Owl Creek

Owl Creek is a new community planned in Alva, in unincorporated Lee County, on former farmland between North River Road and the Caloosahatchee River. The county approved the rezoning in 2025 and Neal Communities bought the land in 2026. The first phase is about 290 single-family homes, within a wider approval that allows up to about 1,100 across the property. Nothing has been built yet and nothing is for sale.

Neal Communities. Neal was the applicant on the county rezoning and is now the owner of the land, having closed on the purchase in 2026. Neal is one of the larger and longer-established homebuilders on Florida's southwest coast, and buying the land outright after carrying the rezoning is about as committed as a builder gets before opening a sales office. That is still not a sales launch. Nothing is listed for sale under this name, Owl Creek does not appear on Neal's own list of Fort Myers area communities, and there is no model home and no price sheet.

Neal has publicly indicated a target of breaking ground in early 2027, models in the spring of 2027 and first homes delivering in 2028. Those are targets rather than commitments, and on a project this size they move. That timeline is longer than most of what we track, which cuts both ways: there is real time to plan, and there is also a genuine chance the schedule shifts. The list exists so you hear when it firms up rather than when it is advertised.

Nothing has been formally released. What has been reported, as of August 2026, is a signalled range of roughly $290,000 to $450,000 at Owl Creek, with the wider community expected to run higher, around $350,000 to $750,000. Treat those as an early indication from the builder rather than a price list, because they are exactly that, and they were reported more than a year before homes are expected to be released. The day real pricing is published, it goes out to this interest list.

The rezoning sets minimum lot widths of 35 to 40 feet, which puts this in the efficient end of the detached market rather than the large-lot end. What the site does instead of big lots is keep land open: roughly 60 percent of the property is set aside for retention, conservation and native habitat. Specific lot dimensions, floor plans and square footages have not been published.

In Alva, along the corridor between North River Road and the Caloosahatchee River, east of Fort Myers and south of Babcock Ranch. It is unincorporated county land, so a buyer would pay county taxes with no separate city tax on top. Individual home addresses have not been assigned yet, so we have not published drive times to the door, because any mileage would be invented precision.

A pool, tennis, pickleball, bocce and walking trails are on the record. That is a fairly complete picture for a community at this stage, and more than most projects have published this early. What is not settled is the clubhouse program, the phasing of the amenities, or when they open relative to the first homes, which is worth asking about at contract because amenity timing is often tied to a home-count trigger rather than a calendar date.

Alva is a genuine 1880s river town, founded by a Danish settler, and it still reads like one: a one-room-schoolhouse museum, a historic garden club, a country store, and a couple of miles of oak-lined road along the water. It is the quiet, agricultural end of Lee County, which is exactly why this land was farmland until recently. Buyers choosing Alva are choosing river country and space over being close to the beach, and paying considerably less per square foot for it.

Nothing has been published for Owl Creek. It is worth asking about, because many Florida communities are built inside a community development district, which issues bonds for roads and utilities and repays them through an annual assessment on your tax notice, separate from and on top of HOA dues, sometimes for decades. Two homes at the same sticker price can carry very different yearly costs depending on whether an assessment rides along. We will surface it here as soon as it is on the record.

No. Joining is free, it does not obligate you to anything, and it does not create any brokerage relationship. When homes get close to release, a real estate professional licensed in Florida will reach out and can make sure you are properly represented before you ever walk into a builder's sales office, which is the single most valuable thing a buyer can line up in advance.