Imperial Golf Estates

Imperial Golf Estates is gated, in North Naples, on the inland side of US 41. Two 18-hole golf courses lie inside the gates, East and West, and both belong to Imperial Golf Club.

The houses went up over about 50 years, starting in 1964, and that's the fact to shop against. The stock here is not one thing, and two addresses a street apart can be very different propositions: different decade, different roof, different pipework behind the wall. Judge the house, not the entrance.

Why is the golf club a separate question from the association?

Because it is a separate organization. Imperial Golf Club sits inside the gates and keeps its own books, which are not the homeowners association's books. Two organizations with two budgets, which is why a home here can carry one bill or two.

The club also draws a line around what it pays for: "we don't burden our members with the cost of duplicating their residential community amenities". That is a statement about what the club charges its own members for, and it says nothing about what the residential side of Imperial costs.

Who plays the courses?

Not only the people who live behind the gate. The club headlines part of its membership page "Residency Is Not A Requirement For Membership", and says that "the majority of our golf members live outside the Imperial community". So the membership list runs both ways, drawn from inside the gates and from outside them.

Membership comes in equity and non-equity categories, and the golf carries a stated ceiling: "to preserve the golf experience, our golfing memberships are capped at 280 members per golf course". Read that as written. It's a limit per course, not a figure for the club as a whole.

Why do two homes here quote different monthly figures?

Imperial is a master community made up of named sub-associations, and which one a home sits in is the single largest reason two homes behind the same gate quote different monthly figures. So get the name of the sub-association before you get a number, because the number follows from the name.

What kind of homes are behind the gate?

About half are detached houses. Condominium buildings take most of the remainder, low-rise and mid-rise, with attached villas in smaller numbers behind them. There are no towers.

Homes hold 2 to 4 bedrooms, and living space runs from about 1,150 to about 3,500 square feet. Sold prices span the $230,000s to around $1.8 million, and a gap that wide behind one gate follows from the range of what was built. A modest condominium and a large detached house are both Imperial.

What should you check on a condominium building?

Its age, before anything else: some of the buildings here are old enough to fall under Florida's requirement for structural review and funded reserves. Two answers matter, what the review turned up and whether the reserve account holds enough to act on it. Between them they decide whether the monthly figure stays put or a special assessment follows behind it. A detached house sits outside all of this.

What to settle before making an offer

• The sub-association the home belongs to, and the monthly amount attached to it.
• Whether the documents at that address require club membership, or leave it to the owner.
• What a membership costs, to get in and then each year after, if you mean to play.
• Where the 280-per-course cap stands on the course you would play, and whether joining means waiting.

Two things sit inside this gate and they do not keep step. One is a golf club with its own budget, its own equity and non-equity categories, and a membership that reaches outside the gates as well as inside. The other is 50 years of houses wrapped around two 18-hole courses, built to no single pattern and priced accordingly.