The Villages Golf & Country Club in San Jose - an Active Adult Community

The Villages Golf and Country Club is the most important address in San Jose for the clients I work with, and it deserves a straight description rather than a brochure. It is a gated, age restricted community in the Evergreen foothills, open to residents 55 and over, built out in phases from 1967 through the end of the 1990s across eleven named villages. There is no new construction, so everything here is a resale.

The housing is overwhelmingly attached, with townhomes, villas and condominiums making up the large majority of roughly two and a half thousand homes, and a much smaller number of detached single family houses. That mix is the whole point. In a county where almost everything affordable comes with stairs and a yard, this is one of the few places offering genuine single level living behind a gate with someone else handling the exterior.

The amenities are substantial: two golf courses including a full length championship course and a nine hole par three, four clubhouses, multiple pools, tennis and bocce, a fitness center and more than fifty resident run clubs. The association covers club membership along with water, sewer, trash and basic services, which makes the monthly cost easier to plan around than in many communities.

What I would actually emphasize is less the golf than the social infrastructure. The single most common thing I see go wrong for people in their eighties is isolation, particularly after losing a spouse, and no amount of square footage fixes it. A community where there are fifty clubs, a dining room and neighbors at the same stage of life does something for people that a beautiful house on a quiet street simply cannot. I have watched it make a real difference more than once.

It is not right for everyone and I say so plainly. Some people find the age restriction limiting, some find association governance frustrating, and some want grandchildren running around the neighborhood rather than visiting. If that is you, this is not the answer, and there are better ones elsewhere in the city.

A few practical notes for anyone considering a purchase here. Verify the current association dues and what they include directly, since they change over time. Read the reserve study and the governing documents properly rather than skimming them. Understand the age rules as they apply to your own household, particularly if a spouse or family member is younger. I go through all of that with any client I represent here, and I have done it many times.

The setting is in the Evergreen hills on the eastern side of San Jose, with Evergreen Valley College nearby, Lake Cunningham and Montgomery Hill Park a short drive, and Highway 101 reachable in a few minutes. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is the county’s trauma center and Good Samaritan Hospital serves the other side of the city, with the San Jose Public Library operating an Evergreen branch nearby.

The city also runs older adult programming through its Active Adults 50 and Over program at community centers including Evergreen, which is worth knowing about even for residents of a community with its own full calendar.

On price, San Jose ran a citywide median sale of about $1.4 million through the summer of 2026, down roughly three and a half percent year over year, with a median of about 21 days to contract. Homes at The Villages trade well below that citywide figure because the inventory is largely attached, and that gap is exactly what makes this community work as a landing place. Selling a family house elsewhere in the county and buying here typically frees up a very large amount of capital. My San Jose home prices page tracks the wider market and the full San Jose area guide covers the rest of the city.

If this is the move you have been circling, the sequence matters and so does Proposition 19, which lets homeowners 55 and over carry their existing property tax basis to a replacement home anywhere in California. On a house held since the 1970s that can be worth many thousands of dollars every year for the rest of your life, and getting the order of the transactions right is part of capturing it. I have represented buyers and sellers inside these gates many times, and helping older adults and their families plan exactly this is my full time work. Book a call with me to talk it through, or read how I prepare and market a home before a move like this.