The Villages, My one year celebration with the house I bought. Tour of the Winslow model.

it was literally one year ago today that i stood out in the street with almost exactly the same weather with no idea what was in store for me and i did my first video about the villages today we're gonna do a one-year recap and end up with the house that i bought let's get started [Music] yeah that's just about right one year ago today literally today i did my first video and let me say thank you so much to all the people that have subscribed that really appreciate it i'll tell you what let's go ahead and just jump to the first little bit of that video just so i can revisit it here we go hi everybody how you doing my name is rusty nelson and welcome to my new youtube channel you know they may ask why is this guy standing out why is this guy standing out in the pouring rain well it was a week ago that i was standing out and walking around the pouring rain freezing my butt off then all of a sudden i decided that since i was approaching that retirement age it would be a great time to go ahead and head down to the villages to see what the villages is all about now if you don't know what it is it's an over 55 retirement community in florida and i've heard a lot of rumors of what it is what it isn't so i decided to just create a youtube channel and start shooting from the very beginning from my first phone call onto well who knows how long it could last a lifetime it could last a week yeah that's it it could last a week or it could last a lifetime and i still have no idea but now it is one year later so what i'm going to do today is i'm going to jump back a lot of people have had questions about what house i bought why i bought the house how i came about buying that house and so on and so on and over the next couple few videos i'm going to cover a lot of those things so today i'm going to show you exactly how i found the house and the lot and actually show you inside the house and it is a winslow and there's i'll show you there's a couple different kinds of winslow's and give you some information along the way so let's go ahead and get started on that uh beginning process of actually how i found the house stop the presses stop the presses i got to tell you something that that happened to me when i first started doing these videos and that was that the actually the attorneys called me up from from the villages and had a wonderful discussion uh with those guys in their marketing department and they told me some of the things that they wanted to make sure that that um i said so i want to make sure i say it on this one because as i tell the story i'm going to be using their website and stuff so it's very important that you guys understand that i don't represent the villages in any way i'm just going on this journey myself and um i'm not part of the villages i don't do anything for the villages i have absolutely nothing to do with the villages and i wanted to make sure i said that because i told them that i would make sure you guys knew that and uh as we go along this journey i'm going to jump onto their website and and so it's part of the story so anyway let's go ahead and do that because it's one of the first places i started along with actually calling up for the lifestyle preview which you can see a ton of my videos about that when i first called up i highly suggest you go watch those but anyway this is what i did i started to jump onto the website and i used their website so let me show you how i did that real quick this is the website that they have and in that website there is a sales section which has a great map on it and that's basically what i started using now i i don't want to get into all the reasons of why i chose an area or whatever because i'm going to do a couple of videos following this on things you may want to think about when you go to buy in an area that doesn't mean that things are right or wrong but just some things you may want to think about but this is a great map to use it's also their sales map where you can look up for homes for sale obviously but first thing i did was kind of get a general orientation to the whole area and then once i realized that there was a certain area down here in the south which was the brand new area i went and started hunting around down there and then i kind of narrowed it down to saint catherine's where right now if you are following the whole construction thing the uh whole st catharines area is just about ready to start open up with the iselle or azeal or how everybody different pronounces it and the market down there it is not a square is a kind of a marketplace down there because there is no town square it's just the market area and a whole bunch of stuff golf courses opening up and pretty exciting and i just wanted to be a part of that as i get closer and closer on these maps you can start to realize really quick how detailed they get and that's one of the factors that took place when i decided where i was going to try to find a home but it wasn't the only one the one that really zeroed me in was this shot taking taking a step back for a second all of this information comes out at different times and when you used to look at the map when you went to the website it wasn't up to date it just said saint catherine in there but when i was actually looking at videos there's a guy named gold wingnutter that's the name of his company don wiley and this is the shot that i saw on there and i thought wow that looks like where the town square or the center's going to be or the rec center it looked like they were building the rec center and i thought man i see what looks like pickleball courts going in there which kind of got me excited and there's a small lake so what i did was after i saw this i went up and i realized that and i'll show you a picture right here of the topo maps or i guess that's what they call them the in the sales offices and i came to find out that they were extremely accurate and when i looked at it this is what i saw i'm going to zoom in here a little closer so you can take a look at this and what i noticed was there was two lots right along the lake that were larger than the others now you couldn't see this at the time and think about this because that first still shot that i showed you the air shot of uh gold wingnuts uh shot was october of 2020. this is now october of 2021 one year later so when you see my drone shots down a little bit later think about the difference that you're seeing and what happened in just one year so let's jump back to this right now and in these lots i decided that that must be a winslow so i went back and as don did more videos and this is a shot of his i started to see it take shape and this is a drone shot of that area in saint catherine and there are the two lots so i decided that that lot eight was going to be the one that i wanted as many of you know it's not that easy to just these were pre-built homes so you really didn't have any say in what was going into them but as we all know there is no deciding anything on these homes you will end up buying that house in a matter of seconds once it comes on to the market but i was bound and determined that this was going to be my place and the only big difference between those two lots was simply this one had the extra golf cart garage in it and that's it and i'll talk about that in in another video but once the pad started going up i could tell by looking at some of uh don's videos so if you haven't seen his videos jump over to his channel and watch them they're pretty good and i i knew i started driving by and i found out that this i was right this was a winslow and i started taking pictures it was as it was being built i watched the guys build it i went out in the backyard and hung out one night just to make sure i liked it and even had one of the electricians guys take a picture inside for me for me when they were actually building it because you're not supposed to go inside the houses right right now jump forward a little bit when you go to buy a house it's not a matter of you know even though it's a pre-built house or whether you're buying a lot at this point in time things happen really quickly and i got in touch with my sales guy and i told him this is the one that i want this is where i want to be and he goes well do you have a backup and i said nope no backup this is it or i just wait till a later date until something else comes along we keep trying now this guy's name is mike sargent and unfortunately he no longer works with the villages but i'll tell you what it was because of him that i believe that i got the house so what happened that day i went up and i knew they were coming on the market the thing was in that area right there payton every single home except for those few that that were right along the edge of the lake right there had been sold and there was only like i don't know like six or seven homes left right on the lake and that was it i think one of them had sold and it was every single day did they come available yet are they coming up is there any rumors or is there anything going on and it was torture let me tell you so all of a sudden we're down to the wire where we think that this is going to become available i fly down to uh florida and believe it or not i could actually because somebody fell through in a lifestyle i got a chance to stay down there for a lifestyle and literally went out and was out playing golf one day and mike calls me up and says today's the day and he said actually in a few hours i mean it happened that quick and so at that point in time there were certain things i guess that people could do they would get other sales people to help them out they would do this they would do that to try to get these homes and i guess as time changes everything changes down there so when you look at prices on like the other the the web pages and stuff like that everything's going to change it constantly constantly changes you have to realize that and i will say it again i do not work for the villages i have nothing to do with the villages i want to make sure you understand that so i decided to go out and play golf that day i literally get up with a couple of friends that i had met hit the ball off on the first tee the phone rings and i'm about ready to make a birdie it was the closest i'd been to a birdie in a while and it's uh mike on the other end of the phone and he goes well rusty guess what and i'm going oh god silence it was like watching a commercial or something like that and he goes you got the house you better get your butt down here and sign these papers because you got three hours to get this done because there's already people in line waiting to get that house i get down there head into the sales office we sit down we start going through the basics i have everything all ready in comes the manager and he goes so you're the guy and i'm like on what guy and he goes there's about 12 people right behind you that hate you for getting that house and he said i said yeah and the sales people too and he goes yeah he said oh anyway congratulations so ended up um getting the house which was a really big thrill and uh yeah it was really good signed all the papers and then it was actually because there were so many homes they were coming on market it's usually 30 days you have up to 30 days and they tell you what day you're going to close in those 30 days and uh just because of some scheduling problems i had and everything else i really wanted to be there when i closed on the house because i wanted to meet the builder that day and um so they they worked it out we worked it out where it was actually about six weeks so six weeks later i get down there and this is basically what happened i'll tell you a little bit about the walkthrough because i am going to go through a whole video on just this process of what i did on my walkthrough and how we handled it now this is a picture of me on closing day and if you don't know it when you go to close they make a big deal it's a little over the top for me i'm a little more conservative than that but it's it's fun you go down and somebody's ringing a bell as you're walking down the hallway and all i could think to myself is there every time they ring that bell the check must get bigger or something like that but they walk down and you go through the whole closing when you get done with that it's it's fun and uh my agent was in there with me mike and we went through the the whole thing signing all the papers and then he came back out and you do a picture thing out in the lobby and this is the shot of over the the map that i was talking about earlier and they were selling homes so fast that they didn't have enough time to glue the houses down so when i went down to point towards my house in the picture i looked at and i said hey there's no house here i said go get your monopoly pieces go get me a house get me some elmer's glue and i'm gluing my own house down and that's why i'm laughing so hard because they actually did they went out and got a house but as you can see right underneath my finger there were no homes and those homes sat for they didn't go up for sale for quite some time and then after that we got done and then in the afternoon the schedule is pretty tight and then you go and i want to tell you something this experience is really great this is a picture of uh the builder and myself going through the house and she's going to do a walk through through the house now i'm going to explain this in another video so i'm not going to get into this but let me tell you something this is a picture of missy and she was the nicest woman uh i couldn't have asked for anybody more to work with as as they called her a builder and what a great representation for the villages so hats off to her and i hope the village is really happy to have her and we went through the whole home and she showed me all types of things that i needed to know and then basically she walks out and there you are standing in the house now it just so happens that i had a big old tv ready to go in there and a card table and uh as i started to get set up a little bit who comes by and you may recognize these people now as soon as we go through this and i show you them we'll go through walk through the house and i'll explain about the model that i got so you guys might remember from another video bob and liz whose house is out that way i can see right in their window they close in a month in a month september in a month and they were so kind as as you can see i have nothing in here but in tv uh a housewarming gift say hi hello a lot of people know you out there so anyway i can't wait to see their house gets done and i can't wait to get some place to sit and i'm gonna munch on some of this stuff see you later bye and that was bob and liz from another video they've actually been in a couple videos they were in one where they actually talked about the process of going through and building their house on their lot or picking out the design stuff and so i want to thank them so much for stopping by because at that point that's about the only thing i had in the house was my big screen tv a table and their house warming gift which if you look at the housewarming gift after i looked at it really close it looks like maybe he put in stuff in half of it and she put in the other half so there's there's some beer and jim beam and some alcohol on one side and then the other stuff that i probably really need on the other side so anyway thank you so much to bob and liz i really appreciate it and it's great to have them neighbors right out the back door and get my canoe one day and go over and canoe over to their their pool since i don't have one anyway um now i'm gonna show you the actual house now it's gonna be a little chopped up because it's different videos from different time frames and you'll see one point the house is empty and the other part is i slowly started to get furniture in the in the house but first of all first thing i want to do is uh show you and i'm going to bring these two things up one thing you have to understand about these models of the homes is it is a base model and i go back again i am not a representative of the villages so things change and they may change from the time that you see this video there are base models so they may call one and i'll call it a prefab home although it's not really prefab that's just pre-designed and that's the way it comes up about the way it's going to look and it's very basic that part of it so this model is called a winslow and i've seen a bunch of different designs of the winslow sometimes they have one large garage sometimes they have two separate garages sometimes they have a golf cart garage sometimes they're 1826 square feet sometimes they're 1800 square feet sometimes they're 2002 square feet it just depends they're all bumped around and that goes for the custom homes too it's very easy from what i understand when you go to do a custom home a premier home you can go right in and tell them you know what we want to bump it out from the center in the living room now obviously things cost everything but what i had was one of the models that was pre-built i had no no decision in what the color was it just so happens that i really like blue so you'll see that's blue and i really like gray so the gray part worked out and i probably would have picked something very close to that myself so i'm pretty happy now because these homes sit right on the water and their view lot they tend to be upgraded in in the interior so they have upgraded floors and the the countertops and stuff are upgraded and the way the bathrooms are so you know you have to look at each individual home just because they call it a winslow doesn't mean it's going to look exactly like this but let's take a walk through i'll show you two basic models that were in that area let's take a look at the picture right now like i said there's a few different models of the winslow and just like because it's called a winslow doesn't mean it's going to be the exact same size my version i believe is called a winslow 4 which is on the left hand side now to make it easier to compare the two i took the one on the right which is a slightly larger winslow mine's 18 26 on the square feet and the one on the right is 2002 square feet and it really didn't make that big of a difference to me which one it was but as you can see there's a few differences these are both uh the the two car garage plus a golf cart the master bedroom on the one on the right is slightly bigger and i think some of the bedrooms are a little bigger and if you look at the dining room there since there is not as much closet space they put a it's like almost a whole room there um just to the right of the kitchen on my model on the left hand side and so this is basically it and and also if you look i have the bumped up ceiling in my master bedroom the other one didn't and [Music] that's about it uh if you look some of the bathroom similarities are the same anyway let's um before we jump inside and do a walk around inside let's take a ride up in the drone and see exactly what the area looks like now now i'm going to show you first thing here is a shot of what it used to look like a year ago now if you take a look you'll see that the drone i put the drone down in the bottom left-hand corner so you can kind of get an idea on that still picture where the drone is taking these shots from in the top is the iselle rec center there's those pickleball courts in the three lakes and this is all saint catherine and there's the postal center up there by the pool with the bocce and shuffleboard and unbelievable that this was all pretty much seems like accomplished in a year so this was shot just about one year later from that still images that uh don wiley took from gold wingnut and just a couple of places left to build out in here so this like i said one year later now my place there's the live oaks golf course which is now uh almost ready to be played on and the zell is going to open up also so that is just amazing to me i thought you guys would get a kick out of it let's go ahead and jump back down into the drone and we'll come down over that lake and then go ahead and go inside the house take a look on the right hand side really quick that is the other model that's just like mine except it has doesn't have the golf cart garage it looks a little wider because of the lens but this is my house the blue house right here i'm pretty excited about it and i i must say the reason the two reasons i bought this house is one because of that it sits on the lake that's really what i wanted i mean i bought the back porch is what i bought but also that it is close to gazelle and the pickleball courts and the championship golf course was a bunch of the reasons i also didn't want a lot of upkeep so the bungalow seems to work out really well plus i got my palm tree right in the back which was pretty exciting taking a look at the front yard you can kind of tell you lose a little porch space in the front with the extra garage there on some of the other versions on the two car they're separated but you definitely lose a little bit of porch i think i'm going to build something out there but i want to leave it go until the first year the warranty's up i don't really don't want to touch a thing but speaking of the garage let's jump inside the garage you see it started raining just as i started shooting this after doing the drone work but the garage has uh definitely got a lot of space and that becomes kind of important i think to a lot of people and it's good selling point couple of windows in there the air handler is great having this out in the garage you need to make sure this whole area is sealed off but it makes it so that it's really silent inside the house which i really like i don't even know when the air conditioner is on barely the water shut off like i said you'll see the blue tape around here that's because i leave that on to remind me that there needs to be something done with that for the warranty maybe not right away the water uh irrigation i paid i think it was an extra 70 bucks or something like that for a wi-fi add-on which i highly recommend and then this is the hot water heater which is actually outside on demand it is a love hate relationship you'll find out with a lot of people because it takes a while to get the hot water to the back room but anyway not a big deal to me the garage is actually bigger than what it looks like right here go eagles go birds inside as you walk in i call this one of the dead space areas nobody's going to live there nobody's going to do anything with it and i don't even have that many coats to hang up but this is the porch area and like i said i think what i'll do is extend the porch area out a little which will aesthetically bump the front of the house out instead of having just all garage [Music] just as you walk in is the first bedroom which is the guest room now kind of the strange thing is the way this is designed is you have the hall closet right here and then the bedroom and the bedroom does not really attach to a bathroom which is not a big deal to me but it's a a smaller bedroom the closet in here is actually a pretty good sized closet it's pretty deep get the uh light back here so i had to use one of my how many lights in the room yet but uh it's pretty good closet it's it's kind of deep which was kind of a nice surprise when i opened it up for the first time but if you look over the chest of drawers that's over there the it that is actually an entertainment center for a bedroom and the woman at the furniture store kind of told me about that she goes you can get this it makes a nice little chest of drawers and it doesn't take up most of the room there's a ghost knock on my bags over but there are my washer and dryer which i love they're hooked up to the wi-fi they kind of tell me when things are done and the washer actually talks to the dryer and tells it what kind of clothes it had to set the dryer up for it now i haven't done it yet but if you notice there is wi-fi and alexa all through the house i'll get some cabinets and stuff in there this is the closet slash everything room you can fit a lot of food in here obviously i have some alcohol cookbooks i just don't have any food yet and this is the ecobee which is my thermostat that's also hooked up to the wi-fi so i have an app on my phone i can control that while i'm away and also raise and lower it so when i'm coming home and i know i'm gonna be home in an hour i can lower the temperature to sleep at night the stools down below a lot of people ask me that i got those on amazon i will put as many amazon links as i can down below and i'll start doing that on the different videos and the backsplash i like it's kind of a nice nice backsplash goes with the gray and these homes are gas i'll put the yes i will put the link in for the knife holder there which is magnetic like i said it is a gas house since we're down south most of the homes are gas and i think i have yep one steak in there and some ice that's about it i promise i will grow up and get things eventually and my espresso machine coffee grinder dishwasher um took a little bit to learn how to use the dishwasher with the little start and go buttons up top and my mat my drying mat which that that sucker i absolutely love and my yep my soap my soap dispenser which is i have those in both of my houses i like there's plenty of room uh i found out for the dining room this is expandable has a leaf in it pretty good size and this is another dead space right over here the where this plant is i'm not 100 sure what i'm going to do with this i was thinking about maybe a bar or since i am a bachelor i even thought about putting a pinball machine right there so we'll we'll see what happens with that temporary um stands for the big screen which is like one of the first things i got and i finally got my couch and i'm going to pull the couch back a little bit and then there's going to be a console custom console river table back behind there with some stools underneath it and some other chairs in the room this is like i said this is one reason i bought the house and that is because of this back porch i absolutely love it i have my coffee every morning up here and watch the sunrise and these doors uh when they started building south they put some really heavy doors in there and they're they're really nice doors the great thing is is the way they built this they slide all the way behind these walls and sort of open this up into another room now i know some people have already talked about putting glass in here and there's actually glass that you can get that is glass and screen and sliding doors which makes a whole another room out there personally right now for the time being i don't need another room so this will be my morning place to get outside and i love it when they stop hammering the construction across the street this area i'm not quite sure what or how i'm going to treat this area over here but it sure makes for a nice view out there and there is i know from a guy that's up north i like having my palm trees since i lived in california for about 18 years in southern california so i'm kind of used to those palm trees over here um not a whole lot you can do with this but what i thought i could do with it is a great space for when i have game nights and play corn hole back there and back into the the house so you can see my tiki torches it's like one of the first things i bought tiki torches um going back into the hallway this is towards the front of the house and this is going to be kind of like my den office type of thing i know somebody actually talked about they were actually going to put a sliding door in there so they could walk right out onto the porch or the at that area out there this closet in there is a little bit smaller but the room's a good size and each one of the rooms has a fan so that kind of makes it nice the bedrooms in this my particular one are [Music] carpeted and the rest has a ceramic wood finish type flooring the tile is i believe this is an upgrade like i said if you have a view a lot of times the view lots since they charge more for them they upgrade and i am probably going to put a glass type of door in there rather than a curtain [Music] and i actually had towels believe it or not for that room this is the master bedroom as you can see really quick if you look up the ceiling is bumped up and it's a pretty good sized bedroom uh definitely big enough for me and i'll probably move the plant over and put a reading chair right there and don't make fun of me because i haven't even gotten the tags off the furniture yet and this is a strange thing living up north i thought i would need all the space for clothes and everything coming down here and as you'll see the walk-in closet here is kind of on the small side and i have to be honest one thing i've learned about being down here is i don't use very many clothes i haven't been here for a year yet so i don't know i haven't gone through all the seasons but it has a nice two sink bathroom for me plenty of closet space there but i thought this was going to be so small but i don't even use the chest drawers right now so basically it hasn't proven to be too small because i just don't use the same amount of closet space that's for sure and uh there's alexa on the left so there's a small little hamper here that works out great i actually really like that i use it more than i thought i would and my scale is hooked up to wi-fi i'll put a link down below i really like that good motivational scale i had to add on that towel holder because i don't know it's a thing about the village's homes they only have these single little towel holders so i added that on it's a suction a suction cup type thing i got that on amazon also absolutely love the little seat there i don't sit on it because it's a little too cold but it's great to dry off on and put your feet up on and so on uh really happy they put a medicine cabinet in there i've been in a couple of places where there was no medicine cabinet and that's about it yep it has been a year and i am still totally amazed at what has happened in a year a year ago standing outside in the pouring rain i had no idea that i'd be actually be buying a house i didn't even i had no idea that this youtube channel would be going this long so first of all let me say thank you so much to the subscribers that have subscribed because i'm kind of flabbergasted at how many people subscribe thank you so much i will continue to try to put out some fun content also thank you so much for hitting that little subscriber button i want to thank don for allowing me to use those shots that i had at the very beginning because i think it's really fun to see exactly how much has changed in a year uh from from when i first started this and when i first started looking at places and it's just uh absolutely amazing and with that said i also i i want to say something me personally you know everybody's got their own thing but i if you really look at what has transpired over the years in the villages it is pretty amazing and i gotta give kudos to uh you know the developers and the family that have uh as they say continue the dream and i said in the very beginning that i hope someday um i i get to meet them because i i admire people that have done things like this in their life and continuing the dream i think is is pretty amazing absolutely and i i get to take advantage of it which is even even even better but i will say again i got nothing to do with the villages i'm just somebody along for the ride that's for sure so thank you so much to don thank you so much subscribers thank you so much for the great the fun people that i've met down there the friends that i've met and uh thank you for the folks stopping me on the street it has been a great wonderful one-year ride and i can't wait to continue and see you guys either down in the villages or see you back here on youtube thanks again see you later you

Channel: The Villages with Rusty Nelson.

Views: 80,891

Keywords: Rusty Nelson, The villages, Lifestyle Visit, Retirement community, 55+ Retirement community, St Catherine The Villages, Village of St Catherine, Party The Villages, gold wing nut the villages, GoldWing Nut, don wiley the villages, brownwood paddock square the villages, Brownwood square market, retirement community living, Winslow model the villages, buy home the villages

Id: BllhtlxWNJ4

Length: 38min 27sec (2307 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021