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I think I would like such a community if it were heavily and beautifully landscaped with lots of shrubbery, trees, color. And perhaps lots of container grown flowers tended by the residents. Are there any such 55+ communities like this? Less asphalt, more vegetation?
We are currently in the process of moving to be closer to our daughter (another 55+ in DE) and the one thing my DH said was that he would miss all the landscaping in our community. We think it is beautiful. The name is Sun City Carolina Lakes and has a bunch of lakes on the property surrounded by landscaping. The golf cart and walking trails wind around and through a LOT of vegetation that was not removed. We are right on the Catawba River and there is a large area of undisturbed trees down there the full length of the property. Wild bamboo galore, too. To get to the kayak storage center you have to go through, again, a lot of vegetation and trees. They have also planted a ton of trees, shrubs and grasses throughout the community......azeleas, Crape Myrtles, jasmine and more. Plus they always plant annuals along with the Crape Myrtles in the median strips on the roads.
Although you get a basic package of landscaping with your house, most people have upgraded theirs. We have added lavender, Camellias, carpet roses, Salvia, azeleas, and knock out roses. Also have a wonderful flowering cherry tree and a large light purple Crape Myrtle as well as a smaller, bush type very dark purple Crape Myrtle. We have color all year round. We also have a gorgeous coral bark maple that in the winter when the leaves are off, the bark turns bright red and it beautiful. Plus I always have hanging baskets with annuals in them....pansies right now. And we probably are about average. There are bunches of people there who have done a lot more and once a year the community does a "garden walk" where you get a list of people willing to open their yards for viewing. You see some beautiful things. We also have a master gardener resident who does a column in the monthly magazine.
I will admit I have seen a couple communities, even the "family" ones where everything is clear cut and nothing put back. This is not like that at all. There is always something blooming here. There might be some pictures if you go to the Del Webb website and search for our community.
Any recommendations for 55+ communities in North Carolina? Either the Raleigh or Charlotte areas....
single family houses, not group homes...most of what I have found are "senior living facilities" even when I enter 55+ communities. My husband and I are not looking for senior care but rather active private home communities with
smaller houses and limited property.
Thank you!
Except that they have my community as Fort Mill, NC. We are actually just over the border from Charlotte in SC, just 5 miles over the border and 9 miles south of I-485 which is the beltway around Charlotte. Much better tax situation that NC.
Any recommendations for 55+ communities in North Carolina? Either the Raleigh or Charlotte areas....
single family houses, not group homes...most of what I have found are "senior living facilities" even when I enter 55+ communities. My husband and I are not looking for senior care but rather active private home communities with
smaller houses and limited property.
Thank you!
Is there a specific reason you have narrowed it to these two cities?
Spent about three hours today visiting Carolina Arbors the new Del Webb community in Durham NC. This is their second community in the Triangle. Houses are 300-600k with the monthly homeowners association fee being $174. You are seeding and paying for the amenities and maintenance upfront as they are built into the cost of the house. So if getting a mortgage you are financing them at whatever interest rate you are getting. Evidently many buy with mortgages which down the road could be interesting. Very nice community with eleven home models. In a nice area with shopping and a lot else close by etc etc etc. If we were a tad older we might be jumping in but just being on the verge of 68 not yet. Hopefully they will build another community in the area when this is completed. You can go online and research yourself. We did find a home we liked a lot.
I think the communities should be ok, but I did not buy in one due to the quality of the building. I think the new DW is different from the old.
Don't know which DW communities you looked at - but I notice you're in Florida. Some people in the JAX forum have made the same observations regarding the quality of construction in our local DW development that you do. IMO - the quality of construction can matter more in places with somewhat harsh environments (like Florida) than in other areas.
There are lots of threads here on CD about various DW communities all over the country. For example:
Also tons of links will pop up if you Google "Del Webb lawsuits". It is difficult - if not impossible - to generalize about developments that have gone up over the course of many decades - from one end of the US to the other.
A few random thoughts that also enter my mind when it comes to communities like this (or similar) are...
Many (although not all) are located outside of or on the periphery of metro areas. While a location like this may be ok for an "active 55 senior" - it becomes increasingly less optimal as you get older. If I were to move today - I'd want to be closer to things - not farther away from them.
When one moves to a new part of the world - it's important to learn something about hazards that exist there that one may not be familiar with. For example - many people who move to Florida think they don't have to worry about flooding if they're not close to the ocean. When - in reality - a lot of our worst flooding comes from soggy otherwise minor tropical storms that can dump huge amounts of rain inland in a very short period of time. Which results in flooding in areas where you might not expect it (often as a result of backups in drainage systems). Good building practices in many areas demand that houses be raised - at least a little - and not built "slab on grade". But that is the way DW builds here (as do many other builders).
The new construction market is "hot" where I live now (don't know what is going on in other parts of the country). When the building market is hot - it seems that developers just don't build things as well as they do when things are slower. For example - most houses here are built on concrete slabs. Site preparation and curing poured slabs properly are 2 of the most important things when it comes to the stability of a house. Yet I see that most builders today aren't spending the time or money to do these things properly. Which means that a lot of these houses are going to wind up with structural defects in a pretty short period of time.
If you're looking at a large community that is still "a work in progress" that won't be finished for decades - if you need to/want to sell before completion - you - as a seller - will always be competing with the developer.
Finally - a lot of these communities wind up being very specific age segregated ghettos as many people move in when they're about the same age - and then they all age in lockstep. For example - if average age in a place is 65 now - it will be 75 ten years from now - 80 15 years from now. At least in south Florida - it was very hard to attract new younger buyers as large 55+ communities wound up looking like nursing homes (due to the age of the residents). More than a handful wound up in financial distress (especially post-2008) - and some have actually been converted into "regular age" developments in recent years. Robyn
I have looked at a bunch of Del Webb communities around the country (online, I should make that clear) and was surprised at how expensive the homes are. The upfront cost plus the monthly fees make it unlikely that my husband and I will ever seriously consider a DW community, even though we could probably "afford" to move to one of them. Many of them look lovely, but I don't think it will be the best use of our retirement funds.
I follow these 55+ threads with interest. We're researching, in that we rented for the month of November this year in a Del Webb in the Palm Springs area (Shadow Hills), and last November we rented for the whole month in a Robson place near Tucson (Quail Creek).
Both months were a lot of fun and we joined clubs, met neighbors, went to Sunday open houses, explored the surroundings, etc. Good from a research point of view, but we wouldn't choose either location.
The Robson community was superior in some ways. Both were immaculate, but since Shadow Hills was 100% sold (except for resales), they weren't too accommodating to renting "guests." Maybe that's a good thing for their owners. Restrictions on accessing fitness center, harder to come & go thru main gate, no discounts on their golf course, etc. Robson was nicer on all counts.
On the other hand, there's not much to do 20 miles south of Tucson! Shadow Hills, though, is in the Coachella Valley, and we were endlessly busy with fun & interesting things to do.
The biggest red flag about Shadow Hiils, to me, is their turning a blind eye to the area's water crisis. The Coachella Valley is desert. They are the area of CA most fined for not meeting water-saving goals. They don't even seem interested. Everywhere we saw sprinkling systems in full force, flowing fountains, etc. A disturbing sense of unreality . . .
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