Sun City Texas

I decided to visit Sun City Texas after I saw the floor plan for the house called the Lexington. There is a sales center, design center and model homes complex for prospective buyers to tour. The Lexington was one of the model homes. I went through it several times and took many pictures of the interior to study. I definitely liked the layout of the house. I was assigned to a sales representative. He tried to steer me toward a model that includes yard maintenance which would be a definite plus for me, but the houses in that category did not appeal to me. The sales representative printed out a pricelist for the options for the Lexington. We went through the design center, and I got a fairly good idea of what upgrades are available.

What came as a surprise to me was how few standard lots are available for the houses. In fact they hold a lottery when a new area is opened up to assign the available standard lots. There are many optional lots that cost an additional $8,000 that border on what they call a green area. Then there are the golf course lots that add $55,000 to the price tag. The first opportunity to be in the lottery will be in the first quarter of 2006. Then after you have a lot they estimate that construction time will be six months. The first houses in Frisco Lakes will be available in August. I am sure they will have similar designations for their lots.

I got a few more surprises. The sales representative told me what the property tax rate would be. It was higher than I pay in Beaumont. My parents lived in Sun City West outside of Phoenix. A big selling point was since Sun City homeowners have a minimum age of 55 and no children are allowed to reside in the homes longer than 90 days there are no schools to support. This results in much lower property taxes. Well things do not work that way in Texas. The Sun City Texas residents are supporting the local schools.

The Arizona Sun Cities have many shopping centers within the city confines that were built by Del Webb. There are several grocery stores, car washes, banks, restaurants, drug stores. There is almost every kind of store that is needed for day to day living. Well Sun City Texas is different. Del Webb made a deal with the city of Georgetown to keep businesses out of Sun City Texas so that the Georgetown merchants would get the additional business. As far as I am concerned, this is a great big drawback. Sun City Texas residents have one grocery store that I did not like approximately four miles from their homes. It is ten plus miles to the next store. I tried to find a shopping center with a Target and Home Depot that they told me about but decided it was too far and turned around and went back to Sun City Texas. There is a new Wal-Mart also a considerable distance. I did not attempt to find it. There is no Sam’s Club within 20 miles of Sun City Texas.

Sun City Texas has a very nice community center with large indoor and outdoor swimming pools, an extremely well equipped exercise facility, a little library and many meeting rooms. It was very appealing but not as nice as the facilities in Sun City West. There was an activities center where crafts of many types are available. There was a large computer lab that had all kinds of equipment available. Residents are allowed to use all the facilities and the costs are covered by the annual fee. There are additional costs for classes and additional fees for the golf courses. There are two restaurants. One is a buffet type. I ate breakfast there and was not impressed. There is a more formal restaurant but it was closed on Monday and Tuesday so I did not get to check it out.

The distance that residents have to drive to do their shopping is the biggest negative and would prevent me from considering Sun City Texas. I hope I do not find a similar situation at Frisco Lakes.