Selling now in Brooksville, FL
Southern Hills Plantation
A gated golf community inside the City of Brooksville, Hernando County
The district line on your tax bill here is either nothing, about $1,021, or about $2,283, and which one you get was decided by a 2011 bond workout that no brochure mentions. It is also inside the city, which almost nobody guesses, and costs about $2,360 a year with no offset. All of it is in the districts' own audits and the state's own rate file. The whole carrying cost is below.
- Area
- Hernando County, FL
- Parcels
- About 1,258
- Districts
- Three
- District bill
- $0 to $2,283
At a glance
Southern Hills fast facts
Every figure here comes from the three districts' adopted budgets and assessment tables, their audited financial statements filed with the state, the state revenue department's rate file, the county parcel roll, and federal and state mapping queried directly. Where two official sources disagree, we publish the disagreement rather than picking one.
- Area
- City of Brooksville, Hernando County
- Jurisdiction
- Inside the city, and that is the surprise
- Size
- About 1,258 parcels, 542 homes standing
- Stage
- Selling, at a record pace, 20 years in
- Districts
- Three under one gate
- District bill
- $0, about $1,021, or about $2,283
- Debt premium between halves
- A flat 31.14 percent
- Assessment direction
- Down two years, then flat to 2023 levels
- Total tax rate
- About 20.75 mills
- Unincorporated county rate
- About 14.85 mills
- Cost of being in the city
- About $2,360 a year, with no offset
- County insurance average
- About $2,304 with wind
- Homeowner association dues
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
- Current pricing and lots left
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
Figures come from the districts' adopted budgets, assessment tables and amortisation schedules, their audited financial statements filed with the state, the state revenue department's taxing-authority rate file, the county parcel roll, federal flood and state emergency mapping, the state geological survey's subsidence database and the state insurance regulator, all as of September 2026. Recorded declarations, association dues, plats, bond indentures, the city's fire assessment resolution and solid waste rates could not be obtained and none is published here. All details are subject to change without notice.
The fire assessment here is about to change.
The city charge on a home is reported at about $356 a year, and we could not obtain the adopted resolution behind that figure, so treat it as approximate. More importantly, the city's fire department was consolidated into the county's from the start of the last fiscal year, and the county is expected to levy its own fire assessment on city addresses from 2027 instead. Ask for the current-year number in writing rather than relying on this page for it.
Where it is
On the ridge south of downtown Brooksville, at roughly 130 to 200 feet of elevation, which is high ground by Florida standards and is why the hurricane answer below is what it is. The Gulf is about half an hour west, Tampa about an hour south. Half the lots here are still empty after twenty years, so walk it and see how that reads to you before you commit.
How to buy in Southern Hills Plantation without leaving money on the table
The person at the builder's sales desk works for the builder. You can have a Florida agent on your side instead, touring with you, reading the contract and the district's own audited statements line by line, and pushing for every incentive, upgrade and closing-cost credit the builder will give. It costs you nothing: on new construction the builder already budgets your agent's fee whether you bring one or not. The one catch is timing. You usually need your own agent from the very first visit, or the builder will not recognise them and you lose it. Start here and we will set it up.
Set up a tourWhat a local would tell you
Nothing, $1,021 or $2,283, and a fifteen-year-old bond workout decides which
One gate, one golf course, one brand, and three separate community development districts underneath it. A buyer touring here has no way to know which one a home is in, and the difference is the largest we have found anywhere in Florida.
One of the three levies nothing at all. It has no bonds, no assessment roll, and its entire operating budget is funded by a single line: a developer contribution. A home in that district pays $0.00 in district charges.
The district that does levy split its homes across the two halves of a single 2011 borrowing, and the second half pays about 31.14 per cent more debt than the first. Not approximately: the ratio is 1.31136, 1.31135, 1.31138, 1.31136 and 1.31139 across the five lot widths, which is as close to identical as arithmetic gets. The operating component is the same to the cent between them, so every dollar of that gap is debt. On an eighty-foot lot it is about $303 a year, or about $2,725 over the nine levies that remain. On a fifty-foot lot the total district bill is about $1,021 in one half and about $1,265 in the other; on the widest lots it reaches about $2,283.
And it runs backwards from what you would expect. The half paying less has more principal outstanding, about $3.4 million against about $2.7 million, and more remaining debt service. It also enjoys an interest holiday: its own published schedule shows zero interest on six consecutive payment dates, with interest not resuming until 2029. The larger, cheaper-to-service pool of debt is the one paying less per lot.
There is a second, quieter unfairness underneath it. The operating assessment is allocated exactly per front foot, about $4.7666 a foot on every lot width, flat to four decimals. The debt is allocated on a much flatter scale, so a fifty-foot lot carries about $15.65 of debt per front foot and a hundred-and-twenty-foot lot about $10.87. The smallest and cheapest homes here pay about 43.96 per cent more debt per foot of frontage than the largest, permanently, and nothing discloses it to them.
One more thing the roll shows. Of about 1,217 units, only about 908 pay debt service at all, and the number paying has fallen every single year, from 940 to 930 to 926 to 908. Some of that is prepayment, which the budget documents at about $69,553 in one recent year. Some of it is likely exemption and delinquency, which the district's own footnotes and its audit both point at. We could not separate the three. What is certain is that on identical lots some owners pay roughly a thousand dollars a year of debt and some pay nothing, and you cannot tell from the street.
So ask five things in writing before you contract: which of the three districts the lot is in; which half of the borrowing, if it is in the levying one; the adopted operating and debt assessment for that exact lot; whether that lot's assessment has been prepaid; and the payoff figure. A sales desk will not have four of the five. The districts will.
Find out which of the three districts a specific lot is in
It is one question, the answer is somewhere between nothing and about $2,283 a year, and no listing carries it.
The record
What the districts' own audits say, in their own words
Everything below comes from audited financial statements the districts themselves file with the state and publish. We are quoting the auditor's findings, not making allegations of our own, and we name no company and no person.
The reason one half of the borrowing costs 31 per cent more is that it covers the land the developer held, and the auditor's finding reads that the developer did not pay certain debt service assessments and therefore certain principal payments were not made. The status note adds that the district again did not make the scheduled payment in the most recent year, and that the matured unpaid principal stood at $750,000 at the most recent year end, against $540,000 the year before.
The reserve funds exist to absorb precisely this. Here they have been drawn on since 2018 and never restored. The finding on that has now been carried in the audit for eight consecutive years, and its status note says more was drawn in the current year. At the most recent year end the district held about $252,000 against a stated requirement of about $608,000, which is about 58.5 per cent short.
The second of the three districts is in a harder position again. Its most recent published audit shows about $1.41 million of matured principal and about $1.82 million of matured interest, roughly $3.23 million past due; a fund balance that fell about $288,000, in the auditor's words, because of developer nonpayment of assessments; and a plain statement that the project has been placed on hold. Two earlier developers of that land went through bankruptcy. At the last audit, four of that district's five board seats were held by people affiliated with the developer. Its audit for the most recent year has not been posted, while the first district's has.
Now the part that runs the other way, because it is real and it matters. The assessment here has been going down, not up. The debt component has been frozen to the cent for four consecutive years. The total on an eighty-foot lot fell about 5.46 per cent and then about 2.49 per cent, and even after two subsequent increases it sits about $2.32 below where it was five years ago in nominal dollars, through the worst inflation in forty years. That is a genuinely unusual outcome and we would not want it lost in the paragraphs above.
The mechanism is that the district is over-collecting against a frozen rate. Its own coming-year budget plans a surplus of about $207,000 on the debt fund, and run forward at current rates the collections would exceed remaining debt service by roughly a million dollars. Existing homeowners are funding a cushion against the shortfall, at frozen rates, with no published plan for what happens to the excess. Ask the district what that plan is; it is a fair question and they should have an answer.
One structural item worth knowing. About 199 units still held by the developer are billed directly rather than through the tax roll, and in the adopted tables those units show no operating assessment at all. The infrastructure they will eventually use is maintained by the roughly 1,018 platted owners. On our arithmetic that is roughly 10.8 per cent of the operating budget, about fifty dollars a year on an eighty-foot lot.
Finally, the things in these documents that do not agree with each other, and it is a long list. The audit and the budget state the original size of the same borrowing $14.26 million apart. They state principal outstanding about $840,000 apart, and total remaining debt service about $1.8 million apart. The audit says interest was owed in a year the district's own schedule shows none owing. And most consequentially, the stated reserve requirement differs by about $351,031 between the two documents, which swings the district's own reported surplus from about $515,989 to about $164,958. The bond indenture would settle every one of these, and we could not obtain the indenture. Separately, a 199-unit block appears both on-roll and off-roll in the same budget, and the golf course is counted twice.
What to ask for that is not published: the homeowners association's recorded declaration and dues, which are separate from and on top of every district figure here; the bond indenture and the operative reserve requirement; which district and which half the lot is in and whether it has prepaid; the district's plan for the surplus; the current-year fire assessment and who is levying it; and an actual tax bill for a closed comparable showing every line.
The area
Not one standing home is in a flood zone, and the karst shows up in the budget instead of on a map
We tested all 1,258 parcel centroids against ninety federal flood polygons rather than sampling. Of the 368 parcels in the main community carrying a structure, exactly none is in a special flood hazard area. Nine parcels are, and every one is an unaddressed tract on a lettered lot identifier, which is where a golf community puts its retention ponds. All nine carry no determined base flood elevation. The panels became effective in 2012.
The map-change record is thin and we controlled it. Zero map revisions inside the community, against one county-wide, so the county itself has barely been revised. One individual map amendment inside the community, against 277 county-wide, and its recorded outcome is structure removed, property partially inundated: the building came out, the land it sits on did not. One structure removed in twenty years of platting is a precise and checkable fact, and it is the same record that independently proved this community is inside the city.
On hurricanes there is a real advantage and we can state it cleanly. The state's evacuation layer fully maps this county, with five zones covering about 50,600 people, and coastal controls return the first zone correctly at four separate points. An envelope query over this community returns zero features, while the same query widened to the county returns all five. A proven true negative rather than a missing dataset: the community sits at roughly 130 to 200 feet and the least severe zone does not reach it.
Karst is the hazard that belongs to this ground, and it does not show up where people look. The state's subsidence database records no reported incident inside this community; the nearest is about 1.31 miles away, from 1990, and flagged unverified, the nearest verified one about 1.69 miles. County-wide, 274 of 315 reported incidents, about 87 per cent, are flagged unverified in the state's own data, and only about 42 per cent are located precisely enough to place on a parcel. So nothing plots inside this community, and about a tenth of the county's records are too coarse to rule anything in or out.
Where karst does show up is the operating budget, and this is the most useful thing on the page for anyone weighing this landform. Stormwater and water-body work is about 18.7 per cent of the district's operating budget, and water and conservation together about 30.9 per cent, for a district whose own audit says it has no capital projects at all. And it does not forecast: in one recent year drainage maintenance came in at about $57,919 against a $2,500 adopted line, which is 23.2 times budget, and that single line accounted for about 47 per cent of the district's entire annual overspend. The board then budgeted it back down to about $2,680. Lake and pond bank maintenance has run 36 and then 45 per cent over budget in consecutive years, and in the most recent year had spent 105 per cent of its full-year budget by the six-month mark. Ground that moves is expensive to drain, and here the cost lands as overruns rather than as a hazard rating.
On water quality, a distinction that gets reported wrong constantly. This community is inside an adopted nitrate management plan area for the spring system to the west. It is not inside that spring's priority focus area, where the sharper restrictions bite, which covers only about 43 per cent of the plan area. We controlled both layers at three springs and both returned correctly. Saying this community is in a springs protection zone is technically true and practically misleading. This county also sits outside every water use caution area in the region, which the counties to the south do not.
On insurance, the state regulator puts the county average homeowners premium at about $2,304 including wind as of early 2025, which makes it the second cheapest of nine counties across this part of the state and about 41 per cent below the big bay county to the south. That is a real and defensible advantage of being inland and on high ground. The excluding-wind figure could not be obtained and is not published here, and we would add one caution: the mid-period figures in that series swing implausibly for many counties, so we have used only the endpoints.
On schools, we have nothing. The district's zone locator is interactive only and exposes no reachable boundary service, so we name no schools rather than launder a third-party redrawn map into a claim. Run the exact address through the district's own tool.
What you need to know
Buying new construction with someone on your side
Representation is free and the timing is the catch, as above. It matters more here than in most places we have written about, for a plain reason: this community's financial record is public, detailed and genuinely complicated, and nobody at a sales desk will walk you through it. Which district, which half of the borrowing, whether the lot has prepaid, and what the reserve position is are four questions with four checkable answers.
We want to be even-handed about what all of that means. A district in this position is not a reason on its own to walk away from a house you like. The assessment has been frozen or falling for four years, no standing home here is in a flood zone, the ground is high, the insurance is among the cheapest in the region, and the community is building faster now than at any point in its twenty years. It is a reason to go in with your eyes open, to price the district line correctly, and to ask what the plan is. Those are things a buyer's agent does.
On builders, we name only what a primary record supports. Perry Homes is the largest builder here by recorded parcel count, and several others including two national brands hold lots in the same roll. We name no entities, and the developer entities referred to on this page are described only as the audits describe them. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean. If that matters to you, ask and we will have it pulled properly rather than repeat a rumour.
The rest is the same everywhere and it is not complicated: hire your own independent inspector at pre-drywall, again at final walkthrough, and once more before the one-year warranty expires. On this ground, ask that inspector specifically about the lot's drainage and about any settlement in the slab. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign rather than after.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Perry Homes, any homebuilder, any developer of Southern Hills, the City of Brooksville, or Hernando County. The builder is identified here because it is a builder of this community, which is a statement of fact and not a representation of any relationship. Community names and marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. Subdiview is operated by a real estate broker licensed in Illinois. We are not your agent, we do not represent you, and we perform no real estate brokerage services in this state. No one at Subdiview is licensed in this state. If you join an interest list, your information is referred to a real estate professional licensed in the state where the property is located, who will contact you directly. We are compensated by that professional's brokerage, not by you. Pricing, plans, inventory, district, tax and approval details on this page carry the dates shown, are as published, proposed or reported rather than committed, and are subject to change without notice.
Questions and answers
Southern Hills FAQ
What is Southern Hills Plantation?
It is a gated golf community of about 1,258 parcels on the ridge south of downtown Brooksville, including an attached age-targeted neighbourhood, first platted around 2005 and still selling. About 542 homes are standing, so roughly 57 per cent of the main community's lots are still vacant twenty years in. The pace right now is the fastest it has ever been: the most recent full year saw 79 completions in the main community, more than any year since first platting, against just two in 2011. So this is a community you can walk, with a long history in the public record that is worth reading before you buy.
Is it in the city or unincorporated?
Inside the City of Brooksville, and almost nobody guesses that correctly. It sits six miles from downtown behind a gate, surrounded by unincorporated farmland, and it is an annexed island: the city's boundary is made of five disconnected pieces and this is one of them. We verified it three independent ways, because it is worth about $2,360 a year. Federal census geography returns the city here and correctly returns nothing at two known unincorporated controls. The state revenue department's taxing-authority code agrees on 999 of every 1,000 parcels tested. And the federal flood programme administers this community through the city rather than the county. About 22 of the 851 main-community parcels carry the unincorporated code, so the boundary clips the edge; we could not determine whether those are homes or fringe tracts.
Why is the district bill so different from one home to another?
Because there are three districts here, not one, and one levies nothing at all. A home in that third district pays zero; its whole budget is funded by a developer contribution. In the district that does levy, homes are split across the two halves of a single 2011 borrowing, and the second half pays about 31.14 per cent more debt than the first, on every product type, to five significant figures. The operating component is identical, so every dollar of the difference is debt. On an eighty-foot lot that is about $303 a year, or about $2,725 across the nine levies remaining. On a fifty-foot lot the district bill is about $1,021 in one half and about $1,265 in the other; on the widest lots it reaches about $2,283. Same gate, same course, same streets.
Why does the second half of the borrowing cost more?
Because that is the land the developer held, and according to the district's own audited statements the developer did not pay its assessments on it. The auditor's finding reads that the developer did not pay certain debt service assessments and therefore certain principal payments were not made, and that as of the most recent year end the matured unpaid principal stood at $750,000, up from $540,000 the year before. Separately, the reserve funds that exist to absorb exactly this kind of shortfall have been drawn on since 2018 and never restored: the district held about $252,000 against a stated requirement of about $608,000, which is about 58.5 per cent short, and the audit says more was drawn in the most recent year. We are reporting the auditor's own published findings, not an allegation of our own, and we are naming no entity and no person.
Is the assessment going up?
No, and this is the genuinely good news on this page. The debt component has been frozen to the cent for four consecutive years. The total on an eighty-foot lot fell about 5.46 per cent and then about 2.49 per cent, and even after two subsequent increases the current figure is about $2.32 below where it stood five years ago, in nominal dollars, through the worst inflation in forty years. The reason is partly that the district is over-collecting against a frozen rate, building a cushion against the shortfall described above. What that means for you is that the rate is unlikely to jump, but you should ask what the district intends to do with the surplus, because that is not published anywhere we could find.
Is being in the city more expensive?
Yes, and unusually, it buys you no offset at all. The rate here totals about 20.75 mills against about 14.85 for unincorporated Hernando County. The entire difference is the city levy of 5.9 mills, and city residents here still pay both county services-unit levies for emergency services and stormwater on top of it. In most of Florida, annexation relieves you of at least one unincorporated levy. Here it does not, and we checked two consecutive years to be sure. That is about 39.7 per cent more ad valorem, or about $2,360 a year on $400,000 of taxable value. For regional context though, both of the nearby Citrus County cities run higher than this, at about 20.84 and about 21.91 mills, so the city premium on the Nature Coast is a general phenomenon rather than something particular to this one.
Before you walk into a sales office
Get your inside track on Southern Hills Plantation
We will connect you with a real estate professional licensed in Florida who represents you rather than the seller, who can register you before your first visit, and who will get you the answers this page could not: which district and which half of the borrowing a specific lot is in, whether it has prepaid, the association's dues and recorded documents, the current-year fire assessment, a real tax bill for a closed comparable, and what the builder will actually give on incentives at your price point.
It costs nothing, creates no brokerage relationship by itself, and does not obligate you to anything.