Sanctuary at Cocoa Townhomes, Cocoa, Florida

At a glance

Product

For-sale townhomes, attached

Site size

About 89 acres across three parcels

Builder and landowner

Meritage Homes

City

Cocoa, Brevard County

Location

West side of Cox Road, about half a mile south of SR 524

Zoning

Multiple-family residential; townhomes permitted by right

Site work approval

State environmental resource permit issued and in compliance

Flood

Permit boundary straddles the special flood hazard area line

Homes planned

Reported at roughly 250; no final count published Get notified

Recorded plat

None located on the records available Get notified

Street names and addresses

Not yet assigned Get notified

Pricing

Not yet released Get notified

Floor plans

Not yet released Get notified

Homeowners association dues

Not yet released Get notified

Sales center

Not yet announced Get notified

First deliveries

Not yet announced Get notified

Details on this page are compiled from public entitlement records and are targets, not commitments. Pricing, floor plans, home counts, lot layouts and timing have not been released and are subject to change without notice.

About the community

Three adjoining parcels on the west side of Cox Road sum to about eighty-nine acres, and that acreage is the most solid fact on this page: it is confirmed twice over, from the parcel record and from the mapped boundary of the state site work permit. On that ground a for-sale townhome community is planned. The figure reported is roughly two hundred and fifty townhomes, and it is worth being careful about what that number is. No government record carries a unit count here, so it is reported rather than established, and no final count has been published.

What the acreage does tell you is the shape of the thing. Roughly two hundred and fifty homes across eighty-nine acres works out near three homes to the acre, about a fifth of what the zoning here allows. That is not generosity: land this size in central Brevard carries wetland and stormwater obligations, and the first approval taken out on this exact footprint was a formal wetland determination. A site like this normally delivers real open space, buffers and ponds rather than buildings end to end, and some of those become what the back of somebody's home looks at. Which homes those are is the biggest resale variable here, and it is not yet drawn.

Meritage Homes is the builder here in an unusually direct way. On many new communities a land developer entitles the ground and cuts the roads, then sells finished lots on to a homebuilder. Here one company is both the applicant named on the state site work permit and the owner of all three parcels, having bought the land in the middle of 2026, and this is its only landholding in the county. A builder that takes title in its own name is carrying the development risk itself rather than waiting for somebody to hand it lots, which tends to mean a shorter gap between site work and houses.

On names, be ready for confusion in older paperwork. The project name running through the permitting record is Sanctuary at Cocoa Townhomes, which is what we title this page, and it is often shortened to Sanctuary at Cocoa. The earlier approval on this same ground was taken out under the name of the prior landowner, Legacy Villas at Cocoa, the entity that sold the land and now holds nothing in the county. None of these is a marketing brand, no homeowners association exists yet, and no brand name can honestly be stated here. Treat each as a record name rather than an official one.

Why there was never a public hearing on this

If you went looking for a council vote on this community and found nothing, it is because none was needed. The land already carried the city's multiple-family residential zoning before this builder bought it, and in that district a townhouse subdivision is a permitted principal use. The project is what planners call by-right: the use is already allowed, so there was no rezoning application, no ordinance, no neighbourhood notice and no agenda item. Approval ran instead through the state environmental resource permit, issued in early 2026 with a minor modification in the middle of that year, plus administrative plan review at the city.

Both halves are worth knowing. By-right projects are harder to derail and more predictable on timing, because the discretionary approval that usually drags for a year is simply not in the path. The other side is that there was no public meeting where a neighbour or a prospective buyer could have heard about this, asked what the plan looked like, or put a condition on it. That is why the facts on this page come from the permitting record rather than a staff report.

How early this actually is

This community is at site work. No plat has been located on the records available, and that phrasing is deliberate: three separate tests come back empty, with no platted subdivision covering the site, no plat book or page on any of the three parcels, and no matching subdivision name in the county index. What cannot be done from outside is drive the county clerk's own plat search, so the right conclusion is that no recorded plat has been found, not that none exists.

The consequence is bigger than it sounds. No plat means no lot lines, no lot numbers and no street layout in the public record. There are no assigned addresses for this project and no street names for it either. If you come across a cluster of new street names near this part of Cocoa, check carefully: the nearest batch of newly created addresses belongs to a separate rental apartment community on a different parcel, and a boundary test puts every one of those points outside this project's permit area.

Being this early is the argument for being on a list rather than waiting. The first release of homesites in a community this size is usually small, and it is where the lots backing onto something other than another building tend to sit.

The flood question, which is the real one here

Most community pages answer the flood question in one line. This one cannot, and that is the most useful thing on this page. The permit boundary straddles the flood boundary. Part of the ground is mapped inside the special flood hazard area, including an area carrying a published base flood elevation of about 19.7 feet and a smaller area with no published elevation at all. The rest is mapped outside it, including a substantial shaded area of reduced but acknowledged risk. That is what happens when a mapped line runs through the middle of a large parcel.

So the answer differs lot by lot, and with no plat recorded and no addresses assigned there is no homesite to attach it to yet. Not for you, and not for anyone at a sales desk either: the lot lines do not exist in the record, so the determination cannot be run against them.

Why it matters in money: flood insurance is separate from your homeowners policy, and on a federally backed mortgage it is not optional for a structure mapped inside the special flood hazard area. Between two otherwise identical townhomes here, the recurring difference can run into four figures a year for the life of the loan.

One expectation cuts the other way. Builders on sites like this routinely grade and fill building pads above the base flood elevation, and a finished structure above that level can often be rated as though it were outside the mapped area, through an elevation certificate or a map revision based on the fill. Normal engineering, not a trick, but confirm it in writing for your own home.

Which gives you the question to put in writing the moment there is a plat: show me, on the recorded plat, whether my homesite falls inside the mapped special flood hazard area, what my finished floor elevation will be relative to the published base flood elevation of about 19.7 feet, and whether an elevation certificate will be delivered at closing. Get that answered before your deposit goes hard.

Townhomes, and what that actually changes

This is attached product, not single-family, and the differences are not cosmetic. You share party walls with the units beside you, which means shared structure and shared sound. Ask what the party wall assembly is built from and what its sound rating is, and stand in a finished unit of the same type before you decide. Buildings in a townhouse subdivision under this city's rules are grouped and separated from one another, so the pattern is clusters rather than one continuous run, with shared walls inside each cluster.

What you own is the question to pin down in the contract. The city's district regulations treat townhouses as a residential subdivision with a minimum lot area for each townhouse, which is the shape of a product where each home sits on its own platted lot rather than being an interest in one building. Everything else points the same way: a for-sale homebuilder holds the title and there is no rental or lease-up marketing in the record. We give you the lean rather than the conclusion, because the zoning also permits rental apartments and there is no plat yet to show lot lines. It changes financing and resale, so get it in writing.

The maintenance structure is the real trade. On attached product the association typically carries the exteriors and the roofs rather than leaving them to each owner, which is convenient, and which makes the reserve study and its funding level matter far more than in a single-family neighbourhood. A couple of hundred attached roofs in a hurricane market reach the end of their life at roughly the same time, and an underfunded roof reserve becomes a special assessment landing on every owner at once. When dues are published, ask for the reserve study alongside them.

Insurance follows the same seam, and for attached product in Florida it is the most misunderstood cost in the purchase. There will be an association master policy and an individual unit-owner policy, and the line between them has to be established exactly: roof, exterior walls, the party wall, the slab and interior finishes. That boundary drives both your dues and your own premium, and buyers routinely find they were insured twice for one thing and not at all for another.

On resale, attached homes turn over faster, draw a wider pool of buyers at the entry end of the market, and track the finances of the association more closely than a detached house tracks its neighbourhood. A well-funded association with maintained exteriors is a selling feature; a community mid-assessment is not. Parking matters too: this city's setback rules change depending on whether parking sits on each lot or is pooled elsewhere, so whether these homes get private two-car garages and driveways or shared parking courts is a real value question, and it has not been published.

What it will cost beyond the mortgage

This is the part buyers discover last, so here it is up front, with what we have and what we do not.

Property tax. Two components are confirmed for the 2025-26 tax year: the City of Cocoa levy at 6.9532 mills and the Brevard County levy at 2.8643 mills. The school district levy and the water management district levy were not obtained, so we are not publishing a total, because a partial sum dressed up as an all-in rate would understate your bill. Get the full millage for this parcel from the county tax collector before you sign. Two things are worth knowing while you do. Being inside the city limits means you pay a municipal levy on top of the county one, which a buyer comparing this to an unincorporated Brevard community needs in the comparison. And Florida's homestead exemption and assessment cap apply to owner-occupants, but a new-construction purchase resets the assessed value, so your first full tax year is routinely much higher than any prior-year figure you are shown for the land.

Non-ad-valorem assessments, and what we can honestly say. No community development district is apparent on the records available for this project. That is deliberately not phrased as a flat no, and the reason is structural: a district assessment is non-ad-valorem, meaning it rides on the tax bill as a separate line rather than inside the millage rate, so no inspection of a tax rate can rule one out, and the state and county lists that would settle it were not reached for this site. In much of Florida a new community carries a district assessment on top of property tax, repaying the bonds that paid for the roads and pipes, and it can run well over a thousand dollars a year for decades. Ask for the complete non-ad-valorem schedule for your lot, in writing, before you contract. Separately, expect a mandatory association with monthly dues on attached product like this. None exists yet and no dues figure has been released.

Insurance. This is coastal Atlantic Florida and wind exposure is the dominant cost driver. The genuine economic argument for buying new here is that current-code construction, with modern roof attachment, opening protection and a wind mitigation inspection to document it, routinely prices materially better than the county's older housing stock. Flood is a separate policy and has to be priced per lot here for the reasons above. And on attached product part of your exterior risk sits in the master policy, so compare the dues and the premium together.

Location, and the central Brevard story

The strongest objective fact about this location is how connected it is. Measured from the middle of the site, SR 524 is about six tenths of a mile away, I-95 about a mile and two tenths, the SR 528 Beachline about one and nine tenths, and Grissom Parkway about two miles. That is one of the best connected interchange clusters in central Brevard.

East on the Beachline takes you to the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral area and on to Port Canaveral, the region's dominant employment base across the space agencies, the launch companies and the cruise terminals. West on the Beachline is a direct limited-access run toward the Orlando airport area and greater Orlando, which is the part people underestimate: it makes an Orlando-side job genuinely commutable from a Space Coast price point. I-95 gives you north-south access to Titusville one way and Melbourne and Palm Bay the other, including the Melbourne aerospace corridor.

Day to day, the retail and services sit on the SR 524 and Clearlake Road corridor just up the road, with US 1 and historic Cocoa Village to the east, the part of Cocoa with the walkable waterfront main street. The beaches are a short run east. Be straight about the trade: Cox Road today is a quiet two-lane stretch, and it was not built for several hundred more households. You get the quiet now and the traffic later.

Schools

Brevard Public Schools serves the entire county, so the district is not in question. The attendance zones are, and we would rather say so than guess. Zones are assigned by address, this site has no addresses and no recorded plat, and the streets do not physically exist yet. Naming an elementary school for a home that cannot be found on a map is the most damaging thing a page like this can get wrong. Once your home has a real address, run it through the district's own school locator, and make a specific school a written condition if you are buying for one.

Buying new construction with someone on your side

The person at the sales desk in a model home works for the builder. They are often genuinely helpful, and they are also paid to represent the party on the other side of your contract. You are entitled to your own representation, and on new construction it generally costs you nothing extra, because builders budget for a buyer's agent whether or not you bring one.

The part that catches people is the timing. Most builders will only recognise your agent if that agent is named from your first visit or registration. Walk into a model alone, give your details at the desk, and in many cases you have given away the right to be represented for the rest of the transaction. If you want someone reading the contract, pricing the upgrades honestly and pushing for the incentives genuinely available, arrange it before you tour.

A pre-construction contract is also not a resale contract. The deposit structure and when your deposit goes non-refundable, the specification allowances, what happens if the schedule slips, whether the price is locked, what the warranty covers and for how long, and your right to walk if a condition is not met are all negotiable and all worth reading slowly. Two conditions are worth writing in here: the flood determination and finished floor elevation for your own lot, which cannot be answered until a plat exists, and what form of ownership you are getting with exactly where the master policy stops and your own begins.

Communities it is easy to confuse

West Cocoa has more than one attached-housing project moving at once, so the search results are messy. The nearest is a rental apartment community on a separate parcel about two thirds of a mile north, with its own owner, street names and leasing listings. If what you are reading mentions leasing or rent ranges, you are looking at that one. Older recorded subdivisions elsewhere in the county also share part of this name, none at Cocoa and none related.

Questions