Naples Lakes Country Club

Naples Lakes Country Club sits off Collier Boulevard at Rattlesnake Hammock Road, gated, with 731 homes arranged around one golf course and one club at 4784 Naples Lakes Boulevard. Seven homes in ten are attached. Building ran from 2000 to 2004, with 310 finished in 2002 alone and nothing added since.

One piece of structure decides more here than the house you pick. The club is the homeowners association, a single corporation that holds the golf course and runs it, so membership isn't something a buyer decides. It's mandatory, fixed to the home, and the golf arrives as an assessment owed whether anyone here plays or not.

Is club membership optional here?

No. The declaration makes membership "mandatory and automatic with the ownership of any Unit", one class of it, held by every owner and inseparable from the house. The club's rules bar an owner from resigning it.

The golf is a covenant, not a subscription. An owner agrees to pay a Golf Course Assessment by accepting a deed, and a lien secures what is owed. The declaration heads off the obvious objection: "No Member may be exempt from liability for the Golf Course assessments by non-use of the Golf Course."

What falls due when a home changes hands?

Two charges beyond the purchase price. The first is a one-time transfer fee on a resale. The declaration lets the board "impose a transfer fee incident to conveyances of Units." The board fixes it, raised it for 2024 and again for 2025, and limits it to buyers new to the community. The sum is large, so confirm the figure in force with the club, and who is expected to pay it, before you commit to a price.

The second is whatever the seller owes. On a transfer of title the new owner is "jointly and severally liable with the previous Unit owner" for assessments and other charges due at the conveyance. Assessments stay a lien until the account is clear, so get an estoppel certificate showing the balance before closing.

Who bills an owner at Naples Lakes?

Three bodies at least, which is why one figure isn't the whole cost. The club bills a quarterly membership fee bundling operating dues with reserve and capital contributions. It also bills a quarterly master association fee, which differs from village to village. Under both sits the village's own association: "Sub-Association Maintenance Fees are billed separately by the individual Management Companies."

Fourteen separately recorded condominiums sit inside the four attached villages, so an attached home answers to a condominium board as well as the master. Use charges come on top, an annual trail fee for a private golf cart, bag storage, a locker, a handicap fee.

Can you rent the home out?

Yes, within hard limits, and it costs you the club while a tenant is in place. A lease cannot run shorter than a calendar month or thirty consecutive days to the same tenant, and nothing shorter may be advertised. The declaration adds that "no Unit may be leased more than four (4) times in any calendar year", and the board approves every lease.

While a tenant is in the home, the owner loses the golf course. Club rules reach further: "the Member shall not have any privileges to use the Club Facilities, other than dining facilities". The assessment keeps running through all of it. A tenant gets club use only after a transfer fee, then pays green, cart, fitness and tennis fees an owner would not.

Nothing grandfathers a buyer out of this. If the plan is to rent it out part of the year and play golf the rest, it doesn't work here.

What are the six villages, and what do they sell for?

Six villages are named in the declaration: Lake Arrowhead, Lake Barrington, Juliana Village, Lake Placid, Providence Village and Lake Tahoe. Each elects a director and carries its own master fee. Four hold the 501 attached homes, two the 230 detached houses, and they are four separate markets:

• Barrington, 209 condominiums. The smallest homes here, from roughly 1,400 square feet, with recorded sales from the $340,000s into the $600,000s, typically in the $400,000s.
• Arrowhead, 128 carriage homes. A step up in size. Sales from around $500,000 to around $640,000.
• Juliana and Providence, 88 and 76 coach homes. The largest attached homes, reaching about 2,550 square feet, selling from the $600,000s to about $800,000.
• Placid villa homes and Tahoe estate homes. Detached, between about 2,450 and about 4,050 square feet, selling from around $840,000 to about $2 million, most often around $1.05 million.

What is the golf course, and what else is on the property?

Eighteen holes, par 72, an Arnold Palmer Signature course. Six sets of tees, the longest 6,729 yards at a 73.3 rating and 142 slope, the shortest 4,344. The practice range is the lake north of the clubhouse, an aqua driving range.

The clubhouse holds formal and casual dining. Outside it, the resort-style pool, the Arnie's cabana, a fitness room, tennis courts and bocce, and each of the four attached villages has its own pool. Protected wetland tracts wrap the villages and thread between them, kept by the association.

Volunteers counting species here in 2018 found 496, and the club won Audubon International's worldwide BioBlitz award. The club says it has been a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary since 2001.