Selling now near Yulee, FL
Wildlight
24,000 planned homes, unincorporated Nassau County
In the newest village here, an age-restricted 50-foot lot is assessed exactly 20.00 per cent less than an identical 50-foot lot on the same bond, which is about $232 a year and about $6,975 over the life. The district's own methodology says the two should be identical. That is one of five things on this page you cannot get anywhere else. The whole carrying cost is below.
- Area
- Nassau County, FL
- Planned homes
- 24,000
- Built so far
- About 744
- Tax rate
- 15.35 mills
At a glance
Wildlight fast facts
Every figure here comes from the district's adopted budgets, assessment tables, amortisation schedules, engineer's reports, board minutes and audited statements, the act of the legislature that created it, the county's certified rate chart and parcel roll, and federal and state mapping queried directly. Where two official sources disagree, we publish the disagreement rather than picking one.
- Area
- Unincorporated Nassau County, Yulee
- Jurisdiction
- No municipality, verified three vintages
- Size
- 24,000 planned homes, 744 built so far
- Stage
- Early, on a very long build-out
- Age-restricted 50-foot lot
- About $1,162 of debt a year
- Same lot, not age-restricted
- About $1,395, exactly 20 percent more
- Full 50-foot spread
- About $341 a year, about $15,601 over the life
- Debt issued so far
- About 8.4 percent of what is authorised
- Total tax rate
- About 15.35 mills, down from 15.63
- Nearest town rate
- About 14.81 mills, and it is lower
- Flat fire, waste, stormwater
- None in this county at all
- County insurance average
- $3,051 with wind, $1,608 without
- 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, assessment and amortisation schedules, engineer's and methodology reports, board minutes and audited financial statements, its enabling act, its adopted amenity policy, the county property appraiser's certified rate chart and parcel roll, the county's attendance-zone and flood layers, federal flood mapping, state emergency mapping, the state's voter registration report and the state insurance regulator, all as of September 2026. Recorded declarations, association dues, plats, bond indentures, utility rates and impact fees could not be obtained and none is published here. All details are subject to change without notice.
Two county publications disagree about the tax rate.
The property appraiser's certified rate chart puts this address at about 15.3517 mills, and its own online tax estimator, which says it uses the same year's total rates, puts it at about 15.1080. We do not pick a winner. On $400,000 of taxable value the difference is about $97 a year. The component breakdown we verified sums exactly to the chart figure, which is why this page uses it, but the estimator is equally official and equally current-facing. Ask for a real tax bill on a closed comparable.
Where it is
On former timberland north of Jacksonville, about twenty minutes from the beach and the historic waterfront town on the island, with a hospital campus, a school and a small town centre already built inside the community. It is early, so what you are buying is partly the plan. Walk what exists and ask what is funded.
How to buy in Wildlight 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 documents 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
Two identical lots on the same bond, exactly 20.00 per cent apart, and the district's own methodology says they should match
In the newest village here, funded entirely by one 2025 borrowing, the adopted table prints two 50-foot products. The one that is not age-restricted is assessed about $1,394.93 a year of debt. The age-restricted one is assessed about $1,162.43. Divide them and you get 1.20000. Not approximately. Exactly.
That is about $232.50 a year, and about $6,975 across the thirty installments that remain, between two lots of identical frontage, in the same village, on the same bond, platted in the same programme.
What makes it worth putting at the top of this page is that the district's own master assessment methodology contradicts it. That report, adopted by the same board, gives both products the identical maximum lien and the identical unit factor of 1.00. The maximum-lien document treats them the same. The bond that was actually issued does not. The supplemental report that would explain the difference was presented to the board on the record and is not in the posted package, so we can prove the gap exists and we cannot tell you why. We checked the table itself is real by summing units against rates across all eight products in that village: it reconciles to the budgeted levy within $1.67 on $3.89 million.
The same four borrowings break the frontage ladder in ways that look like errors and are not. A 45-foot lot pays about $37 a year more than a 55-foot lot. A 60-foot lot pays about $254 a year more than a 65-foot lot. Between two other neighbourhoods, fifteen feet of frontage is worth about sixteen dollars a year. The district has borrowed four times since 2018, through a rate environment that moved from roughly 2.4 per cent to roughly 6.25, and each borrowing is pledged only to its own area. A dollar of the newest principal costs about $1.25 in interest over its life; a dollar of the 2021 borrowing costs about sixty cents.
Run the same 50-foot product across the whole community and it goes from about $1,419 to about $1,760 a year, a spread of about $341. And because the cheapest also has five fewer installments left, the lifetime difference is about $15,601. The sharpest version is two halves of the same phase, on the same borrowing, about $200 a year apart, which is consistent with a true-up after platted density in one half came in below plan.
One more number you should see, correctly framed. The master methodology apportions roughly $637 million of potential debt across the newest village's 4,100 planned units, of which about 8.4 per cent has been issued. Per 50-foot lot the recorded maximum annual debt assessment is about $13,860, against an actual levy of about $1,395, so the current bill is about a tenth of the ceiling. That maximum is a recorded legal ceiling, not a forecast, and no district we have looked at levies near its maximum. But it is the limit on what can be assessed against that lot, and it is in a real document.
So ask five things in writing before you contract: the annual assessment for the exact lot; how many installments remain; the payoff figure; whether the lot sits in an area with bonds authorised but not issued and what is planned; and, if it is in the newest village, why the age-restricted and non-age-restricted rates differ by exactly a fifth.
Get the installments-remaining figure for the specific lot
The same 50-foot product here ranges about $341 a year and about $15,601 over the life. The annual number alone will not tell you which one you are looking at.
The record
No statutory disclosure on a resale, a $2,500 amenity fee for outsiders, and a board that needs half the county's voters to change hands
Start with the single most useful sentence on this page if you are buying a resale here. The act of the legislature that created this district requires a boldface warning above the buyer's signature line, telling them the district may impose taxes and assessments on the property. That requirement applies to the initial sale only. A resale carries no statutory district disclosure at all. So the second owner of a home here, and everyone after, has to go looking for everything on this page rather than being handed it.
Second, this is not an ordinary community development district and the difference is not cosmetic. It was created by its own act of the legislature, which writes its own rules for when control passes to residents, and it carries an express future ad valorem taxing power that is dormant until a referendum after full resident control. The act also provides that if the community is ever annexed into a municipality, the district and its assessments carry on unchanged.
So the transition thresholds matter, and the arithmetic is striking. Full resident control requires 40,500 qualified electors living inside the district. This county's entire active registered voter roll is about 81,083, so that is about 49.9 per cent of the county's whole electorate living in this one community. A single resident seat requires 9,000 electors, about 11.1 per cent of the county roll. The alternative trigger is 22,000 completed homes, which is about 92 per cent of full build-out. About 744 are built today.
Until then, elections are one vote per acre. At the most recent landowners' meeting, about 19,736 voting units were assigned by proxy to one proxy holder, who nominated the candidates and cast every vote for all three seats. Three people were present and the meeting ran twelve minutes. The district's audited statements say plainly that all board members are affiliated with the developer. We are reporting the mechanism and the arithmetic; none of it is improper and none of it is hidden, and we name nobody.
Third, the amenity terms, which are adopted policy and worth knowing before you count on anything. A non-resident user pays $2,500 a year for access, payable in full at application, and the board can raise it once a year. A renter designated by an owner has that fee waived. Guests are capped at four per household at a time. And the community's main trail is expressly open to the general public at no charge, which is a genuine amenity for the wider area and something to factor in if you assumed a gated feel.
One drafting oddity in that same adopted policy, which we flag because it is the kind of thing that matters if there is ever a dispute: the policy defines who counts as a property owner by reference to a completely different district, in a different county. That is in a live governing document adopted by resolution. It is almost certainly a copy-paste error, and it is also the definition on which amenity access rights turn.
Now the taxes, and here the good news is real and specific. The rate totals about 15.35 mills and it fell about 0.28 mills in the most recent year. It is the county levy, a municipal services unit, two school components, water management and inland navigation, and the components sum to the published total exactly. More usefully: this county levies no flat fire assessment, no solid waste assessment and no stormwater assessment at all. Fire sits inside the millage and garbage is an open subscription you arrange privately, off the tax roll. Across the Florida communities we have written about, those three lines routinely add six to eight hundred dollars a year. Here they are zero, and the only non-ad-valorem line on the bill is the district.
One expectation to correct, though. Unincorporated is not the cheap option here. The nearest town totals about 14.81 mills, roughly half a mill less than this address, because the county's services unit costs more than that town's entire municipal levy. The city on the island runs about 18.02. Worked through on $400,000 of taxable value, the all-in figure here runs from about $7,560 to about $7,901 depending on neighbourhood, of which roughly 19 to 22 per cent is the district rather than tax. A comparable home with no district at all would pay about $6,141.
Two more things worth a line each. Homes billed through the tax roll pay about 7.5 per cent more than the direct-billed rate for the same net revenue, a gross-up that reconciles exactly and that the November early-payment discount only partly recovers. And several assessments here went down this year rather than up: the general fund per unit has fallen about 18 per cent as the denominator grows, and the commercial lines fell between 6 and 14 per cent.
What to ask for that is not published: the association's recorded declaration, dues and any capital contribution at closing, which are separate from and on top of every district figure here; the supplemental methodology behind the twenty per cent difference; the annual assessment, installments remaining and payoff for the exact lot; what is planned for future issuance against that area; and a real tax bill for a closed comparable showing every line.
The area
Every parcel out of the flood zone, and the newest village is in the earlier-evacuated zone
The flood answer is as clean as any we have published. We tested every one of the 1,757 parcel centroids against the federal layer rather than sampling, and all 1,757 returned an area of minimal flood hazard, outside the special flood hazard area. Not one in any other zone. The control at the ocean beach on the island returns a special flood hazard area correctly, so the query works. The panels became effective in 2010 with a partial revision effective 2017, and the county's own flood layers are literally named for those two dates.
We checked the map-change record too, because that is where surprises live. Zero map revisions inside this community, controlled against 24 county-wide and 75 in the metro to the south. Zero individual map amendments inside it. The five amendments that fall inside the community's bounding box all belong to adjoining subdivisions rather than to this one, which is exactly the sort of thing a careless search would attribute here. There have never been any inside this community, which follows from the fact that no parcel is in a flood zone to seek removal from.
One data warning we are carrying because it changes how you should read any flood claim about this area: the federal panel service returned out-of-county and even out-of-state map panels for points unambiguously inside this county, and the zone service returned 98 polygons or zero for the identical area depending only on how the query was encoded. Our figures rest on point-by-point queries for that reason. If someone quotes you a flood conclusion for this community from a bulk query, treat it with suspicion.
Now the finding that no flood map, no insurance quote and no listing will surface. This community sits across two hurricane evacuation zones. About 1,598 parcels are in a later-evacuated zone and about 159 are in an earlier one, and the 159 are the newest village and one adjoining parcel. In other words the homes paying the highest district assessment in the community are also the ones in the higher-priority evacuation zone, while their neighbours a mile away are not. Both halves are equally out of the flood zone. Eight control points returned correctly and differentiated, including the barrier island, two inland towns and two points in the metro to the south, so this is a real split rather than a mapping artefact.
On storm surge we have to be honest that our coverage is sampled rather than complete, because the county's mapping server throttled us. Residential Wildlight is overwhelmingly outside the modelled surge envelopes. But the community's own arterial at the hospital campus falls inside a category four envelope, and two of six sampled parcels in the newest village fall inside a category five. Take that as a flag to check the specific lot rather than as a community-wide finding.
On insurance, this is where our expectation was wrong and the correction is worth money. We assumed north Florida meant cheap. It does not, on the headline figure: the county averages about $3,051 including wind, above the state's county median of about $2,893, and above every inland county in this corridor, because the county contains a barrier island and this address is pooled with it. The real advantage is in the other column. Excluding wind, this county averages about $1,608, the ninth lowest of the 66 counties reporting, roughly 21 to 24 per cent below the three neighbouring counties. One caution the regulator itself makes: those two columns describe different groups of policies and cannot be subtracted, and the proof is that in two counties the excluding-wind average actually exceeds the including-wind one. Get a real quote on the actual house.
On schools we do have names, which is rarer than it should be. The county's own attendance-zone service, last edited days before we looked, puts this community in its own zone, served by Wildlight Elementary for kindergarten through fifth, then Yulee Middle and Yulee High. Six control points around the county returned six different and correct zones. The structural detail worth noticing is that the surrounding zone splits elementary across two schools while this community has a single one. The caveat: that layer is the county's cartographic rendering of school board policy rather than the board's own service, and boundaries move. Run the exact address through the district before you rely on it.
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 reason specific to this community: you are buying very early into a build-out that will run for decades, and almost everything that will determine your carrying cost is decided by documents rather than by anything you can see on site. Which borrowing your lot caught, how many installments remain, what is authorised but not yet issued against your area, and, in the newest village, why two identical lots are exactly a fifth apart.
The second reason is the resale disclosure gap. The statutory warning about district assessments is required on the initial sale only, so if you are buying from a first owner, nobody is obliged to hand you any of this. Somebody has to go and get it.
It is also worth naming what is genuinely good, because it is unusual. Not one parcel in this community is in a flood zone, the tax rate fell this year, there are no flat fire, solid waste or stormwater assessments in this county at all, the community has its own elementary school, and several district assessments went down rather than up. Against that, an insurance market that needs a real quote, an evacuation split that nothing else will tell you about, and a governance structure that will stay with the landowner for a very long time.
On builders, we name only what a primary record supports. Pulte Homes is the largest builder here by recorded parcel count and holds about 539 lots in the age-restricted village; two other national builders hold smaller positions in the same roll, and a fourth had an acquisition agreement before the district's board recently. The land developer is a separate long-established forestry company and we are not naming entities. 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. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign rather than after. And read what the purchase agreement says about completion timing, price changes before closing, and dispute resolution.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Pulte Homes, any homebuilder, any developer of Wildlight, the community of Yulee, or Nassau 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
Wildlight FAQ
What is Wildlight?
It is a very large planned community on former timberland in unincorporated Nassau County, about half an hour north of Jacksonville and twenty minutes from the coast, with a Yulee mailing address. The plan is for about 24,000 homes across roughly 22,700 acres, of which about 744 are built and occupied today, so it is about 3 per cent of the way through a build-out that will run for decades. Pulte Homes is the largest builder here by recorded parcel count and holds about 539 lots in the age-restricted village; two other national builders hold smaller positions and a fourth had an acquisition agreement before the district's board recently. Jurisdiction is not ambiguous: the full community envelope returns no incorporated place in three separate vintages of the federal boundary layer, while four control municipalities return correctly in all three. Yulee is a statistical designation, not a government.
Why does an age-restricted lot here pay 20 per cent less than an identical one?
We do not know, and that is the honest answer, but the fact itself is exact and checkable. In the newest village, funded entirely by one 2025 borrowing, a 50-foot lot that is not age-restricted is assessed about $1,394.93 a year of debt and an age-restricted 50-foot lot is assessed about $1,162.43. The ratio is 1.20000, not approximately. That is about $232.50 a year and about $6,975 across the thirty installments that remain. What makes it strange is that the district's own master assessment methodology, adopted by the same board, gives both products the identical maximum lien and the identical unit factor of 1.00. The maximum-lien document treats them the same; the bond actually issued does not. The supplemental report that would explain the difference was presented to the board on the record and is not in the posted package, so we could not read it. Ask the district for it.
Does a wider lot always cost more here?
No, and this is where the four separate borrowings show up. The district has borrowed four times, in 2018, 2021, 2024 and 2025, and the rate environment moved from roughly 2.4 to 3.5 per cent up to roughly 4.1 to 6.25. Because each borrowing is pledged to its own area, the frontage ladder breaks. A 45-foot lot pays about $37 a year more than a 55-foot lot. A 60-foot lot pays about $254 a year more than a 65-foot lot. Fifteen feet of frontage between two other neighbourhoods is worth about $16 a year. Across the whole community, the same 50-foot product ranges from about $1,419 to about $1,760 a year, a spread of about $341, and because the cheapest also has five fewer installments left the lifetime difference is about $15,601. Ask for the annual figure, the payments remaining and the payoff together; any one alone will mislead you.
How much more debt could be added here?
A great deal, and you should understand exactly what that number is and is not. The master methodology for the newest village apportions roughly $637 million of debt across its 4,100 planned units, at an assumed 8 per cent coupon, and about $53.5 million of that has actually been issued, or roughly 8.4 per cent. Per 50-foot lot the recorded maximum annual debt assessment is about $13,860, against an actual current levy of about $1,395, which is about 10 per cent of the ceiling. That maximum is a recorded ceiling, not a forecast, and no district we have looked at levies anywhere near its maximum. But it is the legal limit on what can be assessed against that lot without new consent, and it is a real number in a real document. Ask the district what is planned for issuance in the next few years and against which areas.
Who controls the district?
Landowners, and the arithmetic of changing that is worth seeing. This is not an ordinary Florida community development district; it was created by its own act of the state legislature, which writes its own transition thresholds. Full resident control requires 40,500 qualified electors living inside the district. This entire county's active registered voter roll is about 81,083, so that threshold is about 49.9 per cent of the county's whole electorate living in this one community. A single resident seat requires 9,000 electors, about 11.1 per cent of the county roll. The alternative trigger is 22,000 completed homes, which is about 92 per cent of full build-out. Until one of those happens, elections are one vote per acre. At the most recent landowners' meeting, about 19,736 voting units were assigned by proxy to one proxy holder, who nominated the candidates and cast every vote; three people were present and the meeting ran twelve minutes. The district's audit states plainly that all board members are affiliated with the developer. We report the mechanism and the arithmetic and name nobody.
What are the taxes and the other charges?
The rate here totals about 15.35 mills and it went down about 0.28 mills in the most recent year. It is made up of the county levy, a municipal services unit, two school components, water management and an inland navigation levy, and the components sum to the published total exactly. One thing genuinely worth knowing: this county levies no flat fire assessment, no solid waste assessment and no stormwater assessment at all. Fire sits inside the millage and garbage is an open subscription you arrange privately, so the only non-ad-valorem line on the tax bill is the district. And unincorporated is not the cheap option here: the nearest town totals about 14.81 mills, about half a mill less than this address, because the services unit costs more than that town's entire municipal levy. Worked through on $400,000 of taxable value, the total runs from about $7,560 to about $7,901 depending on neighbourhood, of which roughly 19 to 22 per cent is the district rather than tax.
Before you walk into a sales office
Get your inside track on Wildlight
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 annual assessment, installments remaining and payoff for a specific lot, what is authorised but not yet issued against that area, the association's dues and recorded documents, 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.