Renting First in Central Florida (Gainesville, Ocala: apartments, rentals, insurance)

[shideg]

Hello.

I posted something similar to this a few months ago in the Florida forum, and someone there suggested I post to the Ocala forum, so I apologize for the repetition.

My wife and I are looking to settle in central Florida (coming from northern Indiana) in retirement. We are planning to move in the summer of 2021. We don't have a particular community in mind (We have toured the The Villages, and we have a friend that came from the same area and now lives in Stonecrest, just northeast of The Villages).

Anyway, we're thinking of doing the oft-advised renting first and spending that time looking at various areas and communities and shopping for a home.

Has anybody here done this? I have some questions about the whole "rent first" scenario.

1. How flexible are lease terms? Is it possible to rent for, say, 6 months then go month-to-month after that? Or is a minimum long-term rental 1 year? If we find (and close on) a house well before our lease expires, is there a way to get out of a lease early, or am I just stuck?

2. Are certain types of rentals more flexible than others (apartments vs houses etc.)?

3. We are planning to visit the Ocala area in a couple of weeks (mid October 2020) and look around at places to possibly rent the following year (assuming we can visit places in this COVID-19 world). There seems to be a lot of places that rent. Does anybody have any recommendations or warnings? Granted, we need to settle on a price range, but any general guidance or opinions would be appreciated.

Has anybody here done the rent-first thing? How did you do it?

[wizrap]

We did the rent-first thing, but in Gainesville. We used a realtor to find us a house since we own a large dog & didn’t think apartment or condo living would be fair to any of us.

We signed a one year lease as we still had a home in SFLA that would have to sell. We decided to rent it out for a year while trying to decide if we wanted to retire in Gainesville.

Turns out we did and we worked out a deal with our landlord to go month to month our second year of our lease. It gave us time to sell the house in SFLA and find one in Gainesville. Our landlord had even offered to sell us the house we were renting from him but we thought the price was too high and declined.

The process wasn’t entirely stress free. Our landlord also decided to sell his home and by going month to month, we felt that if we didn’t find a place, we could be forced to move to another rental if our landlord sold his home first.

Fortunately it worked out well for us. He found a buyer about 2 months after we moved & closed on our new home.

[rjm1cc]

In the Villages you can find a rental for what ever period you like. Summer is better for price and give you an idea of the hot weather. See https://www.villagershomes4rent.com/

Travel from there to Ocala. You can also do stay vacations for several days at the various properties. If you can I would try and rent in the community you want to buy into.

[Chas863]

In general, finding places to rent in Florida during the winter time is difficult unless you are prepared to pay substantial deposit money and schedule it for at least one year in advance. For example, right now would be a difficult time to rent a place for this coming winter unless you could find a cancellation due to Covid-19.

If you're coming down for a couple of weeks in October, that should give you a good chance to look around, plus the fact that you've already visited The Villages so you have something to compare with. I can't say which is more difficult to find to rent... apartments or houses.

However, I can say that rentals during the warm/hot weather months will generally be much easier to find and likely have greater flexibility in terms than during the winter. In short, nothing is cast in stone.

I suggest that you look online prior to coming to Florida in October for places that you might want to BUY since that seems to be your ultimate goal. Then, when you're here, you can tour/visit these places to help narrow down your search area. Once you've got the area and price range narrowed down to a manageable size, you can then start searching for a rental that would be handy.

My personal opinion is that it shouldn't take all that long to decide if you want to move or not... at least it didn't take us long. One month was enough for us to decide. It did take longer to actually find WHICH place to buy, but not long at all to decide whether TO buy. Good luck in your search.

[rjm1cc]

If it is important, not all homes have natural gas.
Utility, taxes, insurance etc can vary between homes so if costs is important keep this in mind when selecting a home.