This is my new taxonomy of Sun City housing:
Virtually all houses are Homes – meaning places of residence where shoes and clothes are shed, family members two- and four-footed are fed, TVs are watched, even from bed.
Because of the unique life-cycle of the Sun Citian, we are encysted with craven flippers, who for now and foreseeably intend for us to reside only in spaces that mimic offices, especially medical offices, expressing in their bounteous palette every shade of the rainbow from white to black. I call these houses Dentist’s Offices. They can tilt toward Art Gallery status, but most are simply failed and fractured Homes, restored by their buyers to a simulation of hominess with furniture, art and tchotchkes in the warm colors of the cornucopia.
Art Galleries are Homes only by necessity. As in the photo above, they are show-pieces – inherently and irredeemably soiled by the emanations and extrusions of human life. They are meant to be seen always as they are in their photographs: Breathtakingly, fastidiously, impeccably perfect.
Not very livable? Perhaps. But on the right lot – on the golf course or the lake – a Home that has been upgraded to full-on, no-human-comfort-accomodated Art Gallery status has the best chance of commanding an above-market price on resale.
It’s kind of funny – we do in fact buy houses in order for them to be our Homes – but scarcity is simply what the other guy can’t have. Premium Sun City lots are rare, and houses upgraded to Art Galleries are rarer still. And that makes them catnip for a certain kind of buyer.
Nota bene: If you live in a sturdy Del Webb house on a non-premium lot, beware of over-improvement. Please, please, please resist the urge to make everything gray, but mind what your neighbors are doing. Everything you do that eclipses them is likely to yield you little or nothing extra on resale.
Meanwhile, if the idea of cashing out at the top from a premium lot as an unobtainable Art Gallery appeals to you, consider doing it on the way out. Live in a Home, then when it’s time to sell, vacate it and make it into a show-piece for the next buyers. They may warm things up with Thanksgiving colors – or they may host nightly, very-brightly-lit cocktail parties. Either way, they’ll pay more for a house that hides its heritage as a Home.
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