We’re heading to a neighborhood called Longleaf. It is in the eastern section of New Port Richey, Florida. It’s different from the traditional neighborhoods we see around here. I’ll share some pros and some cons with you. Let’s give you a quick tour around. 

Longleaf: Location on the Map

Head northwest, about 28 miles from the Tampa Airport to the neighborhood of Longleaf. 

Longleaf is a Golf Cart Friendly Community

You’ll see the signs that say, “Watch for golf carts”. This is one of the rare golf cart-friendly communities, and you just never know when you’ll see one. I never expected one to come right by just as we entered the neighborhood. That’s an absolute win for the day!! So enjoy that, because people take their kids to school on the golf carts. There isn’t a golf course to play at. There are children’s play areas spread throughout the community. Some street parking is allowed here, which is unusual. 

Pros and Cons of the Longleaf Neighborhood:

Plenty of housing styles and opportunities.

The second pro is the amount of open space. In fact, every home was built to be within a short walk of about five minutes at the most of an open space area so that you can enjoy just being outside with the blue sky, the grass, and the trees, so the segments of the community that have the larger estate lots. As you’ve already seen, we’ve driven by some of the smaller homes, the patio homes, and some of the townhomes closer to the entrance to the community.

Longleaf hosts community Activities and has great amenities

Number three, plenty of activities are going on throughout the year, so get involved in what the community has to offer. You’ll get to know your neighbors and maximize the use of the outdoor space.

The amenities are great and spread throughout the community, and that’s pro number four. Do you like to play tennis or basketball or volleyball? 

Longleaf Elementary School and Stores

Pro number five, longleaf Elementary, is located right in the heart of the community. As we look around for what is local, you’ll be able to see the multiple-level hospital. It’s one of the tallest buildings in the area. And right there, you’ll find Publix, Target, and PetSmart, and also then, across the street, you’ll find some of the other stores like Walmart is over there, sprouts, Home Goods, and Michael’s.

Lot Layouts- Front Porches and lot sizes.

Maybe one of the cons is the lot layout and design. It isn’t for everybody. You have steps to get up to your front patio or porch, and then you have an alley at the back, which means that you have people going to the front and rear of your house. And that’s not for everybody. 

Longleaf- a creative ecosystem

One of the wonderful things you will find throughout the community is the creative way the rainwater ecosystem has been designed. Usually, in a great year when we’ve had the usual amount of rain, you’ll see waterfalls and streams taking and transporting that water throughout the community, so you get to enjoy that rather than the rainwater being a nuisance. 

Let’s head back down Main Street towards the front of the neighborhood. You will find Pro number eight, the community pool, the spa, the event lawn, and the amenity center that you can rent out. The other nice part is that you can also use the children’s play area, which is well-maintained and fenced in for safety.

Businesses in Longleaf- coffee, pizza, Cuban’s and- even BIKES

Longleaf also has some small community vendors at the start of the neighborhood. And for New Port Richey, this is a great location; whether you’re having pizza out on the dog-friendly patio or getting your coffee and Cubans from Havana Dreamers Cafe, these New Port Richey businesses love to have people go in. 

You might decide to rent a bike or on your own. Then, head over to JB Starkey Wilderness Park. This park is on the way to the high schools in the neighborhood. It covers a large area, but it’s on the way to River Ridge Middle and High School. 

JB Starkey Wilderness Park. 

It’s a massive area of preserve with all kinds of recreational activities. There’s a recreation center here on the way in. I passed it. A school bus parked up there today told me that there was an activity going on, so I couldn’t head on inside, 

There’s cabin camping here! They are very basic facilities, but if you love camping and being outdoors and truly away from everything, this could be a great location for you to plan on spending some time. It’s always pretty peaceful here. 

Pasco County Bike Paths

The bike trail runs through the park as well, so it runs up Starkey Boulevard then turns right into the park here and goes seven or eight miles out to the Suncoast Parkway, which is the toll road that leads down to Tampa International Airport and up north towards Hernando County. And from there you can truly cycle all the way from Hernando County down into Pasco County, through Pasco County and then down into Pinellas County and all the way down to the Sunshine Skyway. 

Sometimes, when we’re in some of the local bike shops, we run into guys that are out, and girls too, to be honest, of all ages, that are out doing a cycle ride. It’s common to run into people who say, yeah, I’m just doing 90 miles today. Like, whoa!!! It is a very, very popular sport, especially when it gets a little cooler like it is. Today’s a beautiful day to be outside today. All right, this is what JB Starkey Wilderness Park looks like. There are some Day Areas and some kid’s park areas- just a beautiful spot if you like being out and about.

You hear that? You don’t do you!! There’s really nothing to hear except nature. They do guided walks and things and stargaze many activities worth checking out.

River Ridge Middle and High Schools

Now it’s time to head back on the road and go over to River Ridge Middle and High School. These are not the closest schools to the community. In fact, they were changed several years ago, which might be considered con number three for the Longleaf neighborhood. Now, I’m going to share the data from Niche.com so you can see the grades of the school, 

and we always encourage our families who are moving and have schools as an interest to check out the local schools and visit them to find out what you think. 

Homes for sale in Longleaf, New Port Richey

We are back in the office, and I just wanted to hop on MLS and show you some of the currently available listings and just talk about what you can get for your money. And here are a few things to look out for in listings in this neighborhood. So right now, there are seven active listings in the neighborhood, and I’m just going to show you a little bit of data for some of them.

Longleaf Townhomes

The first one is a three-bedroom, two-bath, and a half-bath. Downstairs townhome in there. This is about 1500 square feet; its list price is $375,000. So this one’s been on the market for seven days. It looks like it is in decent condition. Looks like it’s going to be a great buy for somebody. 

One of the things that you’ll notice as we look at different listings is that there are different schools annotated as well. So, it’s always worth it; I recommend verifying the schools where the property is zoned for. Now, there are a couple of townhome areas within the community. When you live in one of those, you are paying with your taxes for the CDD, you’re also paying for the HOA for the community, and a HOA fee to have those townhomes taken care of.

That’s something to bear in mind. This is your starting price- to get into the neighborhood at this point is around $375,000, and that’s 1500 square feet for that one. 

So, let’s give this house a couple of looks inside. So this house has really had some nice renovations done. It’s very current; again, it’s been nicely taken care of, and it looks like it’s in great shape. The garage entry is at the back. And then as you see here, we’ve got the fence line from one side of the house that the houses are set on the lot line on one side, and then that gives you all of this space to the other side of the house that is like your yard. So, a good amount of your yard space is to the side of the house. 

Four Bedroom Longleaf Home

Next, a four-bedroom, three-bath for 2,160 square feet is listed at $549,000. Then this last one  is a four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath, 2,500 square feet, making it one of the larger houses in the neighborhood. Two stories here. This one has been fully renovated. Actually, it says in one place that it’s a four-bedroom in the other area that it’s a three. This has a first-floor in-law suite. And I want to mention that because this one isn’t the standard that you typically see in the community, but let me show you a couple of the photos.

Nicely staged, a lovely little house. This one’s had the renovations done,

But in here they have an accessory dwelling unit downstairs, like on the side of the garage. What’s more common in this neighborhood, and you can’t see one on here, but if you look at their neighbor’s house next door, what’s a little more common is that somebody has added like a one-bedroom, living room, sitting room, maybe with laundry facilities, kitchen living room above the garage space, which has a separate entrance, typically going up to it. And many homeowners then rent that out as an accessory dwelling unit. 

Before we jump off of MLS, I just wanted to come in here and look at the active, pending, and sold listings for Longleaf over the last six months to give you an idea of how that looks from a data point of view. So we’re just looking at the active pending and sold. We’ve got five results.

Neighborhood listing data for Longleaf

We’ve actually got seven active listings on the day that I’m looking at this and the rest of them are sold. So the average active listing in there right now is a four bedroom, two and a half bath, two car garage home built in 2006 on 0.12 of an acre for 2,100 square feet listed for $536,000. Here is a list of the ones that have sold. So the average sold listing was a three bedroom, two and a half bath with a two-car garage built in 2008 for 2056 square feet with a list price of $498,000 and a sales price of $493,000.

That just gives you an overview of some of the activity in the neighborhood in the last six months. I’m sure you enjoyed looking around Longleaf and the New Port Richey area and seeing some of the real estate in New Port Richey, Florida.

Your Next Move in Tampa Bay, Florida

So what’s the right next move for you? Is there a specific location you need to stay close to in terms of commute time or drive time? Are you looking for a particular experience from a school point of view? What kind of lifestyle do you want to live? How will that be reflected in the community you choose to live in versus heading out of the community to do things like boating or golfing or the interest you might have today? We talked at length about cycling. 

We constantly have people moving here from New York, Washington State, or Chicago. People are moving to Tampa Bay, and part of our job is to help make a smooth move for you. Go ahead and watch the next video that YouTube recommends. There are also some other videos of other neighborhoods that we’ve already been out and videoed, and we’ll be adding more as well