The true-cost desk
Cost of Living — What a Month Actually Costs
Price the life, not just the house. Build one monthly number from the mortgage through the golf cart.
Run your number →The buyer reset
Why the purchase price tells you almost nothing here
In most of the country the mortgage is the cost of the house. In The Villages it isn't. On top of your mortgage (or instead of it, if you pay cash) sit five recurring charges that many buyers only discover late: property tax that resets to your purchase price, an annual amenity fee written into the deed, a bond payment repaying the district's original infrastructure borrowing, a perpetual CDD maintenance assessment, and Florida homeowners insurance. Two homes with the same asking price can differ by hundreds of dollars a month once those are counted — mostly because of the bond and the county. That's why this page exists: it puts every number in one place so you can compare homes on what you'll actually pay, not on what the listing says.
Your budget
Put the entire month on one screen.
Change any assumption. The total and every cost line update immediately.
Enable JavaScript to model mortgage, taxes, amenity fee, bond, CDD, insurance, utilities and transportation.
Three reference points
Worked example: monthly ownership cost at three price points
All three assume Sumter County (the cheapest of the three counties, at roughly 10.03 mills), the $50,000 homestead exemption applied, and no mortgage payment — this is the cost of simply owning the home. Bond and insurance are the two lines that swing hardest between individual homes, so they are shown as the mid-range assumption, not a promise. Treat this as a gut-check template and replace every row with the real figures for the specific parcel before you offer.
01
~$250,000 home
- Property tax (Sumter, homesteaded)
- ~$167
- Amenity fee
- ~$204
- Bond payment (mid-range assumption)
- ~$0–160
- CDD maintenance
- ~$30
- Home insurance (estimate)
- ~$190
- Ownership subtotal, before utilities
- ~$591–751
02
~$400,000 home
- Property tax (Sumter, homesteaded)
- ~$293
- Amenity fee
- ~$204
- Bond payment (mid-range assumption)
- ~$160
- CDD maintenance
- ~$50
- Home insurance (estimate)
- ~$300
- Ownership subtotal, before utilities
- ~$1,007
03
~$700,000 home
- Property tax (Sumter, homesteaded)
- ~$543
- Amenity fee
- ~$204
- Bond payment (mid-range assumption)
- ~$224
- CDD maintenance
- ~$85
- Home insurance (estimate)
- ~$500
- Ownership subtotal, before utilities
- ~$1,556
Five moving parts
The five ownership costs, and what drives each one
Property tax
Your purchase price and the county — Sumter is the cheapest of the three, Marion the most expensive
Only by choosing where you buy; file homestead to cut taxable value by up to $50,000Amenity fee
Set community-wide, rises each year with CPI; written into the deed as a covenant
No — it transfers to you at closing on the existing termsBond payment
The remaining balance on that specific parcel, which varies from zero to $28,000+
Yes — negotiate it in the sale, or pay it offCDD maintenance
Your district's adopted annual budget and home type
No — it is perpetual and re-set annuallyHome insurance
Replacement cost, roof age, deductibles and carrier
Yes — wind-mitigation credits and shopping multiple carriers move it a lotOne hard utility benchmark
Electricity — the one utility with a hard number
Most of The Villages is served by SECO Energy, a member-owned cooperative. Florida's Public Service Commission publishes what every utility in the state actually bills, which makes this one household cost easier to benchmark before you move. As of December 2025, a SECO residential customer using 1,000 kWh a month paid $143.40, against a monthly customer charge of $39.00 — placing SECO 32nd of the 54 Florida electric utilities the Commission tracks, squarely mid-pack (the cheapest in the state was $86.01, the most expensive $229.65). SECO also approved a May 1, 2025 rate adjustment and says a 1,000-kWh household would see roughly a $10–$12 monthly increase from that adjustment, so treat the table as a benchmark and run SECO's estimator for the freshest budget. The figure that matters most for a Florida retiree is the next one up: at 1,500 kWh — an ordinary summer month with the air conditioning running — the same benchmark bill is $209.85 before any later adjustments. Budget for the summer number, not the average.
The give
What makes living here cheaper than you'd expect
Three structural things work in your favour. Florida levies no state income tax and no state property tax, so retirement income — pensions, Social Security, IRA withdrawals — is not taxed at the state level at all, which is worth more to most retirees than any single line above. Being 60 to 75 miles inland means insurance premiums well below coastal Florida, no storm-surge exposure, and no evacuation for most storms. And the amenity fee, for all that it is a real recurring cost, replaces a great deal of discretionary spending: free executive golf, more than 100 recreation centres and pools, and free live entertainment on the town squares every night of the year. Households that use the amenities heavily find their entertainment budget falls after moving.
The take
And what costs more than you'd expect
The honest other side. The bond is the big one: it is not a mortgage, it does not build equity, and on a newer home it can add $160 to $225 a month for fifteen years or more — buyers routinely miss it because it appears on the tax bill rather than the closing statement. Summer electricity runs high because the air conditioning genuinely runs most of the day from May to October. Property tax resets to what you paid, so the seller's current bill systematically understates yours — sometimes badly, if they held the home a long time under the Save Our Homes cap. Home insurance is Florida insurance: better inland than on the coast, but expensive by national standards, and roof age can make an older home hard to insure at all. And most households end up buying a golf cart, which is a real four-figure purchase plus a trail fee.
Read the assumptions
The number is only useful when the inputs are honest.
How that example is calculated — and what it leaves out
Property tax is the purchase price less the $50,000 homestead exemption, times 10.03 mills, divided by twelve — so $400,000 becomes $350,000 taxable, or about $3,511 a year. The bond assumes a mid-range remaining balance amortised over the rest of its term; an older home with the bond paid off pays nothing on that line, which is why the $250,000 column shows a range starting at zero. CDD maintenance uses the low, middle and upper end of the roughly $350 to $1,000+ per year spread. Insurance scales with dwelling value from inland Florida benchmarks. What this deliberately leaves out: your mortgage, and the household running costs in the next two blocks. It also assumes Sumter — the same home in Marion County would pay materially more property tax.
Water, sewer, trash and internet
Water, wastewater and sanitation come from the district rather than a private utility, and arrive on a single combined monthly bill from Villages Community Development Districts utility billing — which is convenient, but does mean the amount depends on your district and your usage rather than on a published flat rate. Internet is a competitive market here: most addresses can choose between cable and fibre, and promotional pricing moves constantly, so check availability at your specific address rather than trusting a citywide average. Because both of these vary by parcel and by household, we deliberately don't publish a single number — see the Utilities section for how to look up yours before you close.
Flood insurance is a separate policy and a separate bill
A homeowners policy does not cover flood. That is true everywhere in the United States, but it matters more here because inland central Florida floods in ways that surprise people who were watching the coast: this is a rainfall and drainage problem, not a storm-surge one, and a parcel well away from the sea can still sit in a mapped flood zone. Whether a lender requires the policy depends on the zone the parcel is in, so it is a per-address question and never a neighbourhood one — two homes on the same street can differ. Look the address up on FEMA's Flood Map Service Center before you fix a monthly budget, and if the zone calls for it, get a quote at the same time you are quoting homeowners rather than after. We are deliberately not printing a typical premium: flood pricing is parcel-specific, and a number averaged across Florida would be worse than no number at all.
None of these numbers stay still
Treat any monthly figure you calculate as a floor rather than a settled cost. The amenity fee is written into the deed as a covenant and adjusts annually with the Consumer Price Index, so it moves without anyone voting on it and there is no HOA mechanism to stop it. CDD maintenance assessments are set district by district each year. Property tax follows the millage set in whichever of the three counties — Sumter, Marion or Lake — the parcel falls in, and the same house pays differently across a county line. Insurance has been the most volatile line of all in Florida in recent years, and roof age moves it more than anything a buyer controls after closing. The practical consequence: budget with headroom above the number you calculate today, and re-check the whole thing at renewal rather than assuming it carried over.
Before you rely on any of this
Every figure here is an illustrative estimate assembled from the sources cited on this page and elsewhere in this guide — not a quote, and not financial advice. Tax rates, the amenity fee, CDD budgets and insurance markets all change, and the two biggest swings (bond balance and insurance premium) are specific to one parcel and one household. For any home you are serious about: pull the actual tax bill, get the bond amortisation schedule from the district's lookup, ask for the CDD maintenance figure in writing, and get insurance quotes from at least two carriers. Then rebuild this table with the real numbers.