cases being tried on this topic before long.

So, let me ask my readers: Any interest in a shower just for your pet, or desire to live in a no smoking allowed HOA?

Photos by bchow and wizardhat respectively on flickr

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