Looking for a 55+ neighborhood (Sarasota, Bradenton: for sale, HOA, mobile home)

[hsm_of2]

We are thinking about moving into a 55+ community in Sarasota county. We currently live in one in central Florida and enjoy it. Would like one where you can have larger dogs, adult family members stay longer than 30 days, and one where you do your own yard. It can be a sfh or a mobile, either one is fine. Any suggestion in the south Sarasota county area on what is good or stay away from because the HOA is super intrusive?

[Sunshine Rules]

Originally Posted by hsm_of2

We are thinking about moving into a 55+ community in Sarasota county. We currently live in one in central Florida and enjoy it. Would like one where you can have larger dogs, adult family members stay longer than 30 days, and one where you do your own yard. It can be a sfh or a mobile, either one is fine. Any suggestion in the south Sarasota county area on what is good or stay away from because the HOA is super intrusive?

Unfortunately I can only think of one 55+ community in our area that might meet all 3 of your criteria -- larger dogs allowed, long term visitors & do your own lawn. Fair Lane Acres Mobile Home Park in Bradenton. You would have to check about the long term visitors & owners are restricted to 2 pets per household.

There are a few others that allow larger dogs (most restrict owners to 1 or 2 pets, no aggressive breeds allowed) but not long term visitors and the lawn maintenance is handled by the association.

[hsm_of2]

Thanks Sunshine Rules, that stinks but is helpful.

[motordavid]

Not in the RE biz, but there are many communities of various prices/flavors in Sarasota county: SFH or villas, that will allow dog(s), of most sizes.

As for "55+", most communities are on average, that age or more, with some sprinkling of households w/kids, in many communities.

The community I live in, and those I am familiar with have 'kids', but it isn't LWR, and the usual kids pop. is small, in my experience. And, most of us Geezers have our adult kids/grand kids down during winter, pre-CV19.

Our situ is that our SFH is in a POA, so all of us have our own yard guy/do our own, though some sections of our community are HOA, with blocks being tended to by a bulk contractor...each community often has its own set of HOA/POA/COA set up.

Hit the usual RE websites and do some looking vs any of us offering up 'this is the community for you that fills all of your needs boxes'.
GL, mD

[Nancy in Nokomis]

I would suggest if you do find a mobile home park you like - make sure you own the land - I keep hearing horror stories about how people are at the mercy of the greedy lot owners that keep raising lot rents.

[choff5]

We found in some areas there’s not much difference between a 55+ community and another non age restricted community when it came to average age of the residents. I would start with your other requirements first then filter from there.

[rfomd129]

If a fenced yard is important to you you might have to look outside of the 55+ HOA communities. There are a few communities that allow fencing but I think the majority of them don't. For us, a fenced backyard was non-negotiable.

[hsm_of2]

I guess we are just looking for peace and quiet but activities to do if we want to. We moved into this one temporarily actually never thinking we would like or ever live in one, but it's nice. There are no loud cars, music, people pretty much are decent and if we wanted to stay in central fla, we would probably pick here but we want to move back to that area our concern is many non hoa'd neighborhoods the houses are pretty close together and if you get one jerk that wants to play loud music till 2am or they have a barking dog that never stops, there is nothing you can do about it and that's kinda what we want to avoid. We recently left both of those issues and actually had almost an acre of land but the houses were closer together and the lots were deep so it was like having the neighbors dog outside our bedroom window barking for hours non=stop.

[rfomd129]

Originally Posted by hsm_of2

I guess we are just looking for peace and quiet but activities to do if we want to. We moved into this one temporarily actually never thinking we would like or ever live in one, but it's nice. There are no loud cars, music, people pretty much are decent and if we wanted to stay in central fla, we would probably pick here but we want to move back to that area our concern is many non hoa'd neighborhoods the houses are pretty close together and if you get one jerk that wants to play loud music till 2am or they have a barking dog that never stops, there is nothing you can do about it and that's kinda what we want to avoid. We recently left both of those issues and actually had almost an acre of land but the houses were closer together and the lots were deep so it was like having the neighbors dog outside our bedroom window barking for hours non=stop.

I completely understand this concern. Hubby and I lived in very strict HOA's for the last thirty years and making the change to a very light HOA community was a leap of faith. In our case it turned out to be wonderful and I'm enjoying the freedom of planting any kind of flowers I want and parking my car on the driveway for more than 15 minutes if I so wish! I also admire the individuality of the homes - that's a real treat. We have wonderful neighbors who truly care about property values and have respect for the unwritten rules that make a community work, but there was no guarantee of any of these things - we got very lucky.

[hsm_of2]

rfomd129, that's how ours is now and we actually enjoy it and were hoping to find something down there that is similar.
I have looked on all the for sale sites but don't really know which ones are over the top strict which we don't want. Which one did you find that has some freedom to plant. That's my biggest thing, the other for my hubby is keeping his garage door open when he is out there. We actually looked at a place and the deal breaker was you had to keep your garage door closed all the time. lol.