The Highlands Club

The Highlands Club is an approved community of about 747 single-family homes planned on roughly 300 acres of unincorporated Polk County, in the south Lakeland area west of US Highway 98. The county approved the plan in 2026. Nothing is built yet, no homebuilder has been assigned, and nothing is for sale. This page exists so you can hear the moment it opens.

Just west of US Highway 98 in the growing corridor between south Lakeland and Bartow, in unincorporated Polk County. It is county land rather than city limits, so a buyer would pay county taxes with no separate city tax on top. It is not raw land in isolation, either: it sits in a stretch that is already filling in with new subdivisions. Individual street addresses have not been assigned yet, so we have not published drive times, because any mileage would be invented precision.

Nobody yet. No homebuilder has been named for The Highlands Club. The parties on record are a land-development group and the families who own the land, which is the normal early pattern: an entitlement group takes a property through approval and site work, then sells lots to homebuilders. Builder names usually surface at or shortly before homes go on sale. Catching that moment is the entire reason the list on this page exists.

The approved plan calls for about 747 homes on lots ranging from roughly 50 feet up to 130 feet wide, with a minimum lot size of 6,000 square feet. That points to a community built mostly around attainable production homes, with a smaller band of wider homesites that usually turns into a premium tier along water or open space. Beyond that, nothing is released: no floor plans, no square footages, no elevations and no pricing, because no builder has been assigned. Those all come from the builder at launch, and the day they land for The Highlands Club they go out to this list.

No. It is unincorporated Polk County. That distinction is worth money to you. Unincorporated property does not pay city millage, so the tax picture differs from an otherwise identical home inside city limits, and county rather than city services apply. Mailing addresses in this area commonly carry a Lakeland designation even though the land is not in the city, which is a frequent source of confusion.

Lakeland sits right in the middle of the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando, which means two major job markets, two international airports, and the beaches on both coasts are all inside an easy drive, while day-to-day costs stay well below either big city. Polk County is famous for its lakes, dozens of them, with boating, bass fishing and lakefront parks, and Lakeland itself has been on a roll: Bonnet Springs Park, a 168-acre former rail yard reborn as one of the best new urban parks in the state, Florida Southern College with the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world, a walkable downtown, and a growing food and brewery scene. It is also the hometown of Publix, whose headquarters anchors a stable local economy. For a lot of buyers the appeal is simple: central Florida access at a price that still makes sense.

That has not been published for The Highlands Club. Larger Florida communities are often 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 any HOA dues, sometimes for decades. It is one of the first questions to ask when pricing is released, because two homes at the same sticker price can carry very different yearly costs depending on whether a district assessment rides along. Florida also has no state income tax, which is often what starts the math for relocating buyers. We will surface the details here as soon as they are on the record.

No sales date has been announced. The plan is approved, but site work, engineering, platting and builder assignment all come next, and that can take months. The advantage of getting on the interest list now is simple: the earliest buyers hear about a first release before it is advertised, when the most homesites and floor plans are still available and before any lot premiums climb. Treat any date you see elsewhere as a target rather than a commitment.

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.