Timber Creek

Timber Creek is 1,315 homes behind a gate on State Road 82, in Fort Myers, Lee County. Two ways in: a front gate and a back gate. The community association describes it as "a resort-style community designed for everyday living and easy enjoyment," and every house in it was built in 2020 or later.

Three kinds of home sit behind that one gate, and which one you are looking at sets the price. Detached houses run from the $370,000s to around $850,000. Townhouses and attached villas run from the $270,000s to around $370,000. Those two bands barely touch, so one price for Timber Creek would describe a market that isn't there.

What kinds of homes are at Timber Creek?

941 detached houses, 216 townhouses and 158 attached villas. All of them are owned freehold, on their own lots, and that holds for the townhouses and the villas as much as for the detached houses. There isn't a condominium in the place. A townhouse somewhere else is often a condominium unit, which changes what you own and who fixes the roof over it. Not here.

The houses are low: one story or two, nothing taller. Floor plans begin around 1400 square feet, stretch to about 4050 at the top, and the bedroom count runs 2 to 6. A private pool sits on 345 of them, so a pool is something to look for rather than something to expect.

Is there golf at Timber Creek?

No, and it's worth saying plainly: the community has no golf course, and no land inside the gate is set aside for one. There are no boat docks either, on any homesite here.

What is at the clubhouse?

One clubhouse of about 22,000 square feet, built in 2023, on a 9.66-acre site on Timber Creek Drive. A pool sits on the same site, and there's a playground in the community.

That building and the ground under it belong to the association itself rather than to a separate club, which settles who owns the place and not what it costs to walk in. Ask the association for its list of facilities, and ask what using them runs to on top of the assessment. An association can own a building and still charge for what goes on inside it.

How many homes back onto water?

693 of the 1,315 homesites front water, which is a little over half of the community. Eleven lakes cover about 122 acres inside the gate, with another 142 acres or so of preserve and buffer land kept up under contract. Water shapes the street layout here rather than sitting in one corner of it.

What may be done on that water is a separate question, and a waterfront buyer should settle it before offering rather than after. Ask what is allowed on and along the lake, and what an owner may plant or clear between the back of the house and the bank.

What should a buyer pin down before offering?

Five things:

• The assessment. Ask the association what it comes to and what it includes. The answer may not be the same for a detached house, a townhouse and a villa.
• What the facilities cost to use, over and above that assessment.
• The leasing rules, if letting the house out is any part of the plan.
• What is permitted on and along the lake, if the house you want is one of the 693 on water.
• The recorded declaration, and whatever rules the association has adopted under it. Have your agent read them.

Every homesite in Timber Creek carries a finished house, the oldest of them dating from 2020, and the clubhouse followed in 2023. Eleven lakes, 1,315 roofs, and one building inside the gate that isn't somebody's home.