Shopping for a Home - Villa? Compound? Apartment?

These are some of the choices we will have as we decide the type of home we will live in. Compound life can be compared to living on a military base, with guarded and gated entries and a wall around it. A compound is like a small city. Most have swimming pools, recreation centers, a restaraunt, a mini-mart and a playground. Some even have a golf course, bowling alley, bus services, salon and more. Within the compound, women follow the laws of their own country. There is no need to wear the head covering, which is sometimes worn outside, but not required. I am sure that I will write another post about the topic of the head covering. That will come later. Now these are some of the non-perks of compound life: visitors must be screened and approved in order to enter your home on the compound. The compounds that are within our price range-have  smaller bedrooms and less square footage as a whole (when compared to a villa). Compound life for a family of 5 is would be from $35,000-40,000 a year.

This is one view of  "Compound Life," created and posted by another international.


Here is another option-the Villa in Saudi Arabia. After searching online at various postings from internationals, and from my husband's point of view, a villa is three times cheaper than a compound. The square footage of a villa will be double the size of a compound home. Most villa's are more private and some have a pool in the backyard along with a patio. By paying less to live in a villa, we would be able to afford a driver and a maid (how exciting!) Having a driver would keep us from having to pay and ride public transportation to and from school and anywhere else we would go. Here are a few villa video's.



Another villa video...



So, what do you think? What would you choose. It's hard for us to decide also!

*update* Sohail visited MANY apartments and villas. Most of the stand alone villa's were HUGE and way above our price range. The apartments were in various price ranges and were based on the area of town.

We ended up moving in to a quaint apartment in the Rawdah area!