Selling now in North Fort Myers, FL
Del Webb Oak Creek
1,028 lots in unincorporated Lee County
The district assessment on 419 of these lots is rising from about $394 a year to about $2,000 , on debt that appeared on no tax bill at all last year because it was billed privately to the developer. And every single parcel here is in a hurricane evacuation zone while only about a fifth are in a mapped flood hazard area. The whole carrying cost is below.
- Area
- North Fort Myers, FL
- Lots
- 1,028
- Still vacant
- 683
- In an evacuation zone
- All of them
At a glance
Oak Creek fast facts
Every figure here comes from the district's own adopted budgets, debt-service schedules and audited statements, the county appraiser's own parcel roll and per-parcel authority listing, the state's own non-ad-valorem assessment roll, the county's own evacuation and school-zone services, and federal flood and disaster records queried directly with controls geocoded from real addresses. Where two official sources disagree, we publish the disagreement rather than picking one.
- Area
- Unincorporated Lee County
- Size
- 1,028 lots on about 503 acres
- Still vacant
- 683 of them
- District bill rising in 2027
- 419 lots, about 400 percent
- Bond principal per lot
- About $23,098
- Total tax rate
- About 14.41 mills
- Fire districts inside it
- Two, same rate, different headroom
- In a special flood hazard area
- About 22 percent
- In an evacuation zone
- Every single lot
- School assignment
- By choice application, not address
- County insurance average
- Not published, we could not verify it
- Institutional rental owners
- None, and we ran the control
- Homeowner association dues
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
- Current pricing and lots left
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
Figures come from the district's adopted budgets and audited statements, the county appraiser's parcel roll and authority listing, the state non-ad-valorem assessment roll, the county's own evacuation and school proximity-zone services, and federal flood and disaster records, all as of September 2026. Any county homeowners insurance average, school capacity and utilisation, the district's assessment methodology report and any maximum lien figure, recorded declarations and association dues could not be obtained and none is published here. All details are subject to change without notice.
On the age question, we are going to be careful rather than confident.
The county's own zoning and development-order record contains no age restriction for this property. The zoning is a residential planned development and the development order describes single-family and multi-family units. Any age restriction would live in private deed covenants, which are not a government record and which we did not retrieve. So no public record we could obtain establishes one, and we are not going to assert one from a brand name. Ask for the recorded declaration and read it before you rely on it.
Where it is
Northern Lee County, on the north side of the river about nine miles inland of the Gulf, in one unbroken block roughly a mile across and a mile and a third deep. Five plats, one builder, and two of the five with nothing standing on them yet. The phases differ in what they cost to hold and in which flood zone they sit, so walk more than one before you decide what you mean by this community.
How to buy in Del Webb Oak Creek 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 budget 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
Four hundred and nineteen lots are about to see their district bill rise roughly 400 per cent, on debt no tax bill has ever shown
This is the single most consequential fact about buying here, and it is invisible in exactly the document a buyer and their agent would check. Last year the later of the district's two borrowings had its debt service, about $660,580, billed directly to the developer rather than certified to the tax collector. It appeared on no tax bill anywhere. The 419 lots pledged against it were assessed operations only: about $394 a year.
This year that obligation moves onto the tax roll, and those same lots are assessed about $1,957 to $2,165. That is an increase of roughly $1,563 to $1,771 per lot in a single year, a rise of 396 to 449 per cent. The money is not new and the district is not doing anything irregular. It has simply moved from the developer to the homeowners who bought the lots. And it has run once before: the earlier borrowing had about $765,982 direct-billed the same way before it too migrated.
The underlying obligation is worth stating plainly, because it is not a fee. Total district debt is about $21,735,000 across 941 assessable lots, roughly $23,098 of principal per lot, sitting on top of the purchase price and repaid out to 2053 and 2055. And the district's most recent audited statements predate the later issuance entirely, which means the audited figure understates district debt by about $9,660,000, or 80 per cent. That is a timing artefact rather than a concealment, but a buyer reading the audit as current would get the wrong number.
One more piece of engineering that a tax bill cannot reveal. The two borrowings are structured to land within about sixty cents of each other on the annual bill, so a buyer comparing two lots sees effectively the same number. They are not the same instrument: the earlier one carries about $24,109 of principal per lot and the later about $23,055, on different terms, maturing two years apart. The annual payment is nearly identical and the lien and the payoff are not.
Two smaller mechanisms, both real. Operations are a flat charge of about $394 for every product while debt is tiered by lot width, so the largest and smallest homes pay identical operating charges. And a handful of lots on the current roll pay operations only while identical neighbours pay $1,956 to $2,165, because their bond lien has been paid off in full. That count is rising. Nothing public identifies which lots those are.
Now the second structural thing, and it is peculiar to this county. There are two independent fire districts inside this one community, 981 lots in one and 47 in the other, and nothing on the ground marks the line. Both currently levy exactly the same rate, so the bills are identical and the split is invisible. But one of them can raise its rate by about 0.90 mills on a simple majority and the other by about 0.02. That is a forty-four-fold difference in the capacity to increase the largest independent line on the bill, between two sets of lots in the same community, and it is not discoverable from any bill, listing or disclosure.
So ask five things in writing before you contract: the specific lot's adopted district assessment for the coming year, not the current one; which borrowing is pledged against it and what the payoff is; whether any part of its assessment is still billed to the developer; which of the two fire districts it is in; and a real tax bill for a finished comparable in the same phase, showing every line.
Find out what a specific lot is assessed next year, not this year
On 419 of these lots the difference between those two numbers is about $1,700 a year, and the current tax bill shows the smaller one.
The record
A rate that reconciles exactly, prices flat for four years, and 44 per cent of the lots missing from the state's own data
The total rate here is about 14.4125 mills, and getting there took more work than usual because this county does not publish a per-authority rate table in any retrievable form. We derived the common unincorporated base six independent ways, by taking six different districts' published totals and subtracting each one's certified fire rate. All six return the same base to four decimal places. We then sourced about 4.26 mills of that base component by component and we are telling you plainly that the remaining 6.65 mills is a residual we did not individually source, rather than presenting it as if we had.
Thirteen ad valorem authorities and two non-ad-valorem levies reach these parcels, and five of the thirteen are independent special districts that set their own rate with no county control. That includes the fire district, which at 3.5 mills is the largest single line after the county and the schools. In most states fire is a municipal service paid from a general levy. Here it is a separate government with its own board and its own budget, and as above there are two of them inside this community.
On the total burden, the range between two finished, occupied, physically comparable houses is about $775 to about $2,547 a year of non-ad-valorem charges, roughly three and a quarter to one. The cheap end is a lot whose bond lien has been prepaid. And a developer-held vacant lot in one of the two unstarted phases currently pays nothing at all, which is worth knowing when someone shows you a tax record for a lot rather than for a house.
One number we cannot give you, and the reason matters. No maximum lien figure appears anywhere on this page, because the district does not publish its assessment methodology report or its maximum annual assessment table. The amounts we do publish are exact and reconcile to the cent against the district's own adopted budget. The ceiling is simply not in the public file.
Something to check before you run your own title or tax search from home. 452 of the 1,028 lots here, about 44 per cent, do not exist in the state's own property data at all, and they are not scattered: they are two entire phases. A title search, a tax search or any diligence product run against state cadastral data returns nothing for those lots. Not no liens found. No parcel. Anyone buying in those two phases needs the search run against the county's own roll.
On price, the honest read is flat. Median recorded closings here have moved from about $533,000 to about $554,380 over four years, roughly 4 per cent cumulative, which is behind inflation. Declared construction value on the roll runs about $304,000 against those closings, a ratio of about 0.56, and that gap is expected rather than suspicious: declared value is the building alone and excludes the lot, the district-funded infrastructure already liened against it, and builder margin. It should never be read as a valuation.
A mailing-address fact worth carrying into any comparison you do. Only about 26 per cent of this county's 145,300 parcels addressed to the nearest city are actually inside it. Three-quarters carry city services, city millage assumptions and city expectations that do not apply. The trap runs the other way too: about 1,013 parcels addressed to an unincorporated area are inside a city and pay city fire, city solid waste, city stormwater and city voted debt.
What to ask for that is not published: the district's assessment methodology report and any maximum annual assessment per lot; the coming year's adopted assessment for the specific lot; which fire district it sits in; whether the lot exists in state property data or only in the county roll; the association's recorded declaration and dues; and a real tax bill for a finished comparable in the same phase showing every line.
The area
Every lot in an evacuation zone, a flood map effective seven weeks after Ian that does not reflect it, and no neighbourhood school
Start with the fact that inverts what most out-of-state buyers assume about buying inland. Every one of the 1,028 parcels here is in a hurricane evacuation zone, most of them in the second zone called. Only about 21.5 per cent are in a mapped special flood hazard area. Put those together and about 54 per cent of the lots carry a mandatory evacuation designation while sitting in what the federal map calls minimal flood hazard. Flood mapping prices insurance against a still-water event of a given annual probability. Evacuation zoning models storm surge under a moving hurricane. They answer different questions and a buyer must not read one off the other. For scale, we ran controls in a genuinely inland part of the same county and they return no evacuation zone at all.
Inside the flood answer, the distribution matters more than the headline. All five plats straddle a zone line, so this is decided lot by lot rather than phase by phase. Four lots sit in a regulatory floodway, the most restrictive designation the federal map carries, where development may not raise the base flood elevation. Another 22 sit in a category with no published base flood elevation at all, which means an elevation certificate has to be commissioned before a lender or insurer can rate the property.
Now the date, because it is the thing most likely to be misread here. The panels governing this community became effective in November 2022, seven weeks after Hurricane Ian made landfall. That does not mean they reflect Ian. A countywide map revision takes years from study to effective date, so a map effective seven weeks after the storm was finalised long before it. The federal database publishes no study date for these panels, so the honest statement is that the effective date postdates the storm and there is no evidence the study does. Treating one as the other is exactly the error the date invites.
What has genuinely changed since is narrow. One map revision became effective in mid-2026, which means the printed 2022 panel and the live federal database no longer agree over part of this community. Separately there are eight property-specific map-amendment letters here, five of them the kind that removes a structure rather than a lot. That lifts the mandatory insurance requirement for one building on the strength of its elevation or fill, and it never changes the published map. The lot stays in the hazard area on every map, every lookup and every automated valuation product, and the next lender may re-underwrite from the map rather than the letter.
What actually happened to houses here is on the federal record, and the nuance is the finding. Under Ian this county saw 125,276 owner-household registrations and about $424 million paid; this postcode alone saw 8,067 registrations and about $42.4 million. This postcode had a lower share of catastrophic damage than the county, about 16 per cent over $30,000 against 24 per cent, but 89.1 per cent of inspected owner households here had some inspected damage against 82.7 per cent county-wide. Damaged more broadly and less severely. For scale, Ian is about fourteen times the 2017 storm by dollars paid to owners in this county.
Two things we could not get, and will not guess at. The county's substantial-damage and substantial-improvement rules, and any elevation requirement applying to new construction here, could not be sourced from a primary code library, so nothing on this page asserts anything about them and a buyer in the flood-zone lots, especially the four floodway lots, should treat it as a live question. And on insurance, the state regulator's county premium file was unreachable at every path we tried, so no premium figure of any kind is published here. A third-party repost was available and we declined to use it.
Schools are the last structural surprise, and it is a real one. This county does not run neighbourhood attendance zones. It runs a choice model: families submit an application ranking schools, and a family that does not get its first choice goes on a waitlist. Living at a given address does not entitle a child to a particular school. The county's own boundary service carries fifteen polygons for the entire county, labelled as proximity zones with a letter and no school name attached to any of them. All 1,028 lots fall in one zone and no plat straddles. There is a school six-tenths of a mile away, and under this system that is an input to a ranking rather than a seat. We could not obtain capacity or utilisation figures at all, current or historic, so none is published.
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 is worth more than usual here for one blunt reason: the diligence everybody actually does, which is to look at last year's tax bill, would have missed the largest number on this page entirely. The district debt arriving on 419 lots this year was on no bill at all last year. Between roughly 12 and 65 per cent of the annual carrying cost here is not property tax, depending which lot you are standing on.
The second reason is leverage, and the record is unusually clear. 683 of the 1,028 lots are still vacant, and two entire phases have not been built on at all. The takedown is cleanly sequential: the original plat is about 79 per cent built, one phase about 44 per cent, one under 1 per cent and one at zero. A buyer walking into a phase that has not started is in a very different negotiating position from one walking into a finished street.
On pace, only one comparison here is defensible and we would rather give you that than a dramatic one. Certified completions went 122 in 2023 to 85 in 2024, a 30 per cent decline. Everything after that sits on a working roll subject to recording lag, and this year is partial. Recorded sales give an independent and steadier read: monthly closings have run about 8.3, 8.6, 8.7 and now 6.9, so roughly 20 per cent off pace rather than a collapse. We also checked explicitly for post-storm rebuild permits contaminating the new-construction count, and they cannot: every parcel here was created after Ian.
Something the ownership roll shows that no sign on the ground will. About 68 per cent of the lots are held by companies rather than individuals, and two entities hold 653 of them between them: the builder and a finished-lot banking vehicle. That matters beyond inventory, because the district board is elected by landowners on an acreage basis until statutory transition thresholds are met. Residents do not currently control the government that sets their largest non-tax charge. That is ordinary at this stage of a build-out and it is still worth knowing before you write.
We checked the rental question specifically and the answer is a clean negative. We screened all 345 owner names against the major institutional single-family rental operators and found none. The large lot holder is not a landlord: its holdings are 98 to 100 per cent unbuilt and concentrated in the two unstarted phases, which is a finished-lot vehicle supplying a builder. Pulte Homes is the only homebuilder on the roll here. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, developer or land-holding entity, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean.
The rest is the same everywhere: hire your own independent inspector at pre-drywall, again at final walkthrough, and once more before the one-year warranty expires. In this county ask specifically about roof attachment, opening protection and lot grading, and ask for the elevation certificate on any lot in a mapped hazard area. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Pulte Homes, any homebuilder, any developer of Oak Creek, or Lee 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, flood 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
Oak Creek FAQ
What is Del Webb Oak Creek?
It is a 1,028-lot community on about 503 acres in unincorporated Lee County, north of the river and roughly nine miles from the Gulf, platted and built entirely since 2022. One builder is working it. About 345 homes stand today and 683 lots are still vacant, including two entire phases with nothing built on them at all, so a buyer here is buying beside active construction for some years yet.
Is it an age-restricted community?
We are not going to tell you either way, and we want to explain why. The county's own zoning and development-order record contains no age restriction for this property: the zoning is a residential planned development and the development order describes single-family and multi-family units. Any age restriction would live in private deed covenants, which are not a government record and which we did not retrieve. So the honest answer is that no public record we could obtain establishes one. Ask for the recorded declaration and read it yourself before you rely on it.
Why is the district assessment about to jump?
Because debt that was being billed privately is moving onto the tax roll. Last year the later of the district's two borrowings had its debt service, about $660,580, billed directly to the developer or covered from capitalised interest, and it appeared on no tax bill anywhere. The 419 lots pledged against it paid operations only, about $394 a year. This year that obligation moves onto the roll and those same lots are assessed about $1,957 to $2,165. That is a rise of roughly 396 to 449 per cent in a single year. The same thing already happened once before with the earlier borrowing. A buyer who was shown a recent tax bill on one of those lots saw a number that was about to quintuple.
Is it in a flood zone?
About 21.5 per cent of the lots are in a special flood hazard area, and all five plats straddle a zone line, so it is decided lot by lot rather than phase by phase. Four lots sit in a regulatory floodway, which is the most restrictive designation the federal map carries. Another 22 are in a category with no published base flood elevation, which means an elevation certificate has to be commissioned before a lender or insurer can rate the property at all. And the panels governing all of this became effective seven weeks after Hurricane Ian, which is not the same as reflecting it.
If most of it is minimal flood hazard, is it safe from storms?
Those are different questions and here they give opposite answers. Every one of the 1,028 parcels is in a hurricane evacuation zone, most of them in the second zone called. Only about a fifth are in a mapped flood hazard area. That means about 54 per cent of the lots carry a mandatory evacuation designation while sitting in what the federal map calls minimal flood hazard. Flood mapping prices insurance against a still-water event; evacuation zoning models surge under a moving storm. They are not the same model and you cannot read one off the other.
Which school will my child go to?
Nobody can tell you, and that is a structural feature of this county rather than a gap in our research. Lee County does not run neighbourhood attendance zones. It runs a choice model: families submit an application ranking schools, and a family that does not receive its first choice goes on a waitlist. Living at a particular address does not entitle a child to any particular school. The county's own boundary service carries fifteen polygons for the entire county, labelled as proximity zones with a letter and no school name attached to any of them. There is a school six-tenths of a mile from this community, and under this system that proximity is an input to a ranking, not a seat.
Before you walk into a sales office
Get your inside track on Del Webb Oak Creek
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: the coming year's adopted district assessment for a specific lot rather than this year's, which borrowing is pledged against it and the payoff, which of the two fire districts it is in, the flood determination and any elevation certificate for that exact lot, the recorded declaration and dues, 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.