YouTube Star Peter Santenello Explores The Villages

In his own words, Peter Santenello makes videos “showing you a world that the media fails to capture”.

At the time of this writing in May 2023, he has more than 1.66 MILLION YouTube subscribers.

On May 13, 2023, he uploaded a video about The Villages, and in just the first five days it had racked up more than 1.5 million views. As far as I can tell, that makes it the most-watched video about The Villages ever!

You can watch the video right here:

Unlike a lot of videos that knock The Villages in an attempt to create controversy and rack up views, Peter avoids that route in this video.

In fact, to close out the video, he says something along the lines of:

“When I told some friends I’d be coming here last week one of them said, “Isn’t that just
a swinger’s cult out there?”. Another one laughed and looked down upon the place as if, “Ugh, those people down there.” So what I’d like to leave you with in this video is we all get used to making labels on things. Say, The Villages is this or whatever is that.

But really there is usually a lot more to it than we think…Are there problems here? I’m sure. Are there all sorts of things going on? Well, you have 140,000 people. Of course. Humans are messy. But take this story today as…Well, maybe things aren’t always what they seem. This could be your nightmare living in an area like this, or your dream. We’re all different. But understanding where people come from is…Well, in my opinion, number one.

I enjoyed it and it definitely opened my eyes up a bit. ‘Cause I didn’t think it would be, well, this positive, this great of an energy. A happy vibe out here, and I think it’s ticking some boxes for people, such as security, community, entertainment, happiness, and I can definitely see the draw to here.“

Well said Peter!

The video doesn't quite get everything about The Villages right, but pretty close. If you've read my book you probably caught a few things they said that weren't quite accurate. But again, most of it was spot on and I really loved the spirit of the whole video.

Key insights from Peter:

• 🚗 Golf carts have their own roads in The Villages, Florida, making them a popular mode of transportation for residents.
• 🎉 The Villages is not a lonely place, with plenty of communities and social events like driveway parties with food trucks and live bands.
• 🎥 The Villages feels like a Hollywood movie set, with its abundance of restaurants, gift shops, and other amenities.
• 😍 The sense of community and happiness in The Villages is unparalleled: “If you're not happy here, you can't be happy anywhere.”
• 🤩 “Imagine if you can't really drive anymore. But you can handle a golf cart.” – The Villages offers a unique lifestyle where golf carts are the primary mode of transportation.
• 💃 The Villages has live music and dancing every night of the year.

Do you really need two agents?

At around the 36-minute mark Peter and his guide Heather talk about the fact that when you are buying a home in The Villages, it's advised that you have not one but two real estate agents.

And that's exactly right. New home sales are handled only through the developer, but when buying a resale, you’ve got two options:

1. You can work with the developer’s sales team to look at resales listed with them,

or…

2. You can work with an outside Realtor to see resales that are not listed with the developer. 

I suggest you do both. Why?

Well, in each scenario, you’d be seeing about 50% of resales available, so in order to see everything available, you, unfortunately, have to work with two different people:

… one of the developer’s agents and an outside Realtor. 

If you don’t have an outside Realtor yet and you’d like to connect with the one I send all of my readers to, just fill out the form below.