So, Rucco...

So, Rusco...

I know, you're beat after the early morning, long flight and then a day of touring, but when you get a chance, let us know your take on what you've seen so far of Arizona.

Great to meet you by the way; don't know anyone who has ever done their homework like you are doing. That's a good thing.

 

We arrived in Sun City about 10 in the morning. Way ahead of the scheduled tour so off we went looking around the craft area of Bell Center. Pretty impressive work by the residents. What I noticed however, was the condition of the facilities.

About a year ago we visited several communities including Sun City Oro Valley. It is in a beautiful setting and, like the original Sun City, it is older. While the residents and our tour guide at SC Oro Valley were very friendly we were not impressed by the few facilities we saw. Like the community itself the facilities seemed older. The design showed its age with low ceilings, smaller windows. I say all this because, prior to our visit to the original Sun Cities this is sort of what I expected to see. I was wrong.

Bell Center in the original Sun City is massive, in exceptional condition and not at all like an "old" Sun City (at least what I thought I knew about "old"). There's one building for this, another for that. There is the swimming pool, the walking pool (drained for maintenance at the time of our visit) which is very impressive, the metal shop, the wood shop, the recreation center building which houses the state of the art bowling lanes, the billiard room (it has a SNOOKER pool table which I LOVE), the recently installed dart games. We lunched at the small cafe.

With still more time left before the scheduled tour we drove the few minutes over to Lakeview Center. Great design around a centrally located swimming pool (how great did that look with temperatures around 105 degrees that morning!). Time for an honesty check: we went to Lakeview to stop at the corporate office and pick up our 3-day VIP passes which allow us full use of all SC facilities free. Even though we were impressed with what we had seen we were thinking "this may not be the place" for us. The residents did not seem our age. but older. We didn't know if we wanted to join a community of residents that seemed "old". More on this in a moment. Time to return to Bell Center for our tour.

We joined about 10 other people on a guided tour of the Bell Center which is when we saw all the facilities I wrote about above. Wow! It is really something. As an aside, as we gathered in the visitor's center for the tour, this is when I had the pleasure of meeting BPearson who does such a great job on this forum. That was a treat. Now, back to our tour.

After the walk around tour (it was probably over 110 degrees at this time and our guide Paul was very sensitive to this) we climbed aboard the small bus. Our tour took us through shopping plazas, other rec centers (we did not get out due to the heat), through the length and width of the development and residential neighborhoods. It's a great overview of much of what this community offers in about an hour.

Earlier I mentioned we had decided, before the tour, that this community might not be for us. Well, during the tour, seeing one rec center, one neighborhood, one shopping plaza, one golf course after another my wife whispered to me "we're moving here". Uh, okay.

Now that may not be a final decision but when you see Sun City with it's outstanding and numerous facilities, knowing that there is an affordable housing option no matter what you need, and every imaginable club or organization, it's hard to pass this by. Did I mention the extremely low taxes and fees?! This community is no doubt the best buy in the nation. Case closed. Argument Over. Nothing further to discuss. Done.

We're returning today with our realtor team (man and wife) who live in Sun City. We want to see some houses in our price range just to see what you get. We're not buying until sometime between January and June of 2016. Looking online is one thing, seeing it in person is another.

Are we moving here. I dunno. There is one major drawback. It is a 'city'. It is in the Phoenix metro area and there is traffic. Not the stop and go I've lived with in other metro areas but it is heavy on major streets such as Bell. We just don't know if we want to be in a place where there are stop lights, traffic, city buses, taxis and all that. But cities come with benefits such as every kind of shopping you could want, restaurants, sporting events.

Finally, I'll sum up our initial visit and tour of Sun City. It is more than even I had expected. Yes, it's now 55 years old (hey, the whole community can now live in Sun City with it's 55 year old requirement but it does not seem old. This community spends millions and millions of dollars updating and upgrading facilities. Closing those that don't get the use (they can track use by their up to date computer systems) and opening new ones, adding facilities such as indoor (and out of the heat!) pickle ball courts. This community is first rate and I would strongly recommend seeing it for yourself.

I know those that stop by this forum probably live here, are more familiar with what I've written of here than I am, but folks, this place is unbelievable. Read everything you can about it and you still don't get the whole picture. It is even more than I imagined. One last thing: every single person on our tour was no older than I and my wife. There is truly a "next generation" thing happening here.

 

Rusco: Very interesting as you're doing what we hope we'll be doing in a few months. I guess everyone who comes out there arrives with preconceived notions and you've touched on several that are of concern to us. We also wonder about life in an urban setting as we are currently living in a wide-open-spaces rural area and kind of like the idea of low population density. But, a planned community offers compelling advantages that would be of increasing value as we age...lots to think about. Please follow up with your impressions of housing options and the facilities as your visit progresses. You mention the temperatures out there this time of year. We're hoping it doesn't feel much worse than the high heat indexes experience during a typical Midwest summer.

 

You mentioned traffic. O.K. so there are some busy streets
Bell, Grand, Thunderbird. I rarely travel on any of them
but if you time it right they are not too bad.
Go west in the morning and east in the afternoon.

Once every few months I drive on Thunderbird to go to all the great
restaurants on 83rd and to the 99 cent store.

My car is 8 years old and only has 12,000 miles.
That says it all.

Sun City has every kind of store/church/restaurant you could need.
And don't forget the the medical resources.
Great hospital and every kind of doctor specialty.

I look forward to hearing more about your visit.

 

The best neighbors I have had in my lifetime...are old lol.
If you want to get off the reservation now and then, just drive up 107th to Lake Pleasant Pkw to newer big box stores like Home Depot, Lowes etc. They have a new Sprouts now. You will not fight traffic like we find on Bell going to Surprise/Grand.

Husband and I take classes in Phoenix now so there is life outside these walls. But we do have everything we need within a few miles of our home. Life is good.

Welcome soon.

 

Thanks Rusco; great report. You've found what virtually everyone else that has ever visited Sun City has found; it's not what they expected. And you should know, all of us that live here always take our visitors around the community. My dad's joy was his first time house guests that he could show off the community; and that was well before we began the massive upgrades.

Interesting too, as peg noted, when you live here, traffic plays little part of our lives. Admittedly I live in my golf car, so I never drive on the heavily traveled roadways. Having spent my entire life in the Twin Cities and stuck on their clogged freeways, this is like heaven. Road rage is when I'm the third golf car back and the first one is a 1963 3 wheel Thunderbird with a top end of 11 miles an hour.

I have a bigger problem with gated communities or those with limited ingress or egress. If we are leaving Sun City, access to those major roadways are a benefit. I guess one man's pleasure is another man's poison.

Your observations are worth their weight in gold. Whether you buy here or somewhere else, you've opened eyes for others to at least consider a community that most people wouldn't...simply because of the perceptions. For anyone that has watched their retirement fortunes rise and fall with the marketplace, Sun City becomes a really attractive option. As attractive as Sun City is on so many levels, the one thing is we are better positioned financially to weather any storm than any other community out there. That kind of piece of mind is worth its weight in gold.

Have fun today, looking forward to your report.

 

Super assessment Rusco. Your impressions sound very familiar to those we experienced on our visit. For us, the surface streets traffic was actually a pleasant surprise. Yes, Bell has traffic but even during the busy times was a more pleasant experience than most rush hour urban streets I've driven. And talk about nice streets and highways. Wow!

 

Thanks Rusco. Interested in hearing about the rest of your stay.

We may be visiting Sun City Festival in late July. We will make sure to stop by and take the Sun City bus tour.

 

Guess I'm citified. I want to live where I can walk to at least a drugstore...they have so much. I didn't want my back to Bell or Thunderbird or 99th but I wanted to being close to one and not too isolated. As far as traffic goes, every time I'm in sun city I say the traffic is light, even on Bell. But I drive in Los Angeles so most everywhere is light in comparison. It's one of the reasons I'm moving. Does make you a good driver though.

 

Hey Rusco: Where are you in your journey and what have you been finding outside these white walls?

 

I'm also curious to find out the specifics of Sun City Festival. What are the annual rec assessments? What are the water/waste costs? The property taxes are about double from ours since it's in the City of Buckeye and has school tax. The development is also for those 45 years old and up....right? Many at that age still are raising families and can the under 19s still live at home?

Anthem is too far out for us and the smell of livestock is something we don't miss at all.

 

Update on our Retirement Community Visit

About the time we make a final decision we start discussing the order in which we give priority to various aspects of living in a 55+ community. A final decision has not been made on our selection but we've come close, several times. We've been in AZ for 6 days with another 3 to go. We actually thought this, our 3rd trip in a year, would be the clarifying visit. Oh well, nice try.

A quick summary of this visit begins with our Sun City bus tour followed by a day of visiting homes for sale with our realtor team. We looked in SC, SC West and Corte Bella. I loved Corte Bella but a 2nd visit took it off our lists. Gorgeous but lacking in amenities. SC and SCW have great amenities. SCW brags it has more amenities that SC per capita. Our return visits made clear, in our opinion, the SC facilities are better.

You can't do any investigation into SC or SCW without realizing these two communities are probably the best buy of any 55+ community in the country. Housing stock is so varied, neighborhoods super clean and well kept, landscaping mature (we think SCW has more beauty in this area than SC) and facilities are top rate. Houses set on lots that are much larger than those in newer communities for a lot less money. So why not just choose to choose? Well, we think there's one major drawback to both.

Demographics! Look at any data on age of residents. SC and SCW skew very heavy to the top of the age brackets. Most recent data I saw from 2012 indicated the original Sun City has a lower mean age and more residents 55 to 64 than Sun City West. This was somewhat surprising to me since I assumed since SCW is newer it would have a younger demographic. However, as we toured the recreation centers in both communities we noticed almost every person we saw seemed much older to us (we're boomers).

Before you folks get your panties all bunched up over this just know that we are aware there are 80 year olds that are more active than 50 year olds. We know also there are boomers moving in. We just thought that everywhere we looked almost every resident we would see in both communities seemed much older than are we. We're just not sure we want to (or can) develop social circles with people old enough to be our parents. Yes, there are boomers and boomer groups, trust me, WE KNOW. But as we look around the community here at Festival where we are staying you see a smattering of older people amongst the mostly boomer community. So what price to live among boomers instead of "elderly"?

Given the type of property we wish to call home I'm guesstimating it would cost us between $250 to $600 a month more to live in Festival than either of the older Sun Cities. Sun City Grand would be somewhere around $150 to $400 monthly below cost of a Festival residency. These are just guesstimates, actual numbers would vary on housing selection. Taxes and HOA fees are much higher at Festival. Today (Wednesday) we're going to take yet another look at Sun City Grand. It may be a good compromise for our needs and wants. Maybe not.

So you thought you'd be able to read this and find that we had made a decision and offered a list, one, two, three and four reasons why we think X Community is the perfect fit? Sorry. Stay tuned. And...

It may not come for a few more months. Then again, it could come today.

 

Aren't Boomers the ones who were always told "Good Job" and cannot accept the realities of life?
This age thing is very difficult for me to understand.
Apparently Boomers do not expect to get old.
Sometimes you can analyze a bit too much.

 

Emily. Just because it is around 111 degrees is absolutely no reason for you not to walk to Safeway!
Ha! Ha! Only kidding. Praise the Lord for AC.
Actually, when I get out of the pool at Sun Dial, it is rather nice to walk out into the warm air.
Only for a few minutes tho
BTW. The ladies showers are not fixed yet. There are so few people in my pool class that it is being combined with the other class. Consequently, only 1 class during July and that will be at 1:00 starting July 2.

 

Peg, boomers were not the ones told "Good Job" when we were kids and given a trophy just for participation. That's the Gen Xers and Millennium crowd. I think most boomers were told it was never good enough. Rusco I'm 61 and just bought in Sun City. Don't you think all the recent flurry of buyers has to be boomers? Give it a few years and we're all in.

 

Hey R: Thanks for the report. I know several of us have been following City-data and have enjoyed your perspectives. Here's my take: Sun City isn't for everyone and it never will be. Imagine home prices if it were. When I was a volunteer at the Visitor Center years back, I would often encourage folks to shop SC Grand or SC West, if they felt Sun City wasn't right for them.

Sun City West is the closest community there is to Sun City. They've got major cost issues with their golf courses, and their streets are narrower (significant if a golf car is in your future). They do have an infrastructure that is like ours, other than PORA has relinquished their ultimate governance of the CC&R's to the rec centers of sun city west (RCSCW). That may be good, or may be bad as they age, it all depends on how they administrate them.

Grand is exceptionally nice if you like every home looking the same (their CC&R's are quite explicit). Smaller lots and no real internal infrastructure other than the Rec Center's single governance. There's no question it is newer and nicer, but at a price. It kind of begs the question for you and all of us: If money were no object, where would you live?

The interesting thing for me is; the measuring stick invariably becomes the tangibles in a community. The intangibles are almost impossible to understand. They come from living there, from being a part of its day to day existence. It's exactly why newer communities with nicer amenities and homes are most often targeted by boomers. It's also why I take hours and hours to tell and retell the Sun City story. For those who think a sense of community, having a history and having a hand in how we are run matters, it's why so many folks tend to look at Sun City.

Looking forward to hearing the rest and in the end, you should pick the one that feels right to you and the bride.

 

It has come to my attention that people who live in condos or apartment are more friendly with their neighbors.
Perhaps because condos and apartments have associations and individual homes do not.

Some people I know who live in individual homes never see/meet/or talk to their neighbors.

 

Is that a quote from General Patton?

 

Who says old people aren't fun(ny)?

 

I spent the day in Sun City yesterday. It was the first scorching hot I've experience in Sun City. I can't say I enjoyed it because I was outside a majority of the day. But I learned Dawn lake creates a micro-climate: front of the house was no breeze and hot, but at the back of the house there was a surprisingly strong, cooling breeze from the lake, even until 5 pm when I left. The birds looked happy too.