Sun Haven

Sun Haven is a new single-family community reported for southwest Winter Haven, on about 65 acres north of Thornhill Road and west of Deming Drive in unincorporated Polk County. Local development coverage reported that Highland Homes bought the land in the spring of 2025 and submitted plans for 262 detached homes on 45 and 55 foot wide lots, targeting roughly 2027. Pricing, floor plans, the site plan and HOA dues have not been published.

No. As of September 2026 it does not appear on the builder's own list of Winter Haven communities, there is no sales office, no model, no published pricing and no plans released. That is normal at this stage and it is exactly why this page exists. The value of getting on a list this early is not that you can buy something today, it is that you can be organized and represented before the first release, which is when lot selection and introductory pricing are actually decided.

Nothing has been published, and we are not going to guess. For area context only, the median sale price across the surrounding ZIP code was roughly $236,000 in June 2026 and the neighboring ZIP was closer to $299,000, both down modestly from a year earlier. Those are resale medians across every home of every age in a wide area, so they are background rather than a comparable for new construction on a 45 or 55 foot lot. The day the builder publishes real numbers, this list gets them.

Down, modestly, and you should know that before you shop rather than after. Across Winter Haven as a whole, values were off about three percent year over year as of the summer of 2026, and roughly two thirds of sales closed below asking. One nuance: the surrounding ZIP code showed a much steeper drop in median sale price over the same period while its price per square foot rose slightly, which means smaller and lower-priced homes made up more of what sold, not that homes lost a tenth of their value. For a buyer, a soft market with real inventory is a reason to negotiate, not to stay away.

None has been established over this site and none turned up in county records as of September 2026. Two things support that. The site is in unincorporated Polk County rather than inside city limits, so a district here would have to be created by the county commission, and none covering this parcel exists. And at roughly 262 lots on 65 acres this is small infill, while districts exist to bond large-scale infrastructure. We are not going to promise one will never be created, because the community has not launched. Ask the sales office to confirm in writing, and ask separately what the HOA covers.

Because it is money. This site is in unincorporated Polk County, so you pay the county, school and water management rates, which together came to about 12.98 mills for 2025, and no City of Winter Haven municipal rate on top. A city address adds several mills, which on a typical purchase here is a real annual difference. The trade is services: county sheriff and county fire rescue rather than city departments. Neither is better in the abstract, but the tax difference is concrete and most buyers never think to ask.

Transitional, and it is worth being plain about that. This is the edge where Winter Haven loosens into Eagle Lake: two-lane county roads, old citrus grove remnants and pasture, 1970s through 1990s ranch homes on large lots, and new production subdivisions filling in between them. It is not a finished suburb and it is not the country. Eagle Lake itself, just to the southwest, is a genuinely small town of about three thousand people with a very short main street on US 17 and a 640-acre lake with a swimming beach. The real center of gravity is downtown Winter Haven about five miles northeast.

The lakes, mostly. Winter Haven has more than fifty lakes in and around the city, with a navigable chain of roughly two dozen linked by canals and a lock, covering something like nine thousand acres. It is nationally known bass water, with well over two hundred documented catches in the eight pound and up class. Downtown Winter Haven along Central Avenue has been genuinely revived: brick storefronts, breweries, a Saturday farmers market on Magnolia Avenue and a community theater with a national reputation. Circle B Bar Reserve toward Lakeland is the best wildlife viewing in the county. And Legoland sits on Lake Eloise fifteen to twenty minutes away, which is either a feature or a fact of life depending on your household.

Sun Haven would be served by Polk County Public Schools, which earned a B for the 2024-25 school year, up from a C the year before and its first B since 2019-20. The graduation rate reached 82 percent and no traditional school in the district received an F. The district runs career academies, which are career-themed learning communities with industry certifications, internships and dual enrollment, and a magnet and choice program with open enrollment windows. Attendance zones are set by address and shift as new communities are built, so confirm current assignment directly with the district rather than relying on a third-party lookup.

Because there is nothing to join yet on the builder side, and because of how new construction actually works. Builders require your agent to register you on your very first visit to a sales office. If you tour alone and try to bring representation in later, the builder can decline to recognize them, and you have lost your own advocate for that community permanently. Getting that arranged now, while Sun Haven is still a year or so out, costs you nothing and removes the one mistake that cannot be undone later. Our list is free, creates no obligation, and connects you with a real estate professional licensed in Florida.