[Dockside]

We recently visited Ft Myers Beach...very nice. Driving around the area we saw walled and gated communities everywhere, or under construction, or land being cleared to build new homes.

On cable TV, two channels are dedicated to housing, one for existing home sales and one for new home sales, and I noticed a premium in price for gated communities.

Why are they so popular? I'm from a NYC suburb and nothing like that exists around here. Is it a social thing? Is crime a problem? Do people just like living in same-minded communities? I'm not being critical...I'm just curious as to why they are so popular.

[summergal]

We have the same thing here in Tampa Bay. Basically the developers do this to give their communities the appearance of high-end "luxury" to the prosective buyers and to get a higher price for that perceived appearance. They are in the business of making the most money for their investment possible, they know many people play into the "keeping up with the Jones' " game and they use that to their advantage to get higher prices for the homes. It's a very well thought out and successful marketing/business strategy. I know some will state all the "advantages" of community living, but the reason all these and being built in the first place is the reason I've just stated. Doesn't everyone want to live like rich folks? lmao I find it rather humourous

In the end these developments actually hurt their cities by not allowing traffic flow through, so there you get the traffic congestion problem in these places. There really should be planning by the city for this but they unfortunately just let the developers build anywhere, anyway, they want to...

So it's not that they are neccesarily more popular, they are what's being built.

[lulu]

We have 'em down here, too. These developers always advertise.."Golf, pools, tennis courts! ..." to attract out of state/retiree bees to their hives (some locals go for it, too) ...and it costs a pretty penny to maintain all this, plus the landscaping on the grounds, etc. - which amounts to an extra monthly association fee which go up from time to time. Personally, I stay away from all that sales propoganda and look for regular housing communities - this is a priority to me & I would never live in places like that. If I want to go swimming, I simply drive to a beach/or pool, go to city parks for recreational activities, cut my yard/ paint whenever and pocket the change.

[OC2OC]

We picked a house in a new non-gated community where access isn't restricted.

Gates won't protect criminals from entering your neighborhood. But just like a car alarm, the perpetrator will pick the path of least resistance so gates can be a deterrent to crime.

[rkumar3]

[moderator CUT] I can tell you people down here love gated community for their 'perceived' notion of extra security. I personally don't like them and live in a non-gated community. Local newspaper (Sun-Sentinel) did a detailed investigation a few years ago and found no reason to believe that a gated community is no more safer than a non-gated community.

[bamboosmom]

I too am in a non-gated community and can say it is just as nice as the walled in ones. If somebody wants to get in to a gated community, believe me, they will.

[lulu]

All true...my neighborhood is quite safe, never had a break in or anything at all & I live in Miami. I think if you live in a nice neighborhood, w/good decent watchful neighbors, you'll be just fine - just make sure you find a nice safe neighborhood. Better to put that extra $100 or $200 (or more) into your mortgage where eventually you'll get back your money & live in a better/bigger home. You know, my cousin has a 2/2 condo on one of those high rises in Miami beach on 50th something st. on Collins Ave. - he pays about $700 a month in condo assoc. fees - which he'll never see again. O.k., lucky him he can afford it, but to the average person out there w/just a little more they than can have their very own home without having extra fees in a decent neighborhood somewhere else - some communites might even have a pool, parks, tennis courts, etc. at no extra costs that the city takes care of. My city even provides disposal gadgets w/doggie bags in the city parks - even a free old fashioned trolley service to get around for residents/non residents/tourists or whomever wishes to ride 'em....
BTW, these condo presidents are known to pack up one day w/the money and leave the assoc. penniless and guess?? There is no Florida law that protects the innocent unsuspecting owners of against these crooks - not one has been indicted for this crime, it's just unbelievable to me. At least down here, we have this problem quite a bit and then the owners have to start all over saving & collecting from scratch... happened where my mom lived twice & there were months where even the grass wasn't cut - it was looking quite abandoned because there was no money in the coffers. Thankfully, I got her to sell right away after they collected a special assessment (extra money) to paint all the buildings. I thought it was the best time to sell since it looked great at that point.

[daedalo]

This is what I posted on another thread relating to gated communities in Jacksonville- I think it might be useful background here re "Gated and walled communities":

Many Jacksonvillians at least marginally concerned with their security find a "gated stucco box". The first such community was "Deerwood" built in the early 1970's on the spoils of the Humphries Gold Mine operation, outside of town to the south of Beach Boulevard and the Arlington Expressway. In those days Deerwood represented the highest form of "white flight". The city fathers were able to purchase the land from Humphries for a song since the soils were totally denuded and converted to white beach sand. The first big mall, Regency Square, was built atop another section of this wasteland. These were tremendous investments: They were created just at a time when baby boomer families were getting along pretty well- but Jacksonville's downtown had a large population of minorities located in grim public housing and substandard private rental units where the downtown FCCJ is now located. Instead of working with this population Jacksonville bulldozed it (it has bulldozed 99.9% of the black community out of the central business district) and numerous blocks of Jacksonville's CBD became parking lots of dead public space until the big church downtown gradually gobbled up some of this devalued real-estate. The whole development of Jacksonville to the south grew from the Deerwood enterprise and a desire of well to do whites to be safe, and it is where many of these "quasi-closed " developments are now available. In the 1970's it was also debated whether to put UNF downtown or to put it near Deerwood in the "safe" zone far out of town. Deerwood won and the city lost. Most of the land to the south and toward the beach, if not the barrens previously described is land that previously was forested pinelands or dairy/agricultural land of very little intrinsic value. The truly nice areas of Duval are older sections adjacent to the river. The river supported some very nice mesic-hammock granddady oak forests, and where the big oaks are located you will find the nicest-and oldest communities such as Riverside/Avondale/Ortega on the west side of the river, and San Marco and Mandarin on the east. Also, as the river winds its way to the north and east the nicest area is St. John's Bluff. I remember my sister and I would go horseback riding at a place called Greenfield stables located about half way to the beach off Atlantic Boulevard on some god-forsaken scrub land that bordered on the marshy bogs well off the Intracoastal waterway. Now this area is a target gated community called Queens Harbor, which I must say is one of the more pretentious arrays of of boring bland pomposity available for a small fortune. All of this points up the principle of American development rampant in Jacksonville: take devalued property of the least possible cost and zero intrinsic value and build the most expensive pretentious thing on it that the market will bear. If the market won't accept a simple subdivision of expensive larger houses built on trash land then build smaller cheap houses packed in very tightly on miniscule lots then dredge out some fake lakes and throw up some gates and fountains for good measure. Then name this concoction with some kind of old world reference. Use words like "Parke" instead of Park, or "Grande" instead of Grand, etc.

[jdaryl2002]

We live in a gated community and we’ll never live in one again. Gated communities are a microcosm of what real Florida living is all about, uninviting and isolation. They should be called gated developments and not communities because communities are not encouraged or created when walls are built.

[Catrick]

Originally Posted by bamboosmom

I too am in a non-gated community and can say it is just as nice as the walled in ones. If somebody wants to get in to a gated community, believe me, they will.

That is the truth. They can just jump over the wall and get in. And they have HOAs. We live in one that are townhouse and villas. Before the housing prices went over the top, we had alot of "tweeners". People waiting to find the right house and investing instead of renting. A lot of young families where Mom could stay home with the little ones and not have to work. When the kids went to school, most moved to larger homes. Since the prices have gone through the roof, most of the people have been here for awhile. I will say I have more of a sense of communtity here than in the "regular" neighborhood I lived in for 15 years. Most of the people are nice and they try and have block parties. People talk when they are out and about and after Wilma last year, everyone pulled together. Some people making ice runs and helping each other out; letting each other know where to get gas, etc. My husband was just 3 days out of the hopital after heart surgery when the storm hit and people came by all the time to offer help. My kids were here so I didn't need much but their offers were appreciated.

Also, having an HOA and management company can have advantages since in the past, two undesireable people renting their homes were forced to leave. Drugs and such were the reasons. That wouldn't have happened in a "regular community."

All in all, I believe any neighborhood is what the people make of it. If I could afford it, I would most likely live in a regular neighborhood. But it seems the gated communties are way of the future both in Florida and many other states.