Recorded MLS figures and each place’s actual assessment structure — dated, sourced, and labeled by grain — instead of forum opinions.
| The Villages | Ave Maria | |
|---|---|---|
| Median sold price | $289,000 | $400,000 |
| Median $ / sq ft | $210 | $205 |
| Median days on market | 48 days | 74 days |
| Sale-to-original-list | 93.1% | 92.8% |
| New-construction share | 0.4% | 29.6% |
| Recorded sales (n) | 266 | 297 |
| Figures cover | city market, trailing 12 months | city market, trailing 12 months |
| Assessment structure | Per-home infrastructure bond plus amenity fee — the bond balance differs on every resale; get the payoff figure in writing | Ave Maria Stewardship Community District assessment — verify per lot |
| Full guide | The Villages → | Ave Maria → |
The largest 55+ development in the country, spanning three counties, financed through per-home infrastructure bonds rather than a single district rate — two identical houses can carry very different bond balances. County: Sumter/Lake/Marion.
The Collier County town-scale master plan — a frequent search-alternative for both Lakewood Ranch and The Villages shoppers heading further south. County: Collier.
Sticker price is the loudest number and rarely the deciding one. The Villages’s structure: Per-home infrastructure bond plus amenity fee — the bond balance differs on every resale; get the payoff figure in writing. Ave Maria’s structure: Ave Maria Stewardship Community District assessment — verify per lot. Recurring assessments compound for as long as you own the home — model them with the CDD carrying cost calculator and put property taxes on top with the Florida property tax estimator before comparing monthly payments.
The Villages vs On Top of the World · The Villages vs Solivita · The Villages vs Sun City Center · The Villages vs Ocala · The 5-way St. Johns County matrix · Florida no-CDD communities
No winner, no lifestyle scoring, no guessing at fees we haven’t sourced. Recorded figures with their sample sizes and windows, the assessment structure each place actually uses, and links to the full guides — the decision is yours to make with real numbers.
Market figures come from MLS-fed market spines: city-grain figures are trailing-12-month medians from the same data behind our /market/ pages; community-grain figures are MLS community snapshot medians with their window date shown. Assessment structures link to district-budget source pages where we publish dollars; where we have no sourced dollars we say so instead of estimating. General information, not advice; deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Equal Housing Opportunity.
