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55+ community in Florida

H

hoosiermarty

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We are making the move. We now live in northern Indiana and in April we are going to Florida to buy a full time residence. Now, my question to you Florida tuggers is this. Do you have a particular one to reccomend? We want to get a used double wide. We want an active community with lots of interaction activities. We are thinking of locating north of Orlando. A little afraid of being to near the coast line.. Anyone live in the Villages? Maybe that is out of our priceline. How about Ocala? Please join in and give me some input.
 
Be sure to get the figures for TAXES, homeowner's insurance and hurricane insurance before you make a commitment; it's higher than you have any idea it will be--even for a double wide.
 
Insurance issues have been addressed, and new rates will be in effect as of June 1, 2007. We have a part-time legislature which meets for 60 days starting tomorrow. Their main goal this year is addressing the property tax issue. The "talk" is that they may do away with property tax on homesteads, and implement an 8.5% sales tax. Other ideas are also being discussed, like making the "save our homes" tax limitation portable and doubling the exeption for homesteads (from $25,000 to $50,000). Stay tuned....everything can and probably WILL change!
 
I just moved out of the state of Florida so I have some experience there. We can't recommend any 55+ communities because I did not live in one there, but I can offer the following input, be very careful of the property taxes and insurance cost. Insurance costs in Florida have gone through the roof, so before you buy anything, check what it will cost. You just may find there just is none to be had at any cost. We had lived in Punta Gorda, FL and just about all the manufactured homes were destroyed by hurricane Charlie in 2004 in that area, so insurers are really hesitant to insure replacements. Property taxes in Florida are kind of like a shell game. What you see when you are looking to buy isn't likely to be what you end up with. Florida has a 3% cap on increases to your proprerty taxes as long as you are homesteaded there (this is your principle home) anything above the 3% a year is stored in the computer for the next owner. Example, if the owner of a home has a property tax of $2000 a year and has lived in that home 10 years, the next owner could end up paying $5000 property tax a year because of the stored taxes that were above the 3%. The real problem is you won't know about the increase until the next tax cycle and then you are stuck with a huge increase, which you may not be able to handle. It is my experience that most Florida real estate people won't explain this to you before buying because they don't want to kill the deal. I am not trying to tell you not to invest in Florida, just be very careful. A great deal has changed there in the last few years.
 
Think about north Forida away from the coast. Tallahasse, the state captal or one of the smaller towns,Crawfordville, Montichello , Quincey or just acros the Georgia border, Thomasville. Winters are a little cooler but it is not so overcrowded. South Florida is flat,infested with tourists, overbuilt and dull.
 
Own Land

Be very sure if you buy a double-wide that you buy into a park where you own the land. In our part of Florida, Tampa area, and other areas too, mobile home parks where you do not own the land are being sold and the mobile home owners are left with very little.

Also I can't add enough, to check on the insurance before you buy.

Nancy

ps. We live near the coast and love it. Purchase the book "Where to Retire in Florida" and check areas out on Realtor.com.
 
Del Webb communities are popping up all over the Carolinas. There will be a small one withing 10 miles of Sun City HHI. We have lots of folks from Fla who have relocated here. Our taxes and insurance aren't near those of Fla. We are near Savannah and Charleston for good medical facilities.
 
When I drive to Tennessee, I see a billboard on the north side of Nashville on a Del Webb community being developed in TN.
 
Just remember, not all Del Webb communities are "over 55." If it doesn't say "Active Adult Community" it isn't. We have several all age, family oriented Del Webb communities here.

Fern
 
Hi,
I happen to live in Ocala in an adult community, though not in a mobile home community. We've been here for three hurricane seasons, and 3 of them came through the first year, we were assured that this was quite the exception, and they were not severe in this area; we have been untouched in the next two seasons.
There are some mobile home adult communities in the area, but I am not familiar enough with them to recommend anything to you.
We came from Maine, and have lots of people from your area here.
Good luck finding what you need. If you have specific questions, I'll be glad to try to answer.
Connie
 
I remember when we were searching for a Florida place, up until about ten years ago, how we would pull up to those little guard houses and get turned away because we were not old enough to live in many developments.

It was just going to be our winter place, so we considered manufactured housing development. I remember not liking the manufactured homes ones because in most of them you do/did not own the lot, and rent was high.
 
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We had thought about moving to the Villages. Have visited there about 3 times. Prices have gone up so much and it is getting so big.

The main thing that turned me off, is I know a little big about the plumbing and HVAC business and they used what to me seemed the cheapest materials possible. I thought if they did that, I wondered what they used that I couldn't see or knew nothing about. What they used there in expensive homes is things that our company didn't even use in most rental properties.

There were a lot of things we liked about it. I liked the activities they had, the nightly dances, etc. they had in the downtown area, nice bowling alleys.
I just wasn't willing to pay that much for it and get a house I didn't like.
 
Have you lived in a mobile home before? I would suggest you try renting one, before you buy one, to see if you really like it. I had family members that retired and moved from a nice home into a nice mobile home, and they never liked it and really regretted it.
 
RE:taxes here in Fl. The governor is setting a plan in motion which will reduce the recent large increase in taxes. Also, the costs are much higher by the water, near hurricane areas...not so much inland where hurricanes are less likely to hit.
Connie
 
Before you buy, check out different areas/communities and rent for a year and see how you like that area. Right now, in Lehigh, and other areas there are many homes/condos for rent because people can't sell them. We rented here for 3 months and took our time looking around Cape Coral, Ft. Myers and Lehigh. Decided on Lehigh because prices were much cheaper. And by living about 30 miles from the coast, our homeowners insurance did not rise as high as our DD, who lives close to the Gulf. We attended a Hurricane Seminar last year (they do these every year so we know how to prepare and what to expect) and we were told that the TV people tell the Coastal people to 'head inland' when a hurricane is headed our way. Glad we moved here.
 
Yeah, Connie, we heard the inaugural speech, and the new gov promising to do something about runaway taxes and insurance, common topics among our Florida owners here.

To give some perspective, when we were looking we could have gotten a condo in one of the nicer gated communities south of Ft. Myers, one with both golf and a beach club, for around $120K. I believe it was Pelican Landing or one further south on US 41. It's hard to tell now since all of that has changed so much in ten years, filled in and gotten busy.

We could have gotten a condo or even a small home in Westminster near Lehigh, at the beginning of that development for about that.

We have friends who built in Fiddlesticks a few years back, and could have made a couple of million dollars profit from a drive-by buyer before they even got their house completed. They didn't do it because they could not replace what they were building for the same money.

One of their friends is Neon Deion Sanders, who used to be in Gateway, but when we talked to them this January, Deion has upgraded out of Gateway.
 
JLB said:
Yeah, Connie, we heard the inaugural speech, and the new gov promising to do something about runaway taxes and insurance, common topics among our Florida owners here.

To give some perspective, when we were looking we could have gotten a condo in one of the nicer gated communities south of Ft. Myers, one with both golf and a beach club, for around $120K. I believe it was Pelican Landing or one further south on US 41. It's hard to tell now since all of that has changed so much in ten years, filled in and gotten busy.

We could have gotten a condo or even a small home in Westminster near Lehigh, at the beginning of that development for about that.

We have friends who built in Fiddlesticks a few years back, and could have made a couple of million dollars profit from a drive-by buyer before they even got their house completed. They didn't do it because they could not replace what they were building for the same money.

One of their friends is Neon Deion Sanders, who used to be in Gateway, but when we talked to them this January, Deion has upgraded out of Gateway.
Click to expand...

This governor seems to be well liked by both sides of the fence at this time, and is serious about this insurance stuff...
Our community does not have any Deions, sadly...and certainly inland the cost of homes is not so high. Our home has gone up in value significantly in 3 years, though.
Connie
 
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