Shadow Wood Country Club

Shadow Wood at the Brooks is a gated community of 34 distinct neighborhoods in Estero, in Lee County, off Coconut Road between US 41 and I-75. The gate sits 0.7 miles east of US 41, and the main clubhouse is a further mile inside it.

What the address itself brings is a short list: the gate, security staffed 24/7, and walking and biking trails. Almost everything a buyer moves here for sits behind a membership instead. Golf, tennis, bocce and the clubhouse dining belong to Shadow Wood Country Club. The beach, the spa and the fitness center belong to a second club, at addresses that aren't Shadow Wood's. So you're choosing a house, and then choosing nothing, one membership, the other, or both.

How do you get a golf membership at Shadow Wood?

Through the club, and not through the house. The club publishes a waiting list for its Full Golf membership, and no purchase at any price clears it. What ownership buys is position: the club gives "priority to residents over non-residents on the waiting list on a two-to-one basis".

One route gets past the list, and it runs through the seller rather than the property. The club's FAQ puts it exactly: "If you purchase a home from an active Golf member who plans on resigning at the time of closing then you could join as an immediate Golf member and bypass the waiting list." So ask whether a listing's owner is an active Golf member who intends to resign at closing. Sold by anybody else, the same house carries nothing, and the club's word is could rather than will.

Skipping the list is not skipping the cost, because you still join, and the club says the initiation fee is "due in full at the time of joining". The club publishes no figure for it.

Two more categories sit alongside Full Golf:

• Golf-in-Waiting. Its own category, which "allows the member to play golf in season with one-day advanced tee times, plus all other full privileges at the Club". In season, the tee sheet opens a day out.
• Lifestyle. The non-golf category, and the club is precise about the golf in it: "Lifestyle Members have access to all three Shadow Wood golf courses during the summer months and limited use of the golf practice facilities in season."

Where are the three golf courses?

Two of them are behind the gate and the third is in another town. Golf here runs to 54 holes, each course described by the club as "designated as an Audubon International Cooperative Sanctuary". The North and the South play from the main campus. The Preserve Course plays from a second clubhouse at 6900 Shadow Creek Blvd in Fort Myers, inside the gates of Shadow Wood Preserve, a separate community four miles north. A Golf member plays all three, and the club's golf pages don't say that one sits elsewhere. All three have been renovated by Rees Jones, and the club names no original designer.

What does a country club membership cover besides golf?

Eight Har-Tru tennis courts, and three bocce courts beside the Sunset Terrace Bar, covered and lit. Dining is at the clubhouse, with no minimum attached to it: "No, Shadow Wood does not require any minimum spending at the club." There's no trial or preview membership either, so seeing the club from the inside first means coming as a member's guest.

Does the beach come with a home here?

No. It belongs to The Commons Club, a separate private membership, and the country club's wording for what living here gets you is "the opportunity to join". That club is The Brooks' club rather than Shadow Wood's, and it serves five neighborhoods. It is two places in two towns as well, a campus on Coconut Road in Estero and a Beach Club on Little Hickory Island in Bonita Springs. So the spa and fitness are one drive, and the beach another.

The Commons Club caps itself at 1,575 memberships, across the five neighborhoods it serves. The club's membership page says what happens at the cap. "Once we have reached this cap, access to all club amenities is only available via a new member waitlist." Gold is the category that carries the Beach Club, and only people living in The Brooks may hold one. Buying here makes you eligible to apply rather than admitted.

What kind of homes are here?

Two homes in three are detached houses, and most of the rest are low-rise condominiums, the ones the club calls coach homes. Floor plans run 2 to 5 bedrooms, from about 1550 to about 5900 square feet. Prices reach from the $420,000s to around $4.5 million, and building dates from 1998 onward.

That last date is the one to watch on a condominium. These buildings are reaching the age at which a structural inspection and funded reserves become a Florida requirement. Ask for both the report and the reserve balance on a specific building before you offer, because work found at an association with nothing set aside lands as a special assessment instead of a higher monthly charge. None of that reaches a detached house.

Monthly charges swing widely between addresses here, so that figure has to come from the specific home. The club itself has been member-owned since 2010, and members elect the board of nine that hires its general manager.