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New Del Webb homes are cheaper in Ocala

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As you may know I built a new home in 2019 in Del Webb Stone Creek here in Ocala. I always liked to sell homes here but since moving I’ve had a lot more buyer business in my community.

The other day I was showing new homes to a buyer with my sales contact Allen. We were talking and he said how much more expensive the same model was in other Del Webb communities in Florida.

That got me to thinking and I did a simple search. Del Webb Mystique model. Here in Stone Creek the base model and that’s the price they always show was $264,990-. Sure enough I didn’t see another Del Webb and I looked at like 6 communities with a Mystique base under $300K.

That’s why buyers come to Ocala. Inexpensive homes. A lower chance of hurricanes. A quiet and peaceful lifestyle.

Ocala #6 in Best Places to Retire

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Ocala sign for historic downtown square

US News and World Reports published a list of the Best Places to retire in 2020-21 and Ocala came in at # 6 out of 150 major metropolitan areas. You will notice out of the top 20 Ocala has the highest housing affordability score.

Link to article    https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/best-places-to-retire?sort=overall&high_to_low=true

Stone Creek picture blog

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This is a series of pictures that I took walking around here in Del Webb Stone Creek. I like to take pictures as I roam around and these are just taken with my Samsung cell phone. I’m thinking I may do a series of picture posts about Stone Creek. Stay tuned for more.

Early AM rocket launch from Cape Canaveral taken from my front lawn

Early AM rocket launch from Cape Canaveral taken from my front lawn

orange sunrise taken from my back yard

Sunrise taken from my back yard

Sunset orange horizon with big purple clouds

Sunset taken from my back yard

looking down golf course colors enhanced by cell phone

Golf course picture magically stylized by my phone

looking at pool from beach entry palm trees colors enhanced

Stone Creek pool stylized picture

 

Thoughts on building a new home

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a street of new homes lined with trucks and a dumpster

This is a follow up to my ongoing series about my building a new house in Del Webb Stone Creek. When you build new you should be prepared to live with construction noise and dust for 6 to 12 months.

Garden Series Home for sale Del Webb Stone Creek

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Garden Series home in Stone Creek

Garden Series home in Stone Creek

View of pasture land from your Lanai

View from your Lanai

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s all about the view. This is a 2018 Garden Series home for sale in Del Webb Stone Creek. The Garden Series feature lawn mowing and trimming, fertilizing and lawn insect control, shrub care and lawn water included in the $318- month HOA fee. This home has tile floors in the main living area, a great upgraded kitchen with stainless appliances and granite. It is 2 bedrooms and an office with 1447 sqft under air. Perfect if you want to down size or be a snowbird. Sellers were planning on a snowbird lifestyle but love Stone Creek so much they plan to make it their full time residence and want to build a larger home on a lot with the same view. Homes in Stone Creek or any 55+ with a view like this are hard to find.  $224,560.00 Great Deal. Available for immediate occupancy. SOLD

More pictures…. Read more

New home vs a Resale home in Ocala Fl

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This post is about new verses resale homes based on my recent personal experience building a new house in Del Webb Stone Creek.

New houses are new. They have a new roof, AC, kitchen ect ect. They are not flawless. New homes always need things fixed that the sub contractors missed during construction. New houses may also need additional things such as a fenced yard, additional lighting or fans, garage storage, more landscaping, closet storage and the list goes on.

Newer resales especially 55+ resales often show as good as new. A lot of the things like landscaping, storage and fencing are not improvements where you recover 100% of your cost. Some just make a house more sellable. You can often find a nice lot in a resale that would cost a big premium on a new house.

Older resales often need some renovating. You would expect to pay less for the same size house  vs new. I’m selling a 1997 home with a hard to find pool looking out at the golf course in Ocala Palms for only $215K. You couldn’t be any where near that price in a new home.

 

New Home in Del Webb Stone Creek Part 5

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This is part of my on going series about my experience building a new home in Del Webb Stone Creek for my wife and myself.

We closed on our new home on June 21st. It took just about 5 months from signing the contract until closing. In past blog posts I talked about the construction experience. I plan to continue to blog about my experiences after closing.

One thing that pops up is that we have spent quite a bit of money after closing. We found that we didn’t like some options offered by the builder and elected to take care of them on our own after closing. We didn’t like the window treatments offered and installed Levelor blinds on our own. We didn’t like the pendant light options over the kitchen island either and my wife found ones she liked online. There was no option for ceiling fans so we had to get them ourselves. Pendant lights and fans were about $1600- and window treatments which we installed ourselves were another $1,000-. We found a great retired electrician in the neighborhood to install our lights and fans at a super reasonable price of $30- each. These things add up fast ! We have a nice work area in the garage and cabinets and overhead storage were a quick $1,000-. We got a Lanai with a screen cage extension. For added outdoor space we had a 10 x 24 cement pad poured. The cement pad alone was $1800-. We didn’t use pavers on our Lanai floor because we thought they were crazy expensive, $3600- for a 16 x 16 area. We will probably tile the lanai and new cement pad and it should cost about $3000-. A savings but also an out of pocket expense too. We fenced our yard for our dog $3500-.  My new neighbors have made similar comments about expenses after closing.

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New Home in Del Webb Stone Creek Part 4

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This is part 4 of my experience building a new home in Del Webb Stone Creek

Today is June 11. This is my busy season and I am behind on my blog posting. To bring you up to date a lot has happened at my house in Stone Creek since my last post on April 19. On April 22 we went to our pre drywall inspection with our field manager Jacob. He went over how the inside walls are framed, the roof truss system, plumbing and electric both of which are beneath the slab, insulation and pest treatment on the interior wood framing. Once the drywall was in things really took off. Between April 22 and today June 11 they finished my house. I have posted pictures below roughly showing the sequence of events. As of today my house is pretty much finished. My field manager started his pre closing inspection this Monday. I have to admit he has a list of things that sub contractors have to fix that I may not have noticed on my own. After the field manager a woman from customer support does another inspection looking for anything that was missed by Jacob the field manager. I am happy. The whole process has been pretty straight forward with minimal stress on my wife and myself. On June 18 we go to our celebration meeting which is more of a pre closing walk trough and orientation about features of the house. This is not the end of my blogging about my new home building experience. Stay tuned.

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New Home in Del Webb Stone Creek part 3

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This is part 3 of my experience building a new home in Del Webb Stone Creek.

We met our Field Manager on March 8th. It had been about 6 weeks that felt like a very long time before anything seemed to get going. Then BANG as soon as we were assigned Jacob our field manager things really took off. They installed the underground utilities and poured the concrete slab within 7-10 days. Next a crew came in and put up the block walls. We had to wait for inspection of the walls before proceeding but that didn’t take long. Next framers came in and set the roof trusses and sheathed the roof. It was beginning to look like a house. The interior walls were framed, the AC, electric and plumbing are roughed in, exterior doors and windows installed and the roof has been shingled all as of today April 19. Next week we meet with Jacob for a pre drywall build quality orientation. Up to this point we get weekly reports along with pictures of the weeks accomplishments.

Pictures below for anyone who enjoys construction like I do.

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New Home in Del Webb Stone Creek part 2

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This is part 2 of my experience building a new home in Del Webb Stone Creek here in Ocala.

On January 19 we signed our contract. On February 8th we went to the design center to pick out the interior finishes. Almost everything in the house can be upgraded. We decided on all tile floors in every room. Tile on both shower walls. We went with mid level cabinets in the kitchen and baths. We kept the base granite mostly because the upgrades didn’t wow us. We added pull out draws in the kitchen and under cabinets lighting. Although expensive it seemed too hard to do after closing and wouldn’t have come out as professional. We upgraded the base black appliances a couple of levels to stainless Kitchenaid. We had to pick door height 6 or 8 foot, door handle finishes, faucets, cabinet door pulls, even where and how to mount flat screen tv’s. I expected it to be overwhelming but it wasn’t too bad. We are decisive and were in and out in a little over 2 hours. In the end we added $27,000 in options in addition to our lot premium of $18,500.

Nothing else happened until March 7th when we met our Field Manager. Actually he had been busy ordering all the materials for the house and getting the building permit. Building permits take several weeks here.