To Gate or Not to Gate
Unless they just fall in love with that one perfect home, many homebuyers look at several
before they settle on where to put down stakes and the deposit – weighing the pros and cons of location, price, upkeep,
neighbors and a plethora of other personal preferences.
Among those are sometimes whether to live in a gated or un-gated community.
For those who live in a traditional, un-gated community, you can see the signs of the growing
numbers of gated-community residents by noting the number of cars you see with the bar code sticker on the side window, which
is fast replacing the personal security card shown to the guard or swiped in a card reader.
At the beaches, brick walls and iron fences can encircle these enclaves of luxury homes, some
equipped with electronic gates and others with gates and the security guards on site at all hours every day to keep outsiders
away. The streets are spotless and the landscaping lush.
“For some buyers, especially families with stay-at-home moms with young children, the
gates do bring an added sense of security, but in my experience it is the privacy aspect that draw most buyers to a gated
community,” according to Phil Pierce, a realtor with Prudential Network Realty/Atlantic Beach. “Celebrities,
athletes and the most affluent people want to live in a community where there is less intrusion, where they can be themselves
and know that they have a large degree of privacy when they are in their homes.”
Pierce is currently a sales agent for Amy Cataland, who is selling her home at Tiffany by
the Sea, which is the only gated oceanfront community in all of the Jacksonville beaches.
Cataland purchased an oceanfront property in this exclusive community in 1993 and built a
three-story, 5,000-square-foot home, complete with an elevator, on the site in 1996. It’s now valued at nearly
$3 million.
“In my case it wasn’t a priority that it was gated,” she said. “It
was just a unique neighborhood and I did like the beautiful wrought-iron gates that surrounded it. I was expecting my
second child at the time, so feeling more protective of my child then meant having the added security was certainly a plus.”
Cataland
says some of the ancillary benefits she discovered in a gated community are less traffic and less noise.
“The homes have such beautiful architecture that I can see that we would have a lot
more traffic from people wanting to look it over if the gates weren’t there, “ Cataland said. “We
don’t have to worry about people just zipping through the neighborhood, and the gates also slow down the residents and
guests coming into Tiffany.”
Although she is in the process of building another home in Ponte Vedra, she said she will
miss her house in Tiffany when moving day comes. The property is listed at $2.95 million.
“It’s worth every penny,” she said. “It’s a fabulous home, and
being in the only gated community on the oceanfront makes it even more unique.”
A few miles away in Ponte Vedra, Mac McDaniel has lived at the gated Sawgrass Beach Club for
about four years. McDaniel, who manages industrial real estate for a living, had never lived at a gated community before
and says there are pros and cons that come along with it.
“On the security issue, I’m not sure if some of that is perceived or real,”
he says. “In my case, I live in a mid-rise condo, so someone would actually have to scale the wall to get to my
place.”
For McDaniel, being a gated community didn’t enter into his buying decision, but over
time he has witnessed the downside to being in a cloistered neighborhood.
“The biggest downside is when you’re in a hurry to get in and out and you are
stuck in traffic getting because someone is visiting or making a delivery,” he said.
And while developers may tout gates as an added amenity, it sometimes comes with a price.
“Each resident pays about $1,100 each year for the added expense of having manned guard
stations at the entrances to the club,” he said. “That’s something a buyer should be aware of when
they are choosing where to live.”
While McDaniel can see the benefit for some buyers in some cases, for those who
want their privacy or like the added sense of security, he already has plans to move to an un-gated community.
Chris Prescott looked at both types of communities before he decided to purchase a property
on Beach Avenue in Atlantic Beach in 1996. Prescott, who lives in Atlanta and recently had to put his beach home on
the market, grew up in the beaches and attended Fletcher High School. For him, the choice was obvious.
“I bought the property and completely raised the house that was there,” he said.
“For me, I wanted a home that fit my personality – a house that was more urban and more open – and a gated
community didn’t fit that approach.”
Since he grew up in the beaches, Prescott says he doesn’t have a problem with the hustle
and bustle of activity around his home.
“It was that way when I was a kid and I love that about this area,”
he said. “To me, living in an open, active environment is whole point of living at the beaches.”
But across the Intracoastal Waterway at Queens Harbor, resident Mary Taylor says the friendships
that come from living in a gated community keep people like her from looking outside. In fact, Mary and her husband
Art actually moved within Queens Harbor when they bought a larger home.
“We enjoy our neighbors and we’ve
made many friends,” she said. “Also, there’s a lot to do here – boating, golf, a sports center
where we work out in the morning together. Then there are mah jongg games, canasta, the newcomers club, and all kinds
of activities going on. There’s so much to do, I can’t do it all…but I try.”
While many sociologists bemoan the growing popularity of gated communities, Prudential’s
Pierce says they have their place – and the popularity of gated communities is still on the rise.
“As with any home sale, it’s up to the personal preference of the buyer,”
Pierce said. “There are pluses and minuses with both gated and non-gated communities. For those who are
looking for an added degree of privacy and security, or a more exclusive style of living, gated communities can help them
attain it.”
Gated Communities at a Glance
· More than 7 million households — about 6 percent of the national total — are in developments
behind walls and fences. About 4 million of those households are located in communities where access is controlled by gates,
entry codes, key cards or security guards.
· Homeowners in gated communities live in upscale developments. But renters, who are more ethnically
diverse and less affluent, are nearly 21/2 times as likely as homeowners to live behind gates or walls.
· Whether they own or rent, Hispanics are more likely to live in such communities than whites or blacks.
That may be partly because there is a large Hispanic population in the West and Southwest, areas with the largest concentration
of gated communities.
· Affluent African-American homeowners are less likely to live in gated communities than whites and Hispanics,
even in metro areas such as Atlanta and Washington, D.C., which have a large black middle class. Experts theorize that after
centuries of exclusion, blacks may be reluctant to embrace such a lifestyle or to live in predominantly white developments.
· Gated developments are more prevalent in Sun Belt metro areas such as Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles
than in older urban areas in the Midwest and Northeast. But they're becoming popular in places like New Orleans, Long Island,
N.Y., Chicago, Atlanta and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Source: A representative sample of the Census Bureau's 2001 American Housing Survey, which included 119 million
households.
All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. 
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