The National Golf and Country Club

Start with the operating budget, because it explains something buyers here are noticing and cannot account for. Per home, operations and reserves went from about $842 to about $984, an increase of about 16.9 per cent, in a document that prints its own inflation adjustment capped at 3 per cent, which would have been about $29.

The reason is on the revenue side rather than the cost side. The developer's contribution toward operations has fallen across four budget years from about $2.6 million to about $1.36 million to about $868,000 to about $154,000, a decline of roughly 94 per cent, and the separate irrigation contribution has gone to zero while metered irrigation revenue rose about 47 per cent in two years. Spread across the town's 6,648 homes, that withdrawal is worth about $107 per home per year. Add the capped inflation adjustment of about $29 and you account for about $136 of the roughly $142 actual increase, leaving about six dollars we cannot explain from the published documents.

We put that arithmetic on the page because it tells you the direction of travel. The subsidy that made early operating assessments look modest is nearly exhausted, and the remaining $154,000 is not much cushion against 6,648 homes. Whatever the current-year figure is when you tour, ask what the developer contribution line is budgeted at and what it was three years ago.

Second, on who decides all this. This is not an ordinary Florida community development district. It was created by its own act of the state legislature, and its board is elected one vote per acre, with no automatic conversion to resident control on a schedule. Conversion is gated on a mapped test of urban area as a share of the district's total acreage, not on population, and then also requires at least 500 qualified electors, a petition from a tenth of them, and a referendum. Because the acreage test measures against the whole of a roughly ten and a half thousand acre district, adding homes does not by itself move it.

District counsel produced a memo in August proposing to seek a state legislative amendment in 2027 that would change the trigger to a population basis. We report the mechanism and the date and stop there. What it means for you practically is that roughly 6,648 households currently have no elected representation on the body that sets the assessments on this page, and that the path to changing that runs through the legislature rather than through a local vote.

Third, the recorded club covenant, which is the item most likely to surprise someone at a closing table. Membership is mandatory for the lots listed on the covenant's exhibit, and the builder may extend it to further lots at its sole and unilateral discretion, so two houses in this same community can be on different footings. At first purchase there is an initial capital assessment of about $1,500 paid to the declarant. Then at every resale afterwards a resale capital assessment of about $1,500 is payable by the buyer, not the seller, enforceable as a lien, plus a transfer fee of about $100. Budget about $1,600 due at the closing table on a resale here, and understand that it recurs to the next buyer after you.

The same covenant, during the period the builder controls the club, lets the builder excuse itself from paying assessments, keep net operating profit from club operations, and hold votes equal to all other members combined plus one hundred. None of that is unusual in a builder-controlled club and none of it is hidden: it is in a recorded document. It is simply not something a buyer reads unless someone tells them to.

Now the tax rate, and it contains the inversion that most surprised us here. The total rate at this address is about 12.12 mills, made up of county general, water pollution control, conservation, unincorporated services, two school components, water management, a basin levy, and an independent fire district at 3.75 mills. The nearest city, Naples, totals about 9.05 mills.

The unincorporated new-construction town is about 3.07 mills more expensive than the established coastal city, which is the opposite of what nearly everyone assumes about buying outside city limits in Florida. The arithmetic reconciles in both directions and the entire gap is the fire district: 3.75 mills here, not levied inside the city. On a $500,000 homesteaded home the full stack works out to about $8,425 a year, of which about $2,864, roughly 34 per cent, is not property tax at all but district assessments and a flat solid waste charge of about $262. For scale at the other end of the county, Everglades City runs about 18.34 mills.

One honest limit on that figure. We could not obtain a single county parcel record or an actual tax bill: the county's systems blocked every attempt. The rate code for this address is therefore inferred from the published rate sheet rather than read off a bill, and one component, a mosquito control levy, could not be confirmed as applying. If it does, the total is about 12.26 rather than 12.12. Ask for a real tax bill on a closed comparable before you rely on any of it. Separately, the district's own debt roll runs about $10,400 short of its budget, which is small but is the kind of thing that should reconcile and does not.

What to ask for that is not published: the recorded master declaration and this community's own declaration, with current dues and any capital contribution at closing; the club covenant showing whether this exact lot is on the mandatory exhibit; the current-year developer contribution line in the district budget; the annual assessment, payments remaining and payoff for the lot; and an actual tax bill for a closed comparable showing every line.