Yesterday KJG and I took it into our pretty little heads to spend the day looking at real estate. More specifically, we killed several hours touring the models at Trilogy, a Shea Homes tract in Vistancia, itself a sprawling development halfway to Las Vegas. Entertaining experience.
Prices have come down so far that I actually could afford a base house in one of the low-end models out there. Well. That’s assuming I put in no landscaping, no window coverings, and no furniture.
Some of the houses are very pretty—one thing you have to say for today’s developers, they finally have design down pat. I’m partial to the Monaco, which unlike some of the other models doesn’t waste space with a hall-like entry “foyer” for you to keep clean. It has a decent-sized kitchen, nice bedrooms, and an easy-to-care-for layout. The “den” (a sort of second breakfast nook) could serve as an office, if I could stir myself to pick up the litter off my desk.
The problem is, even though the property the developers purchased and bladed is vast and so far out from the city they must have bought it for a song, the houses are built right on top of each other. The gorgeous ceiling-to-floor windows that grace the back end of the house look straight into the back porch and windows of the neighbor’s house. You couldn’t walk into the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee in the morning without being fully dressed! The side windows on some of these models, which often have small side patios, peer right into the windows or patios of the neighbors’ houses.
Want privacy? Encase your yard in a six-foot block wall! That’s exactly what everybody out there eventually will do. So instead of looking into your neighbor’s windows, your pretty little breakfast nook or den will have a view of an ugly cement wall, three feet outside.
If you could persuade Shea homes to build one of these houses on a larger lot—say, a nice boulder-strewn number with a view of the Bradshaws up in Yarnell—you would have the house from heaven. The Monaco would be my choice for the dream small house in the middle of 40 acres. But elbow-to-elbow with the guy next door and his kids, cats, and dogs? Don’t think so.
For the privilege of living on top of your neighbor, you’ll pay $218 a month in association fees. That’s for starters: you know the amount will never go down! The fee supports a vast community center with two pools, a spa, a restaurant, and a golf course. Plus the city of Peoria has divested itself of responsibility for the roads: homeowners also have to maintain the streets. In other words, you’re paying a $218 a month tax on top of the county taxes, and every now and again you’ll be assessed to cover the astronomical cost of repairing and repaving the roads.
Makes the slums across the road look pretty good, doesn’t it?
Last night shortly after we crawled into the sack, Cassie and I were rousted by the sound of an explosion. Couldn’t see any flames nearby, so I figured it probably came from the source of the late, great fumes, over to the west of us. Mwa ha ha: another meth house bites the dust!
{sigh} If my son and the choir and most of my friends weren’t located in the middle of the city, the excessively neighborly Vistancia would look pretty good. Realistically, of course, I can’t afford $218+++ in fees to support a golf course (I don’t golf), swimming pools (I dislike swimming in public pools), a restaurant (I can barely afford to eat out now and certainly couldn’t if I had to choke up over two C-bills a month!), a spa, and roads that ought to be maintained by the municipality that’s extracting taxes from me.
LOL! I guess I could afford a forty-year-old trailer in Yarnell, though!
🙂
These have a lot of add-ons also. For instance, where my mother is: one roof needed replacement, so everyone’s got replaced. There was a vote to add more to the fees to support an upgraded health center–it won by a SINGLE vote. I could go on. Then if some people stop paying the fees, everyone has to pick up the slack. There is no way to plan a budget far into the future under these circumstances.
I want a very small house eventually–or maybe not a house. I’d really like a two room place (one for me, one for Mr FS) in the yard of one of my children.
OOOHHHH. Just looked at the site. You should do a test drive–for under $200 per couple (so w/ a friend), you get two nights, some sporty stuff, andd $100 for meals. I wonder if the dog could go too.
Sounds like a little vacation.
@ frugalscholar: Yeah, I saw that. Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? Housing development as luxury resort….