The Villages

The Villages is unlike anywhere else on earth — a 57-square-mile, entirely self-contained 55+ city straddling Sumter, Marion, and Lake counties in Central Florida. Founded in 1983 and still expanding, it's home to more than 138,000 residents across 46,000+ homes, and it continues to grow through master-planned villages added year after year. The scale is hard to overstate. The Villages has its own hospitals (UF Health The Villages and AdventHealth), its own regional shopping centers, nearly 100 on-site restaurants, banks, post offices, houses of worship, movie theaters, and even a polytechnic institute. Residents can live their entire day-to-day lives without ever leaving the community — and most travel between errands, dinner, and social events in a golf cart on the more than 100 miles of dedicated golf-cart-legal paths and bridges that weave the whole community together. Golf is the beating heart of the lifestyle. With 729 total holes — 13 championship courses and 42 executive courses — The Villages has more golf than any community in the world. Trail fees are modest and executive courses are effectively free with the amenity fee, which is why it's common for residents to play four or five times a week. Beyond golf, the social life is legendary. More than 3,000 resident-led clubs cover virtually every interest imaginable — ballroom dance, pickleball, RC planes, Corvettes, beekeeping, genealogy, Shakespeare, wine, shuffleboard, softball leagues, you name it. The community has 35+ recreation centers with pools, fitness rooms, and meeting spaces, plus the iconic town squares — Spanish Springs, Sumter Landing, Brownwood, and now Eastport — each offering free live music and dancing every single night of the year. Eastport, the newest town square, opened through 2025–2026 with the Eastport Hotel (January 2026), the Bellaire Executive Golf Course (November 2025), a Prime & Embers Steakhouse, and a regional recreation complex that includes the community's first indoor gymnasium with rock climbing walls. Middleton, a multigenerational section created to house the teachers, nurses, and service workers who support the community, now sits adjacent to The Villages' charter school campus and a new Publix-anchored retail plaza. Home styles span patio villas, courtyard villas, cottage homes, designer homes, premier homes, and estate homes on large lots — all built by The Villages Land Company, the in-house developer. There's no traditional HOA; instead, residents pay a fixed monthly amenity fee ($164–$189 depending on section) that funds all of the recreation infrastructure. CDD fees vary widely by neighborhood. The Villages isn't for everyone — it's big, busy, and unapologetically social — but for those who want golf every day, a 24/7 activity calendar, and a built-in network of neighbors within minutes of anything they could want, nothing else comes close.