Ocala Real Estate Talk

Posts Tagged ‘ocala rertirement communities’

Can you buy a house for the price of a car in an Ocala retirement community ? Yes for the price of a really nice BMW and by that I mean around $60,000.00 you can buy a real house and not a mobile home. The house would have been built in the 1980′s of stick frame construction on a concrete slab with vinyl siding, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, a 1 car garage with an updated roof and AC. It might need some updating inside such as carpet, paint and appliances. Homes like this are in the 1,000 to 1,300 sqft range. That is sqft of living area, that part of the house that is under AC and not including the garage or a Lanai not under AC. I actually sell several homes like this every year. Call, email or use my Dream Home Finder for more information.

I get a lot of buyers asking about Ocala 55+ communities. There seems to be confusion about what these communities are and are not. Ocala 55+ communities are about a lifestyle. They are communities with a clubhouse, community swimming pool or multiple pools, clubs and activities. The homes tend to be on small lots because retired people don’t want a lot of yard work. They are all located in areas where shopping, dining and medical care is close by. All of which is funded through HOA fees.

The 55+ communities are not just single family homes with big yards and a back yard swimming pool in a neighborhood with age restrictions. The closest thing we have to a 55+ community with big yards and age restrictions is Marco Polo Village. Close but with smaller 1/4 acre lots is Quail Meadow. If you write me about either of these communities be aware that they are both small with only a few resales a any given time.

I constantly get buyers looking for newer homes. The market crashed here in 2007. This is the Great Recession. There has been very little building here since the crash. Why you ask? Resales are priced below what it costs to build new. So far below that builders can’t compete. Land has gone down in price but no new large scale planned communities have been started since 07. Building materials aren’t much cheaper. Most sub contractors have gone bankrupt or cut back to much smaller companies.  A couple of retirement communities that were started before 07 are building but not much else. New home building won’t get going again until prices go up. It’s just a matter of economics.

I get a lot of questions about deed restrictions here in Ocala and Marion county. Deed restrictions are public records. This blog post will show you how to find deed restrictions here in Marion County.

1. Go to the Marion County Clerk of the Courts web site.

2. In the lower right under Records click on Official Records Search

3. On the right click Search Records Now a blue box

4.Enter party name. You have to get the name exact

5. Under restrict document type by code enter RES which is restrictions and covenants

Deed restrictions can be hard to read. Some were written before computers and are old typed documents that were poorly scanned. Larger older communities can have 100′s of pages mostly of very minor revisions. Typically you will find the important stuff in the largest document.

I always get this question even though you’d think it’s self-explanatory. Do you have to be 55+ to live in an Ocala 55+ community? At least one person on the deed has to be 55.  HOA’s require proof of age in the form of a driver’s license. Some also make you sign an affidavit to that effect. This is true of every Ocala/Marion County retirement community with the exception of Ocala Palms. Ocala Palms is an Adult Community where everyone has to be 21 and over. For more info on 55+ communities in Florida see this State of Florida web site.

I always have buyers looking for a retirement home and an item high on their wish list is a nice view.  Most retirement communities are laid out with parallel streets and the homes are back to back. This is especially true of newer communities. If you think about it this makes a lot of sense. The builder gets a maximum number of homes on his land.

There are options for what you’ll see in back of a 55+ home.

1. A house right behind you, which is by far the most common.

2. A house right behind you screened by a buffer of trees or shrubs. In this case you’ll still see you neighbor to some extent

3. A view of woods. You find this in a home located on the outside perimeter of a community.

4. A golf course view. This is a premium lot that adds a great deal to the price of a new home but you do find deals on resales.

Some of your best bets for finding a home with out another home directly in back of you are Oak Run and Ocala Palms. Oak Run isn’t laid out with parallel streets. It is divided into neighborhoods and a lot of homes face a buffer between these neighborhoods. Ocala Palms was set out to maximize the number of golf course lots. There are great prices on homes with golf course frontage in Ocala Palms.

If you’re interested in Ocala 55+ retirement homes then either call me, email me or better yet use my Ocala Dream Home Finder.

Here in Ocala we have the lowest mediam home prices in Florida. We have foreclosures, estate sales and even great prices on traditional sales. I mostly work with buyers and I’ve seen 100′s of such homes.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a big mistake to concentrate on just the price. Buyers don’t think enough about condition.

I think the big 4 are the age of the roof, the AC heat pump unit,  the flooring and the kitchen appliances. When looking at newer foreclosures I’d add landscaping to this list.

The roof. Standard shingles here last about 15 years. Some insurance companies won’t insure a house with a standard shingle roof over 15 years old. Architectural shingles are good for 20 years or so.  The heat of our summers give a roof a real beating.

The AC unit, which in most cases is a heat pump, is harder to judge. An AC guy told me that they can break in 5 years and I’ve seen them 20 years old.

Flooring is really taken for granted. To carpet an entire house, as can be the case in an estate sale or even a newer foreclosure, can cost as much as a roof. For some reason buyers who would walk away from a house with a bad roof will have no problem replacing flooring. Flooring prices vary a lot from builder quality carpet to tile and wood floors.

Kitchen appliances can be 20 years old in an estate sale and missing altogether in many foreclosures. Here again there is a big difference in price between builder quality and top of the line. I do think appliances are at the bottom of the list price wise though.

Landscaping is often totally absent in foreclosures. No shrubs or trees, dead sod in the front of the home and a back yard that never had grass in the first place because builders here for some reason give an amount of sod that won’t cover the whole yard. You don’t over seed a bad lawn here. You rip out the old sod and lay down new sod.  Mature trees and shrubs won’t add anything to an appraisal. However I owned a landscape company and I can tell you an extensive landscape job on the house in an empty field can cost as much as all the four items above combined! Curb appeal is what makes a house a home.

Am I trying to sell more expensive houses? No I just believe too many people are “Penny wise and pound foolish”. I’ve walked out of what at first appeared to be low priced homes and said to my buyers that they couldn’t buy that house cheap enough to make up for all the work it needed.

Horse Topiary photo by Joe Dallorso

Most of the readers of my blog are from outside the Ocala Marion County area. A great way to get to know an area is to read the newspaper. If you’re a younger person you probably think newspapers are like dinosaurs. The reality is that only local newspapers have local news. All the Ocala Marion County newspapers can be read online.

The Ocala Star Banner is Marion County’s daily newspaper. You need to read it daily in order not to miss anything. This is a great source  to get an idea of what different areas of the county are like.

The South Marion Citizen is a great place to find information about the SW corridor retirement communities. If you click on news and then community you’ll fing columns written about the goings on in various retirement communities written by people who there. The South Marion Citizen is a weekly paper.

The Citrus County Chronicle is a weekly paper than covers Dunnellon and west into Citrus County.

The Ocala area also has 2 magazines. That’s pretty extraordinary seeing that Ocala is such a small city. Both magazines are lot nicer in print than online. They are both printed on exceptionally nice glossy paper, in a large format, with great photography.  Even the advertisements have beautiful photography.

Ocala Magazine

Ocala Style

Moving cross country is a huge undertaking. I know, I moved from Maine to Ocala in 2004. You have to do your home work and keeping up on current events is part of the job

Ocala 55+ Community HOA Fee Chart

Sometimes I think buyers want to shop for a 55+ homes here in Ocala by looking for the lowest HOA fees that they can find. Although I think that the wrong approach, I did create this HOA fees chart. Buyers have to look at what you get for your HOA fees and not just the fees themselves.

What do HOA fees cover? Maintaining the common areas such as the club house and pool. Mowing the drainage areas and along any roadways. Any buildings would need to be insured. Trash pick up is almost always included. Basic, and by that I mean very basic, cable TV is often included. Most communities have a management company to over see daily operations. Communities that are gated would need to pay the guard at the gate. Utilities for the clubhouse and entry. I’m sure that you can see that things can add up quickly in these types of communities.

The 55+ retirement communities are not condo’s. You maintain the home like any single family home. Lawn care is not included in HOA fees but every 55+ community has several lawn care companies and prices are cheap do to their volume. Exceptions are On Top of the World which offers total outside maintenance. Summerglen includes lawn mowing in their HOA fee. Oak Run has homes on maintained lots for a $216- per month HOA fee.

The quality of the amenities will vary from one community to another. Newer communities like Stone Creek boast an almost resort style pool, clubhouse and fitness center. While other communities might have more modest amenities do to the communities age or price point.

Statistics used for this blog post are from the Ocala Marion County MLS and are deemed to be accurate at the time this blog was written but are not guaranteed. All information is time sensitive and subject to change without notice.