What is a Villa?

@lonelygod - For a long time I associated this term with vacations, as we often rented a holiday villa in Europe when I was a child.

Being from a military family I've had the chance to experience several cultures, and your comment about Asia brought back many memories of living there with my father, and later as an English teacher.

As an adult I actually lived in a villa in South Korea, which was rather like a walk up, with five storeys being the maximum height allowed. As anything taller than this required an elevator you can guess that few had one!

I used to find it strange that living in an apartment there, (known as a 'mansion' - another word that can cause some communication issues), was something most people chose to do. It wasn't unusual for people to sell up their house and move from the rural areas to a small place in the city!

Perhaps that is related to the desire to be amongst the crowd? It is definitely a long way from the way Romans saw such property.

As I was reading the article, I couldn’t help but compare the concept of a villa to the concept that plantation estates had in the South before the Civil War.

They were also largely self-sufficient and were almost completely manned by servants.

If anyone has ever been to see a historical plantation (I’ve seen several, as I’m from the South) you know that they almost always have stables, huge gardens (both vegetable and ornamental), orchards, slave quarters, and everything that would have been necessary for a whole community of folks to survive during that time.

I found it to be a quite interesting observation that Rome's private villas were so similar.

I was recently looking at vacation rentals in the mountains of NC and found several listings for ‘villas.’ I guess that I was thinking they were more like a condo sort of structure than what is described here and quickly moved on.

Wow, we were thinking a log cabin or a small cottage with a nice garden and view. Maybe we ought to rethink all of that and go with one of the villas rentals, after all.

Who doesn’t like luxurious grounds and a little pretension in their vacation? Not me, folks! I love it (especially if it comes at the same price as a condo or cabin!)

@summing - They are less common than one bedroom apartments, but yes, these houses do come up for rent.

It depends a lot on where you are looking to rent. In some areas of the world it is easy to find a rental house like this and you have a lot to choose from. In other places it could take months and you might have to settle on a place that you don't completely love.

If you are serious about looking, do a little internet research. There are sites dedicated to houses on the upper edge of the rental market. Typically these listing are not included in more broad ranging real estate listings.

Does anyone know if their are luxury villa rentals? Do houses this nice ever show up on the rental market?

Whenever I hear the word villa I think immediately to some of those 19th century novels I had to read in school. It seems like they talked about villas, or retired to villas, or gazed upon villas in almost every other scene. You would think that there were villas everywhere like billboards, or that everyone had some pathological obsession with large houses.

@MrSmirnov - Wow, sounds like I need to cash out my savings and head down to Central America. It is amazing how much real estate prices can fluctuate according to geography.

I have seen these sort of villas as compounds before. Its my understanding that they are pretty common in Africa as well. It is a strange idea, as appealing as it is odd. It is kind of like having your own gated village where you have everything you need at hand. I wonder if it would feel private or isolated?

I once had the privileged of staying on a villa in Northern Scotland. The residents called it an estate, but I think it falls under the definition of a villa as well. It certainly seemed to live up to the definition. The place was absolutely huge with more rooms than probably anyone had ever bother to count.

The property sat on a beautifully manicured piece of land surrounded by dense woods and rolling hills. It had clearly been chosen for its natural beauty.

While I was there I got to live like a king. They had a cook who made delicious meals 3 times a day and a liquor cabinet that had libations from around the world. Every night we would have a roaring fire in a huge fireplace. It was really an incredible experience, one that I will probably never be lucky enough to repeat.

If you are looking to buy a vacation property in Central America the properties there advertised as villas are generally gated compounds that offer extra security for the home. There is usually the central housing for the family, and often things like a pool house and housing for live in help are on the property.

Depending on the area you may also have things like a guardhouse and garages for vehicles.

What is interesting about villas in Central America is their affordability. Often you can buy one for the price of a starter home in North America, or sometimes even cheaper.

If you ever have a chance to travel in Asia they often use the word villa to describe stand alone houses. They are for the most part, modest, but do still cost significantly more than other housing options like apartments.

Often these villas are rare and when they do come on the market they are snatched up quickly.

In countries such as South Korea, there is a huge premium on space and having your own yard is a novelty. Interestingly enough many Koreans, even affluent ones, prefer to live in modern high rises in the capital city, verses owning true homes on the outskirts of the area.