The Villages

Barb found a place in The Villages that looked good on the internet.  So Barb phoned the real estate agent and made plans for us to come up to The Villages and see it.  She called her friends and they said we could stay with them for the weekend.  We arrived in the afternoon and looked at the place but Barb found it was not as nice as it looked in the pictures on the internet.  The real estate agent said he would look at the listings and take Barb around tomorrow to see other houses in our price range.  That night our hosts took around The Villages to see the sites.  It is a huge complex with over 100,000 retired people living there.  It is made up of seven or eight smaller villages with their own Town Square.  Each Town Square has a theme.  There are little shops and restaurants around the Squares and in the middle of the Square is a band shell with live music every night of the year.  Every week they publish a newspaper listing all the clubs that are meeting that week.  There are over 2000 clubs in The Villages.  There are many recreation centers where the clubs meet.  There are beautiful pools and walking trails.  A major highway runs through the middle of the complex and it has all the big stores for shopping like Walmart.

So Barb played pickle ball on Saturday morning and then met with the real estate agent to see more houses.  First she went to an Open House.  Then she saw a few other houses.  She didn’t like any of them and thought she would have to make do with something less than perfect.  As they were finishing up their day, the lady real estate agent from the Open House phoned and told Barb’s real estate agent that he needed to show her one of her new listings.  So they went to look at it.  Barb had actually seen pictures of it on the internet but didn’t really like it.  However, when she saw it in real life it was much better than she thought.  She was so impressed that she said I had to see it.  I saw it later in the day and I was happy with it too because I was going to get an office.  So we put in an offer.  The real estate agent made a mistake in the arithmetic and put in an offer for $1000 less than we agreed to offer.  Unfortunately, Barb didn’t get the email telling her it was accepted and when we went over to the house the next day to sign the papers she had to ask if they had accepted the offer.  We were moving to The Villages next November for the pickle ball.