Kings Point at Sun City Center Review

Kings Point is a gated, 55+ community in Sun City Center, which is about 25 miles S/SE of Tampa.

Quick Facts:

• Tampa area 55+ community
• 5,000+ attached homes built between the 1970s and now
• $100k's to $400k's
• Multiple clubhouses, pool, and other amenities
• 200+ clubs
• Internal and external tram service

While Sun City Center was started by Del Webb after the resounding success of their Original Sun City which opened in Arizona in 1960, Kings Point is really its own community.

If that isn't confusing enough for you, this Kings Point in Sun City Center should also not be confused with the Kings Point 55+ community in Delray Beach (on the East Coast of Florida), which HBO did a documentary on a while back.

With all those clarifications out of the way, in this article, we'll take a look at the location, amenities, and the more than 5,000 homes available in Kings Point in Sun City Center.

Location

When I survey my newsletter subscribers as to where they plan to retire, the Central West Coast (including Clearwater, Sarasota, and Tampa) where Kings Point Sun City Center is located is the #1 choice with more than 28% of the vote.

Kings Point at Sun City Center is centrally located 30 minutes south of Tampa, 30 minutes north of Sarasota, and 30 minutes to the Gulf Beaches. There are three airports less than an hour away.  Professional football, baseball, and hockey are also less than an hour away. 6 cruise lines and a casino are all here for your convenience.  

Amenities

While the location of Kings Point in Sun City Center is fantastic, people really move here for the amenities, and boy are there a lot of them!

The community offers over 200 clubs. The Veteran's Theatre regularly hosts concerts, movie nights, plays, and dances.  The two large clubhouses contain 3 indoor pools and 2 outdoor resort-style pools. There are also other heated pools sprinkled throughout the community.  The community also features fitness rooms, pickleball courts, tennis courts, shuffleboard, bocce ball, archery range, horseshoes, and billiard leagues. 

There are 2 golf courses in Kings Point, and 4 in Sun City. All are public courses and are not a part of the HOA fees. They have several different packages to choose from, depending on how much you play.

A community newsletter, “The Pointer”, keeps everyone up-to-date on what's going on, and there's also an online events calendar.

But one of my favorite amenities is the tram service. Kings Point offers its residents free scheduled transportation throughout Sun City Center with both an internal and external tram service. As the name suggests, the internal tram service will get you from your home to the various amenity locations, and the external tram service will get you to grocery stores, medical offices, and more.

Homes

With more than 5,000 homes, Kings Point offers one of the widest varieties of homes and price points you'll see in 55+ communities in Florida. Kings Point was started in the 1970s and there have been several different builders over the years.

Most of the homes you see in Kings Point are two units attached, and you'll see them referred to in a few different ways including condominiums, villas, and townhouses, depending on where you're looking at them and who wrote the description.

Tastes in home styles have evolved since the 1970s and you can really tell a difference between the homes built here in the '70s and '80s which were smaller cottage/villa type homes, with the more modern and spacious open floorplan concepts built in the '90s and 2000s.

Some of those older homes have been tastefully remodeled but still, at least from the outside, you can really tell the difference in home styles depending on when they were built.

This leads to a pretty wide span of home prices. You can find homes in the $100k's which will typically be the older styles, as well as homes in the $300k's and 400k's

Kings Point HOA Fees

There are more than 100 condo associations within Kings Point at Sun City Center, and naturally, the fees vary slightly between each of them.

You may be shocked to see that many of them have HOA or condo fees of more than $500 per month. Compare this with other popular communities like The Villages where the monthly fees are less than $200, and you might be scratching your head as to why anyone, let alone 5,000 retiree households, would pay this.

The answer is that the fees here at Kings Point include a lot of things that are not included elsewhere.

Here's just one example of what's included in one randomly chosen Kings Point condo association:

• 24-Hour Guard Gate and Security
• Cable TV
• Recreational Facilities
• Pools
• Escrow Reserves Fund
• Insurance on the building your unit is in
• Internet
• Maintenance of the Structure of your unit
• Maintenance on the Grounds of your unit (landscaping, etc.)
• Pest Control
• Water, Sewer, Trash
• and more!

Add up the costs of paying for all that on your own each month and you understand why it's not a big deal and can even really be a saving vs. what you'd likely pay out there on your own.

Another NEW Sun City Center Neighborhood

While Kings Point is SOLD OUT and only has resales available, there is currently one neighborhood in Sun City Center where you can buy and build a new home, called the Preserve at La Paloma.

The Preserve at La Paloma is a new 55+ community offers stylish, low-maintenance attached villas, single-family homes and fun-filled amenities.

A select number of homesites have views of the beautiful Cypress Creek Golf Club or ponds. This neighborhood is centered around resort-style amenities, including a cozy clubhouse, pool with sundeck and spa, pickleball court, firepit gathering area, and more. Activities and events take place monthly so residents can connect and socialize.

The Preserve at La Paloma is perfectly situated in golf cart-friendly Sun City Center with a peaceful, yet vibrant location just off Sun City Center Boulevard and less than 1 mile from I-75.

Home prices from the low/mid $300s.