Cypress Woods Golf & Country Club

Cypress Woods Golf & Country Club is 787 homes and a golf course in North Naples. It sits east of I-75 and north of Immokalee Road, with the clubhouse at 3525 Northbrooke Drive. The mix is 656 condominium homes to 131 detached houses, built between 1999 and 2006. The declaration caps the community at 787 units, so nothing further is coming.

Membership in the club isn't optional, and it attaches to the home rather than the person. That's what bundled golf means here, and the bill for it arrives every year. "Annual membership dues are required; every homeowner in the community is a golf and social member of the Club." A one-time capital charge also lands at closing, and that one is the buyer's.

Is Cypress Woods a gated community?

No, and the club explains why. "Additionally, the Club cannot provide a gated access to the Community since there is a county road running through the entire Community. However, each HOA/COA does have gated access to their individual communities. The gated access to the individual communities is the responsibility of that particular HOA/COA." The road is Northbrooke Drive, and Collier County owns the tract it runs on. Gates here belong to the neighborhood associations, and the club provides no outside security service. If you want a single gate around everything, this isn't that.

What does a buyer owe at closing?

A resale capital assessment, which the club charges the transferee in any conveyance. The buyer is the transferee, and the due date is the closing itself. It is collected as an assessment, under a section of the declaration headed "Creation of Lien", so unpaid it attaches to the home as a lien. The sum is substantial and the board can change it by resolution, so get the figure from the club before you sign. Anything a seller leaves unpaid follows the home.

Who bills a homeowner here?

The club does, and the club is the master association: one corporation owns the course, the recreation facilities and the clubhouse. So the master HOA fee on a listing and what the club assesses each year are the same bill. Every owner pays an identical share, on a 1/787th basis: a flat pays what a house pays.

The bill that moves is the neighborhood one: the club counts 23 associations across the community. Cypress Trace and Grand Cypress carry a third body too, a recreation association that owns their gates, roads, pools and landscaping. Get both figures for the exact home, from the club and that neighborhood's manager.

There's a compulsory clubhouse spend too. "There is an annual food minimum applicable to each Living Unit." Whatever goes unspent is invoiced with the annual assessment.

What can you buy here?

"Condominium" covers three products here, and the bands barely overlap:

• Flats. The Terrace and Cypress Trace Gardens buildings, in Cypress Trace, the largest neighborhood at 470 homes. Sold between the $210,000s and the low $400,000s.
• Verandas and coach homes. Verandas are two-story, with a screened lanai and a carport or one-car garage. Laurel Greens and Grand Cypress hold two-story coach homes, each with a two-car garage. Sold from around $360,000 to around $475,000.
• Houses. Bradford Lakes and Jasmine Lake, 131 detached homes between them. Sold from around $600,000, with around $810,000 at the top.

Nothing here stands above three stories, and the seven Terrace buildings are old and tall enough that Florida requires structural inspections of them, with reserves funded for the findings. One has been inspected and the other six fall due between 2033 and 2035. An inspection that turns up structural work is what puts a special assessment on the table, so read the association's minutes.

What is at the club, and who else uses it?

Eighteen holes, par 72, a Gordon Lewis design playing about 6,240 yards from the back tees, with six sets of tees named after the neighborhoods. It opened in 1999 and was redesigned in 2012. Around it: eight lighted pickleball courts, one lighted tennis court, three artificial-turf bocce courts, a fitness center open 24 hours and a pool complex. Pools are a neighborhood matter: Laurel Greens North, Laurel Greens South, Jasmine Lake and Bradford Lakes have none, so those homes use the clubhouse pool.

Owning here isn't what puts everybody on the course. The declaration creates annual and special memberships for people who do not own in the community, golfing privileges included, and the club advertises them. "These non-voting, non-equity memberships are available to those who do not own in Cypress Woods." Full membership and the vote are what ownership carries.

Can you rent it out, and can you keep a dog?

Renting is tightly controlled: the floor is thirty days, and the declaration lets a neighborhood "establish stricter standards" of its own. A lease is capped at twelve months, and every lease and renewal needs club approval. A tenant gets no club access unless the owner delegates the membership, and an owner who delegates it loses their own card and charging privileges until the lease ends.

Two household pets are allowed, a dog or a cat, plus tropical fish, leashed outdoors and never on the golf course, and tenants may not keep pets at all. A building's association can be stricter on both.

The club takes no unaccompanied visitors and runs no tours, so seeing it means arriving with somebody who can bring you in.