The Villages, an active-adult property west of Orlando, was the country's best selling master planned community in 2012, according to data collected by John Burns Real Estate Consulting.
The Villages notched 2,307 sales last year, up a hair from 2,208 deals in 2010, when it also was the year's best selling MPC. The next best seller was the Woodlands near Houston, a distant second with 945 sales.
Only one other Florida property – Lakewood Ranch in Sarasota – made the Top Ten list, with 391 sales. But three others in Texas – Cinco Ranch in Houston, Alamo Ranch in San Antonio, and Telfair in Houston – made the roster, with 862, 500 and 381 sales, respectively.
Both Cinco and Telfair are being developed by Newland Communities, the big California-based development company. And Alamo and Lakewood are new to the list.
The other top sellers last year, according to the Burns firm's annual survey, were Irvine Ranch in Orange County, Calif., 764 sales; Brambleton in North Virginia, 454, and Mountain's Edge and Providence, both in Las Vegas and both developed by the Focus Property Group, 434 and 421, respectively.
This is the second year that Burns has ranked the top-selling MPCs. A total of 131 projects responded to the survey, representing nearly 23,000 new home sales, roughly 8% of the estimated 300,000 new home sales nationwide.
Master planned communities are large-scale developments that can include a wide array of real estate product, multiple builders, diverse amenities and non-residential uses. They are designed to appeal to a wide array of buyers by creating a superior “place” with segmented product types that share a common design and marketing theme.
