BROWSE LUXURY COMMUNITIES LOCATED IN SOUTHWEST FLORIDA
Last Updated: September 2026 | By Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar, Domain Realty Group | Southwest Florida Real Estate
There is exactly one master-planned town in the United States that was built from agricultural land around a Catholic university by a single founding partnership, and it sits 24 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico in eastern Collier County, Florida.
Ave Maria, Florida is the work of two organizations that combined a $250 million philanthropic vision with one of the largest agricultural landholdings in the state. Tom Monaghan (founder of Domino’s Pizza, who sold the company to Bain Capital in 1998 for approximately $1 billion) donated $250 million to create Ave Maria University, the centerpiece of a town to be built around it. Barron Collier Companies (descendants of the family that helped fund the construction of the Tamiami Trail in the 1920s and amassed over 1.3 million acres of Southwest Florida land) donated the land. The first students moved to the temporary campus in Naples in fall 2003. The permanent Ave Maria campus and town opened in 2007. As of mid-2026, the town has sold approximately 5,500 homes, is one of the top-20 selling master-planned communities in the United States, and has an approved expansion, voted through by Collier County commissioners on June 9, 2026, that brings its total housing capacity to 17,738 homes on roughly 8,000 acres.
This is a working town, not a marketing concept. Ave Maria has four builder brands (CC Homes, Del Webb, Lennar and Pulte; Del Webb is Pulte’s active-adult brand) building across five neighborhoods. It has its own utility company, its own fire station, its own EMS unit, and a 21-acre town center with a Publix anchor and more than twenty restaurants and retail tenants. It has a 1,100-seat church (The Oratory, also known as Ave Maria Catholic Church) that was the largest concrete pour in Florida at the time it was built. It is bordered on three sides by conservation lands, agricultural reserves, and the early-stage development sites of the next generation of Collier County’s Rural Lands Stewardship Area communities. And it has done all of this without incorporating as a city, without a mayor, without a council, and without a single property-tax-funded municipal department. Its governance runs through a special-purpose Florida state government called the Ave Maria Stewardship Community District, which is currently in active transition from developer-controlled to resident-controlled.
For buyers looking at Southwest Florida real estate, Ave Maria represents three distinct propositions that rarely come together in one place. The first is value: the median sale price in ZIP 34142 (which Ave Maria shares with Immokalee) ran $394,500 in August 2026, against $595,000 for the broader Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island MSA, a roughly 34 percent discount within the same metropolitan market. The second is resilience, Ave Maria sits at 23 feet of elevation, every utility runs underground, and the developer issued a formal statement on June 4, 2025 stating that the community “experienced zero damage despite the extreme 2024 season” (which included Hurricane Helene in September and Hurricane Milton in October). The third is identity, a Catholic-anchored town built around a Newman Guide–recommended Catholic university and a parish church that serves as the town’s literal and architectural centerpiece. Whether the third proposition is a feature or simply context depends on the buyer; the town’s founder said publicly in 2007 that Ave Maria “is open to everyone, not just Catholics,” and the demographic mix today, including an active-adult Del Webb section planned for 2,449 homes at build-out, bears that out.
This guide covers everything you need to know about buying, living in, or investing in Ave Maria: the neighborhoods and builders, the real estate market data, the schools, the hospital, the university, the governance structure, the costs of ownership, the hurricane resilience, and the substantial growth pipeline that surrounds and overlaps the town. If you are evaluating Ave Maria, this is the most thoroughly cited single source we know how to produce.
Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar of Domain Realty Group have helped buyers navigate Southwest Florida’s evolving neighborhood map for over two decades, and we are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008. Our team has closed sales across the Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island market, and we have represented both buyers and sellers on new-construction contracts with national builders. If you have questions that this guide doesn’t answer, contact Jesse McGreevy directly at (239) 898-6072 or [email protected]. We sell across all five of Ave Maria’s active builders and we know every village, every clubhouse, every amenity, and every nuance of the cost stack.
If you are comparing Ave Maria against the rest of the region, we maintain guides to the neighbouring markets buyers most often weigh against it: Naples, Babcock Ranch, Golden Gate Estates, Lely Resort and Marco Island. Every active listing inside the town sits on our Ave Maria homes for sale page, and because Ave Maria trades as part of the Naples market, our guides to the best real estate agents in Ave Maria and the best real estate agents in Naples explain how we work with buyers and sellers here.
If you only have two minutes, these are the eight facts about Ave Maria that change a buying or selling decision. Every one of them is documented further down this page, with the source cited, so you can check our work before you act on any of it.
This guide runs long because Ave Maria has more moving parts than a typical Southwest Florida community: a special district, four builder brands, a university, a hospital project and an approved expansion. Jump straight to the section you need, or read it top to bottom.
Six structural features distinguish Ave Maria from every other master-planned community in Southwest Florida, and from every other planned town in the United States. Some of these are well known. Others are deeply important to a buyer’s long-term experience and almost never surface in property listings.
Ave Maria is the only town in the United States designed and built around a Catholic university as its anchor institution. Ave Maria University, founded by Tom Monaghan with an initial gift of $250 million, opened on a temporary campus in Naples in fall 2003. The permanent campus in Ave Maria opened with the 2007–2008 academic year. The university and the town were planned and built as a single integrated project, with the central church (The Oratory) sitting at the town center, the academic buildings radiating around it, and residential neighborhoods extending outward.
Today, Ave Maria University enrolls approximately 1,260 students drawn from all 50 states and more than 20 countries. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) to award bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. It offers 53 distinct degree programs across eight areas of study, including a Ph.D. in Theology, an online MBA, and majors in disciplines that often do not appear at small Catholic liberal arts colleges: Mechanical Engineering, Biochemistry, Marine Biology, Computer Science, and Nursing among them. It is a Newman Guide Recommended College, one of a small list of Catholic institutions endorsed by the Cardinal Newman Society for fidelity to Catholic teaching. It competes in NAIA Division I athletics in The Sun Conference as the Gyrenes, a Marine Corps slang term that nods to founder Monaghan’s service in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1956 to 1959. In November 2025, the men’s cross country team won the first conference championship in the university’s history.
The current president, Mark Middendorf, is the university’s fourth and has held the office since February 2022. He came from a business background (he founded Lighthouse Catholic Media), and holds an MBA in Finance from DePaul University. Governor Ron DeSantis delivered the 2026 commencement address at the Tom Golisano Field House on campus.
For families relocating to Ave Maria, the university is more than an anchor. It is a daily presence. Many residents work at AMU. Many attend daily mass at The Oratory. Many send their children to Donahue Academy, the Catholic classical Pre-K through 12 school that operates under the Diocese of Venice on land adjacent to campus. The university’s library, athletic facilities, and event programming are woven into community life. There is nothing analogous in any other Southwest Florida community.
Ave Maria does not have a mayor, a city council, a city manager, or any other municipal department. It has never incorporated as a city. It will likely never incorporate as a city. Its governance instead runs through a structure that is rare in Florida and rarer in the United States: the Ave Maria Stewardship Community District, abbreviated AMSCD, an independent special-purpose unit of local government created by Chapter 2004-461, Laws of Florida, signed into law on June 17, 2004 and effective October 1, 2004.
AMSCD was created with an original boundary of 10,805.08 acres, with the Town of Ave Maria’s residential and commercial footprint (the Stewardship Receiving Area, or SRA) occupying 5,027 acres of that. It is governed by a five-member Board of Supervisors. The District has broad statutory powers to finance, construct, operate, and maintain infrastructure within its boundary: water management, sewer and wastewater, transportation, parks and recreation, environmental management, fire prevention, emergency services, and community development services. It issues revenue and special-assessment bonds. As of the September 30, 2023 audit, AMSCD had approximately $99.94 million in outstanding bonded debt across ten series. These bonds finance the infrastructure that makes Ave Maria possible: the roads, the underground utilities, the stormwater system, the town center streetscape, the central parks. They are repaid through a non-ad-valorem special assessment that appears on the property tax bill sent in November each year. AMSCD’s 2024 assessment roll certified approximately $10.25 million in assessments. Its fiscal-year 2023 special-assessment revenue was $6.92 million; total debt service paid was $18.99 million.
The governance structure is in active transition from developer-controlled to resident-controlled. When AMSCD was created in 2004, all five seats on the Board of Supervisors were elected by landowners on a one-acre / one-vote basis, meaning that the developer, who held the overwhelming majority of land, effectively appointed the board. As the town built out and the qualified-elector population grew, the enabling statute provided for a phased transition: at certain urban-density thresholds, individual seats convert from landowner-vote to qualified-elector-vote elections. As of the November 8, 2022 election, two of the five supervisor seats are now elected by qualified electors (registered voters residing within the District). The remaining three seats are still elected on a landowner basis. The threshold continues to ramp as urban density grows: at 90 percent urban density, all five seats convert to resident-elected. The Board scheduled a workshop for May 5, 2026 titled “Board Seat Conversion Analysis” to begin formal planning for the next phase of conversion.
This governance structure has been the subject of legitimate journalistic scrutiny since the town was first proposed. The Naples Daily News published a three-part series by Liam Dillon in May 2009 titled “Ave Maria: A Town Without a Vote,” which surfaced internal communications from the development team (including the now-cited memo stating that “with the preserve areas and university votes we could control it in perpetuity”), and analyzed the precise math (a 5,027-acre town footprint within a 10,805-acre district boundary, structured to keep the developer’s elector base above the threshold for landowner control). The Boston University Law Review followed with an academic article titled “Quasi-Cities,” analyzing Ave Maria as a case study of developer-affiliated special-purpose governance.
The current state of affairs is more nuanced than the 2009 framing. Two of the five seats are now resident-elected. The Civic Association of Ave Maria, founded in 2024 by Collier County Commissioner Bill McDaniel, organizes resident engagement with both the District board and the broader Collier County BoCC. Multiple sitting supervisors are residents who do not work for the developer. The most outspoken voice opposing the developer’s currently-proposed 2,042-acre expansion at the May 7, 2026 Planning Commission hearing was an AMSCD board member, Robb Klucik, who testified against his own district’s expansion proposal. The system is not the same system it was in 2009. It is also not a municipal democracy. Honest framing on this is part of what buyers deserve.
The most concrete buyer-benefit feature of Ave Maria is something that has been quietly true for the entire history of the town but only entered the regional conversation after Hurricane Ian in 2022 and the back-to-back Helene and Milton storms in 2024: the town is built to survive Southwest Florida hurricanes with minimal damage, and it has done so three storms in a row.
In a press release dated June 4, 2025 (titled “Ave Maria Preps for 2025 Hurricane Season”), Ave Maria Development and Barron Collier Companies stated directly: “Ave Maria experienced zero damage despite the extreme 2024 season.” The 2024 season included Hurricane Helene (which made landfall in the Big Bend in September) and Hurricane Milton (which crossed central Florida in October as a major hurricane). Hurricane Ian in September 2022 produced “only minor landscape damage” in Ave Maria, per the same source. Hurricane Irma in 2017 caused “no interruptions” to community utilities.
Seven structural decisions explain this track record:
The practical financial benefit of this resilience profile shows up most cleanly in homeowners insurance. A typical Ave Maria home insures for roughly $2,500 to $5,000 per year, depending on property age, value, and coverage selections. Comparable coastal Collier homes (same square footage, same age, same value tier) routinely insure for $8,000 to $20,000 per year and increasingly require special endorsements or surplus-lines carriers to cover at all. Over a 20-year ownership period, the insurance differential alone runs $100,000 to $300,000 in favor of Ave Maria.
Ave Maria is a working market. As of the avemaria.com mid-2025 sales report, the town had 5,500 to 5,600 homes sold cumulatively since opening, against an original buildout target of 11,000 homes, meaning roughly half-built by unit count, twenty years in. The 2025 mid-year period alone produced 318 new home sales, placing Ave Maria among the top 20 master-planned communities in the United States by sales volume (per Barron Collier’s January 2025 milestones release and RCLCO ranking data).
Four builder brands currently build in Ave Maria:
You may see the name “Liberty Park” in Collier County deed indexing as “Ave Maria Unit 7 Liberty Park.” That is the recorded plat name of what is now Avalon Park, whose neighborhood association was renamed from Liberty Park at Ave Maria Neighborhood Association in 2015 according to its Florida Division of Corporations filing. It is not a separate builder or community.
The Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island Metropolitan Statistical Area is one of the most expensive housing markets in Florida, and one of the smallest geographically. Per the August 2026 SunStats report from Florida Realtors, the MSA-wide median sale price across all property types ran $595,000 (down 0.8 percent year over year), with the average sale price at $1,050,890. Cash buyers represented 55.2 percent of closed transactions, among the highest cash-buyer concentrations in any major US housing market.
Ave Maria sits inside that MSA, with a meaningfully different price profile. Median listing prices for new construction in Ave Maria proper run approximately $445,000 per public listing data, and the August 2026 ZIP 34142 SunStats median sale price (which blends Ave Maria with neighboring Immokalee) was $394,500. The Ave Maria-specific median is therefore roughly 30 to 34 percent below the broader MSA, while still placing buyers inside the same metropolitan area, the same primary employment market, the same beaches (~37 miles to coastal Naples, ~53 minutes by car), the same airport (~37 miles to Southwest Florida International / RSW), the same Naples Comprehensive Healthcare system (NCH), and the same Florida Realtors and Naples Area Board of Realtors MLS systems.
For a buyer comparing Ave Maria to coastal Collier on a per-square-foot basis, the trade-off is concrete. A new-construction four-bedroom home at Maple Ridge or Avalon Park in 2026 typically runs $200 to $250 per square foot for the base build. The same four-bedroom home in North Naples or Bonita Springs at comparable specifications typically runs $400 to $600 per square foot. The drive from Maple Ridge to Vanderbilt Beach is approximately 50 minutes; the drive from Maple Ridge to Mercato (Naples) is approximately 45 minutes. For a buyer willing to accept the 30-to-60-minute Naples commute (whether for work, dining, beaches, or services), the price-per-square-foot delta is the single largest individual financial decision in their Southwest Florida purchase.
Few towns in Florida hold as wide a demographic spread within a single residential master plan as Ave Maria does. The Catholic-family core (multi-child families relocating to Ave Maria specifically because of the parish, the university, and Donahue Academy) coexists with the active 55+ community at Del Webb Naples, which has its own demographic profile (often secular, often Florida-snowbird, often equity-rich and downsizing). The bundled-golf country club residents at The National Golf & Country Club overlap with both groups but skew older, wealthier, and golf-centric. Avalon Park, Gatherpoint and Maple Ridge absorb a broad mix of move-up families, work-from-home professionals, and value-conscious Naples-area buyers who priced themselves out of coastal Collier.
The town is not, and was never intended to be, exclusively Catholic. Tom Monaghan said it publicly in a 2007 CNN interview: “[Ave Maria town] is open to everyone, not just Catholics.” The town’s Master Association, the Stewardship District, the public school assignment to Ave Maria Elementary, which opened in town on August 11, 2026, the public-utility infrastructure, the streets, the parks, and the commercial center serve all residents on identical terms regardless of religious affiliation. The Oratory (the visible centerpiece) is owned by the Diocese of Venice and operates as a full Catholic parish. Residents of any faith, or none, live alongside it without any expected participation.
What’s true is that the Catholic identity is honest, present, and architecturally visible. The town center has a parish church at its hub. The largest single employer is a Catholic university. The town’s signature private school is a classical Catholic K-12. The annual liturgical calendar (including the Solemnity of the Annunciation on March 25, the town’s Feast Day) produces civic events with Bishop and clergy participation. For some buyers, that’s an affirmative draw. For others, it’s simply the town’s flavor, present but not imposing. For neither group does it function as a precondition for residence.
Ave Maria, Florida is the result of a single business partnership that brought together one of the largest individual Catholic philanthropic acts in American history with one of the largest agricultural landholdings in Florida. Understanding how the town came to exist requires understanding both halves of the partnership.
Thomas Stephen Monaghan was born on March 25, 1937 in Detroit, Michigan. His father died when he was four years old. He and his younger brother James spent years in St. Joseph Home for Children, a Catholic orphanage in Jackson, Michigan run by the Felician Sisters of Livonia. One of those nuns is credited in Monaghan’s own biographical accounts with shaping his lifelong Catholic devotion. As a young man he entered St. Joseph’s Seminary in Grand Rapids briefly before being expelled for disciplinary infractions. He served in the United States Marine Corps from 1956 to 1959, the source of the “Gyrenes” nickname later adopted by Ave Maria University’s athletic teams (Gyrene is Marine Corps slang).
In 1960, Monaghan and his brother James borrowed $900 to buy a small pizza shop called DomiNick’s in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Shortly thereafter James traded his half of the business to Tom in exchange for a Volkswagen Beetle. A lawsuit from Domino Sugar forced a name change, and the business became Domino’s Pizza. Over the next 38 years, Monaghan built Domino’s into one of the largest pizza chains in the world. He owned the Detroit Tigers Major League Baseball franchise from 1983 to 1992 (and won a World Series in 1984). In 1998, he sold Domino’s Pizza to Bain Capital for an aggregate consideration of approximately $1 billion.
Monaghan had been thinking about Catholic higher education since the 1980s. He was particularly influenced by Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 apostolic constitution by Pope John Paul II that called for a renewal of Catholic universities faithful to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. After selling Domino’s, Monaghan committed the bulk of his proceeds (and a substantial portion of his personal effort), to founding a new Catholic university that would reflect those principles.
His initial gift to what became Ave Maria University was $250 million, an amount that placed it among the largest single founding gifts in American higher education history. He also founded Ave Maria School of Law (originally in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1999, later relocated to Naples, Florida in 2009 and ultimately closed there in 2017) and Legatus, a fellowship organization for Catholic CEOs and executives. Monaghan continues to reside in Florida. His wife of 60 years, Marjorie (née Zybach), died of leukemia in 2023 at age 83.
Monaghan needed land. He needed enough land to build not just a university but a complete town that could support the university and its students, faculty, and staff. He partnered with Barron Collier Companies, the multi-generational agricultural and real estate firm based in Naples that owns more than 1.3 million acres of Southwest Florida land originally assembled by founder Barron Gift Collier Sr. in the early 20th century.
Barron Collier Sr. (1873–1939) made his fortune in streetcar advertising in New York and used the proceeds to fund the construction of the Tamiami Trail (US Highway 41) across the Everglades, a project that physically connected the southwest Florida coast to Miami and made meaningful population growth in the region possible. Collier County, Florida is named in his honor. The Barron Collier Companies family of businesses today includes agriculture, oil and gas leases, real estate development, and stewardship of the land that became Ave Maria and the surrounding Rural Lands Stewardship Area projects.
In 1976, the family split into two operating entities: Barron Collier Companies (which retained the land that became Ave Maria) and Collier Enterprises (a cousin company that owns and is currently developing other Rural Lands Stewardship Area communities including Rivergrass, Longwater, Bellmar, and the Town of Big Cypress). Both entities trace back to Barron Sr.’s original landholdings.
The land that became Ave Maria was historically agricultural, primarily citrus, with active groves still operating on adjacent parcels. The decision to develop a town on it was made jointly by Monaghan and the Barron Collier executive team in the early 2000s, with the developer entity Ave Maria Development, LLLP formed on July 31, 2003 as a Florida limited liability limited partnership. The principal address remains 2600 Golden Gate Parkway, Naples, FL 34105, the Barron Collier Companies headquarters. The general partners are Barron Collier Corporation and Nua Baile, LLC (the Monaghan-affiliated entity).
In a 2007 CNN interview, Monaghan articulated the long-range vision for the town: 11,000 homes, 25,000 residents, and 5,000 students at Ave Maria University at maturity. He wanted to build a community where “a particular number of Catholics, particularly serious Catholics, would want to live around a really high-quality Catholic university.” He was explicit in the same interview that the town would be “open to everyone, not just Catholics.”
The execution moved quickly. Ground was broken in 2005. The town’s central church (The Oratory) was the first major structural completion, with the first liturgies celebrated in 2007 and a formal dedication by Bishop Frank Dewane of the Diocese of Venice in March 2008. Ave Maria University moved from its temporary Naples campus to the permanent Ave Maria campus at the start of the 2007–2008 academic year. The first residential closings followed in the same period.
The town crossed key population and sales milestones over the next two decades. By the mid-2010s, the residential market had stabilized and multiple builders were active. By 2020, the town had passed 2,000 residences sold. By 2023, more than 1,000 homes had closed in the Del Webb Naples section alone. By mid-2025, total Ave Maria home sales had reached approximately 5,500 to 5,600 units (a little over half of the original 11,000-home buildout target), with the town ranked among the top 20 master-planned communities in the United States by sales volume in 2025.
The expansion approved by the Collier County Board of County Commissioners on June 9, 2026 raises the residential cap from 11,000 to 17,738 homes and the town footprint from approximately 5,928 acres to 7,970 acres. Both numbers exceed Monaghan’s original 2007 CNN vision in absolute terms, and the projected population at buildout would substantially exceed his original 25,000-resident target.
The story is not finished. As of mid-2026, Tom Monaghan is in his late 80s and remains active in Florida. The Barron Collier executive team (under CEO Blake Gable) continues to operate the development. The Diocese of Venice owns and operates The Oratory as a full canonical parish (Ave Maria Catholic Church). The university operates under its current president, Mark Middendorf, with record enrollment and a recent first-ever conference championship in athletics. The town opened its first public elementary school, Ave Maria Elementary, on August 11, 2026. The expansion vote at the BoCC will be one of several inflection points over the next several years.
What was a citrus farm in 2002 is now a working town that the Planning Commission of Collier County, voting 8-1 on May 7, 2026, has recommended be expanded to roughly 17,738 homes on 8,000 acres. Whether the BoCC follows that recommendation will be known by the time you read the next section of this guide.
Ave Maria’s real estate market sits at the intersection of two different sets of dynamics: the broader Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island MSA, and the Ave Maria new-construction pipeline run by four builder brands. In August 2026 those two moved in opposite directions, and that divergence is the most useful thing a buyer or seller here can know.
Data updated: September 2026. Figures below are the August 2026 Florida Realtors SunStats release, the most recent complete month, pulled 21 September 2026.
Per the August 2026 Florida Realtors SunStats report for the Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island MSA (all property types):
Metric | Aug 2026 | Aug 2025 | % YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
Closed Sales | 703 | 679 | +3.5% |
Cash Sales | 388 | 363 | +6.9% |
Cash Sales as % of Closed | 55.2% | 53.5% | +3.2% |
Median Sale Price | $595,000 | $600,000 | −0.8% |
Average Sale Price | $1,050,890 | $996,908 | +5.4% |
Dollar Volume | $738.8 Million | $676.9 Million | +9.1% |
Median % of Original List Price | 92.4% | 89.1% | +3.7% |
Median Time to Contract | 82 days | 99 days | −17.2% |
Median Time to Sale | 127 days | 133 days | −4.5% |
New Pending Sales | 774 | 746 | +3.8% |
New Listings | 808 | 880 | −8.2% |
Pending Inventory | 1,001 | 948 | +5.6% |
Active Inventory | 4,854 | 5,904 | −17.8% |
Months Supply of Inventory | 5.7 | 8.2 | −30.5% |
Three pieces of signal stand out at the MSA level, and all three have changed direction since the spring:
Ave Maria does not have its own SunStats geographic preset. Per Florida Realtors, the most localized aggregation available is ZIP 34142, which is shared between Ave Maria and the much larger town of Immokalee. Immokalee is the post office of record for the entire ZIP, which is why USPS addresses Ave Maria parcels as “Immokalee, FL 34142.” Pulling SunStats at the ZIP level therefore blends Ave Maria’s new-construction sales with Immokalee’s older, lower-priced inventory. Read every figure below as the ZIP, never as Ave Maria on its own.
With that caveat noted explicitly, the ZIP 34142 August 2026 SunStats report reads as follows (all property types):
Metric | Aug 2026 | Aug 2025 | % YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
Closed Sales | 30 | 29 | +3.4% |
Cash Sales | 15 | 10 | +50.0% |
Cash Sales as % of Closed | 50.0% | 34.5% | +44.9% |
Median Sale Price | $394,500 | $377,000 | +4.6% |
Average Sale Price | $407,991 | $424,728 | −3.9% |
Dollar Volume | $12.2 Million | $12.3 Million | −0.6% |
Median % of Original List Price | 93.2% | 93.7% | −0.5% |
Median Time to Contract | 54 days | 58 days | −6.9% |
Median Time to Sale | 105 days | 79 days | +32.9% |
New Pending Sales | 25 | 28 | −10.7% |
New Listings | 43 | 51 | −15.7% |
Pending Inventory | 34 | 35 | −2.9% |
Active Inventory | 264 | 242 | +9.1% |
Months Supply of Inventory | 9.3 | 8.2 | +13.4% |
The signal here looks meaningfully different from the MSA-wide view:
Put the two tables side by side and one fact does more work than any other on this page. Months supply in the MSA fell from 8.2 to 5.7. In ZIP 34142 it rose from 8.2 to 9.3. A year ago the coast and the inland ZIP were absorbing inventory at an identical rate. Today the coast has tightened into a seller’s market while the ZIP that contains Ave Maria has loosened further into a buyer’s one.
The price gap that follows is the practical number: a $394,500 ZIP median against a $595,000 MSA median, a spread of roughly $200,500. If you are buying, Ave Maria is where the choice and the negotiating room still are, and that is now true in a way it was not in April. If you are selling here, the warning is the mirror image: you are competing against 264 active listings in a ZIP absorbing at 9.3 months, and pricing your home to the coastal Collier trend will leave it sitting. The two markets no longer move together, and any advice that treats them as one market is out of date.
The Ave Maria market in 2026 remains buyer-favorable, and the case is now sharper because the alternative has tightened. Four conditions are aligned:
A buyer who wanted to live in Naples but could not pay a coastal price for a four-bedroom home in 2026 has two practical options: (a) buy a smaller or older home in coastal Collier at the same price, or (b) buy a new-construction four-bedroom home in Ave Maria and accept a 30- to 60-minute drive to Naples for the things Naples offers that Ave Maria does not, which is beaches, 5th Avenue South, Mercato, oceanfront dining and the international airport. For many family buyers and many retiree buyers the math has tipped toward (b), which is why Ave Maria has ranked among the top 20 master-planned communities in the United States by sales volume.
Selling in Ave Maria? The 9.3-month absorption figure above is the whole reason pricing strategy matters more here than on the coast right now. Get a current valuation before you set a number: request a free home valuation, or call Jesse McGreevy at (239) 898-6072 and we will price it against the 264 listings you are actually competing with, not against a coastal comp.
Buying in Ave Maria? We track new-construction inventory across every active builder and will work through the cost-stack comparison parcel by parcel. Start with our buyer resources, or reach out directly: Jesse McGreevy, (239) 898-6072, [email protected]. You are calling Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 directly, not a call center.
Buying, selling or building new in Ave Maria? Our guide to buying a home in Ave Maria covers resale prices by village, the Stewardship District and closing costs; our guide to new construction in Ave Maria compares the builders selling today; and owners can read our guide to selling a home in Ave Maria or get a free Ave Maria home valuation.
Ave Maria is structured as a master-planned town composed of distinct villages and neighborhoods, each developed by a specific builder and each with its own character, amenity mix, and target buyer. There are four builder brands in the town as of 2026 and approximately a dozen distinct named residential areas. We profile the four marquee destination villages in depth and roster the remaining areas as briefer entries afterward.
Builder: Del Webb, a national brand of PulteGroup, Inc. Address / Community Center: 6010 Del Webb Way, Ave Maria, FL 34142 Member Services: delwebbnaplescommunity.com / Oasis Office (239) 455-2001 Buildout target: 2,449 homes (2026 association budget) Status: Actively selling new construction; 1,000+ homes closed by October 2023
Del Webb Naples opened in 2007 and has been continuously selling new construction since. It is targeted at the 55+ active adult buyer, the demographic that includes pre-retirement and retiree households seeking maintenance-free single-story living, country-club-level amenities, and a programmed lifestyle.
Home types and pricing: Del Webb Naples offers three primary product collections. The Echelon line at the high end is the single-family / luxury collection with the largest floor plans. The Vista collection (starting from $299,990) consists of low-maintenance villa homes targeted at empty-nester or snowbird buyers, with floor plans starting at approximately 1,448 square feet. The Carriage Collection offers attached carriage homes starting at approximately 1,457 square feet, including the Heron (2 BR / 2 BA / 1,457 sf / 1-car garage) and Egret (2 BR / 2 BA / 1,538 sf / 1-car garage). Mid-tier single-family plans include the Hallmark starting from $359,990 (1,655+ sf, 2-3 BR, 2-car garage), the Mystique open-concept plan, and the newly introduced Flagstone plan (2026). The overall pricing range runs from the low $300,000s through the high $900,000s, with floor plans from 1,405 to 3,970 square feet, 2 to 5+ bedrooms, 1 to 3-car garages.
Amenities: two clubhouses, 30,000+ square feet combined
HOA structure: The Del Webb Naples HOA covers lawn maintenance, exterior maintenance on attached product, amenity access, and the lifestyle programming. Golf is separately optional. The AMSCD special assessment applies on top of the HOA. Total monthly cost-of-living stack for a Del Webb Naples home varies by floor plan but typically runs $500-$900 in HOA + CDD per month at base, with golf adding more for residents who join Panther Run.
Target buyer: Active 55+ snowbird or full-time retiree, golf-oriented or amenity-oriented, valuing lifestyle programming and the security of a gated 55+ community. Many Del Webb Naples residents relocate from Midwest snowbird markets (Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin) or from Florida east-coast equity-rich households downsizing west. The demographic skews secular and active-retiree.
Why it matters: Del Webb Naples is the single most-searched neighborhood inside Ave Maria. Its independent demographic, its scale (2,449 homes planned), and its identity as an active-adult community make it function almost as a community-within-a-community. Read our full Del Webb Naples guide for the 2026 association fee stack, the recorded age rules and flood zones address by address. For buyers, sellers and owners there are also dedicated pages: buying in Del Webb Naples, selling in Del Webb Naples and what a Del Webb Naples home is worth.
Builder: CC Homes Position: “Ave Maria’s Best-Selling Neighborhood” (per CC Homes’ own marketing) Status: Actively selling new construction across 18 floor plans in 5 collections
Maple Ridge is Ave Maria’s largest village by lot count and the cornerstone of the town’s family-Catholic identity. CC Homes (the active builder) has positioned Maple Ridge as the family alternative to the active-adult Del Webb Naples, with floor plans ranging from compact villa homes through estate single-family homes.
Five home collections + 18 floor plans:
Pricing runs from approximately $299,990 for the Grove plan (2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,133 square feet) to $695,990+ for the Harbour plan (4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 3,522 square feet, 3-car garage). Floor plans extend from 1,133 to 3,985 square feet, 2 to 6 bedrooms.
Amenities: Club Maple Ridge, 10,000 sq ft, private and residents-only
Distinguishing feature: Maple Ridge is a certified Blue Zones community, meaning it has met the criteria of the Blue Zones Project (an evidence-based community well-being initiative) for built environment and programming that promotes longevity and health.
HOA: Reported under $200/month, meaningfully lower than Del Webb Naples or The National Golf & Country Club, reflecting the simpler amenity package and CC Homes’ competitive pricing strategy. AMSCD special assessment applies on top of the HOA.
Estate tier: CC Homes’ Capistrano Estate Homes sit on 65-foot lots, with plans from the Fairway to the Inlet, the largest at up to 3,985 square feet under air. The earlier Maple Ridge Reserve, a closed-out collection of 51 homes on lots of a third of an acre or more, is the town’s other estate-tier enclave inside Maple Ridge.
Target buyer: Catholic family relocator (the core Ave Maria demographic), move-up buyer from Naples or out-of-state for value, family with school-age children attending Donahue Academy or the new Ave Maria Elementary, open since August 11, 2026, active 30-65 age range.
Read our full Maple Ridge guide for its four sections, the district bond lines and county-recorded sale prices. For buyers, sellers and owners there are also dedicated pages: buying in Maple Ridge, selling in Maple Ridge and what a Maple Ridge home is worth.
Builder: Lennar Opened: January 15, 2021 (public golf play) Distinguishing feature: The only gated bundled-golf country club community within Ave Maria
The National Golf & Country Club is Ave Maria’s destination golf address. Per Barron Collier CEO Blake Gable in the January 2021 grand-opening press release: “Having Lennar build the first bundled golf community in Ave Maria was an easy decision. Lennar does an excellent job in creating an enjoyable experience for players of all ages which fits seamlessly in our multi-generational community.” Unlike Del Webb Naples (where Panther Run golf membership is optional), at The National every homeowner gets unlimited golf and full country club membership bundled into the assessment.
The Golf Course:
Home types: five product lines, 15+ floor plans at launch
Original launch pricing (January 2021): High $100,000s through $500,000s. Current 2026 pricing has moved up materially with continued construction and condo model openings. Verify with the Lennar sales office for current inventory.
HOA: Lennar’s 2026 non-golf fee sheets put total association costs at $605.83 a month for an Executive Home and $781.17 a month for a Terrace VI condominium. Membership depends on the home: homes sold from 2020 through 2022 generally carry a bundled golf membership, single-family buyers moved to a social membership in March 2023, and Lennar’s 2026 plans all show a social membership included in fees. A resale buyer should confirm which membership that address carries, because golf dues are billed only to golf-membership homes.
Amenities beyond golf:
Target buyer: Golf-focused buyer (often retired or part-time resident) who wants country-club lifestyle without paying $50,000–$200,000+ initiation fees at coastal Collier bundled clubs (Tiburon, Talis Park, Mediterra, Quail West, Mediterra). The National positions itself as the premium-amenity, bundled-golf option in Ave Maria, the highest-amenity, highest-HOA village in town. Read our full guide to The National Golf and Country Club for the fee stack by collection and how golf membership conveys. For buyers, sellers and owners there are also dedicated pages: buying in The National, selling in The National and what a home at The National is worth.
Builder: Pulte Homes (separate from Pulte’s Del Webb brand) Product line: Pulte Echelon Collection Status: Actively selling
Avalon Park is Pulte’s primary family-focused single-family community within Ave Maria, separate from the 55+ Del Webb Naples and separate from the Gatherpoint co-venture with Lennar. The Echelon Collection at Avalon Park offers three floor plans:
Construction standards: All Pulte homes built in Ave Maria meet a 160-mph wind rating, with impact glass and steel-reinforced concrete block walls, per Pulte Division President Josh Graeve’s December 2024 statement during the regional hurricane-safe communities discussion. Every home is built at least one foot above FEMA-determined base flood elevation.
Location: Walking distance to Ave Maria Town Center (La Piazza) and on-site to multiple educational options.
Target buyer: Move-up family, work-from-home professional, value-conscious Naples-area buyer in the $440-680K range. Avalon Park is the practical entry-tier for Pulte single-family in Ave Maria, with floor plans designed for multi-bedroom family use rather than 55+ active adult or premium golf lifestyle.
Read our full Avalon Park guide for the Liberty Park plat history, the fee stack and resale prices. For buyers, sellers and owners there are also dedicated pages: buying in Avalon Park, selling in Avalon Park and what a Avalon Park home is worth.
Builders: Pulte Homes + Lennar (joint development) Position: Pulte’s successor product to Avalon Park, with Lennar product mixed in
Gatherpoint is one of the more architecturally interesting recent additions to Ave Maria. It is a co-venture between Pulte and Lennar, with floor plans from both builders selling within the same village footprint. This is unusual in Ave Maria, where most villages have a single dominant builder. Gatherpoint represents Pulte’s product evolution after Avalon Park largely sold out and represents Lennar’s expansion outside The National Golf & Country Club into Ave Maria’s general family-buyer market.
Specific floor plan and pricing data should be confirmed with each builder’s current sales office.
In addition to the four marquee destinations and the newest addition (Gatherpoint), Ave Maria includes a meaningful roster of named neighborhoods at various build-out stages:
The total count of named residential areas in Ave Maria, including the marquee four and the second-tier roster, is approximately a dozen. As the town’s 2,042-acre / 6,738-home expansion advances through Collier County BoCC review, additional named villages will be added.
Selling? Your village decides your competition, because the builder next door is still selling. Get a free home valuation priced against the inventory in your village. Buying? We will compare villages by builder, fee tier and product for your budget. Start with our buyer resources, then call us about specific homes.
Ave Maria University is the institutional anchor of the town and one of the largest single distinguishing features for any buyer considering Ave Maria as a residence. AMU is the central employer in the town, the source of approximately 1,260 students who shape the town’s daily population and rhythm, the operator of community-accessible facilities including the Tom Golisano Field House and the campus library, and (through its endowment of The Oratory until 2017) the original founder of the parish that now serves the town’s Catholic community.
Ave Maria University was incorporated by founder Tom Monaghan in 1998 immediately following his sale of Domino’s Pizza, with an initial gift of $250 million. The institution opened on a temporary campus in Naples in August 2003 and moved to the permanent Ave Maria campus at the start of the 2007-2008 academic year. The land for the campus was donated by Barron Collier Companies as part of the broader town development partnership.
The institution’s founding charter is grounded in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 apostolic constitution issued by Pope Saint John Paul II that called for a renewal of Catholic universities faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Magisterium. AMU was designed from inception to be one of the small group of contemporary American Catholic universities that explicitly embraces Ex Corde Ecclesiae’s framework rather than treating it as advisory.
Current undergraduate enrollment: approximately 1,260 students (Sun Conference 2025 institutional listing; AMU institutional reporting). Students hail from all 50 states and over 20 countries. The university’s residential population (full-time students living on or near campus) is a meaningful contributor to Ave Maria’s overall day-to-day population, particularly during the September-through-May academic year.
AMU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) to award bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. The Accreditation Liaison is Daniel Hubert, Ph.D., Associate Provost for Institutional Effectiveness.
The institution offers 53 distinct degree programs across eight areas of study:
Graduate programs include the M.A. in Theology (also offered online), Ph.D. in Theology (AMU’s only doctoral program), M.A. in Philosophy, Online MBA, M.Ed. in Catholic Educational Leadership, and M.A. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Writing.
AMU is also a Newman Guide Recommended College (listed by the Cardinal Newman Society among the small group of Catholic colleges endorsed for fidelity to authentic Catholic teaching), and operates its own academic press, Sapientia Press, which has published works by faculty including Lawrence Feingold (The Natural Desire to See God) and Fr. Thomas Joseph White (Wisdom in the Face of Modernity).
AMU competes in NAIA Division I athletics in The Sun Conference. The school’s nickname is the Gyrenes, a Marine Corps slang term reflecting founder Monaghan’s service in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1956 to 1959. School colors are Navy Blue and Kelly Green.
The Gyrenes sponsor twenty varsity sports: Baseball, Men’s and Women’s Basketball, Beach Volleyball, Men’s and Women’s Cross Country, Men’s and Women’s Golf, Football, Women’s Lacrosse, Men’s and Women’s Soccer, Softball, Men’s and Women’s Swimming, Men’s and Women’s Tennis, Men’s and Women’s Track & Field, and Volleyball.
In November 2025, the men’s cross country team won the Sun Conference championship, the first conference championship in the university’s history. Women’s Lacrosse competed in the NAIA National Championship Game in a recent season, the program’s first national appearance.
The home venue for athletics and large university events is the Tom Golisano Field House, a 40,000-square-foot multipurpose facility named for Catholic philanthropist Tom Golisano. The Field House was reopened in March 2024 following an expansion designed by BSSW Architects. The reopening ceremony featured founder Tom Monaghan, namesake Tom Golisano, and US Ambassador J. William Middendorf (Mark Middendorf’s father). The Field House served as the venue for the 2026 Commencement ceremony, with Governor Ron DeSantis as the keynote speaker.
The AMU campus includes several facilities that are accessible to non-students:
Ave Maria Elementary School opened on August 11, 2026, two days before this guide’s August 13, 2026 update. It is the single largest change to the buying case for a family looking at this town in nineteen years. Ave Maria now offers buyers with school-age children three distinct educational tracks: the new public elementary school in town, the Catholic private path (Donahue Academy, pre-K through 12), and the broader Collier County Public Schools feeder pattern for middle and high school grades.
For nineteen years, Ave Maria children rode a bus roughly 30 minutes each way to Estates Elementary at 14685 Collier Boulevard in Naples. That ended on August 11, 2026, when Ave Maria Elementary School opened its doors at 4050 Anthem Parkway North as the 33rd elementary school in Collier County Public Schools and the first public school inside the town. Ground had been broken on June 3, 2025, so the campus went from dirt to first bell in fourteen months.
What the school actually is, as of opening week:
The 400-against-900 number is the one a buyer should sit with. It means small classes now, and it means the district has already provisioned for the 6,738 additional homes county commissioners approved in June 2026 without needing a second elementary campus to absorb them.
The school is a partnership between Collier County Public Schools (CCPS) and the Ave Maria development. Barron Collier Companies and Ave Maria Development donated 46 acres to CCPS for the school site in exchange for school impact-fee credits, a substantial financial commitment that helped move the project from planning to ground-breaking.
The opening also settles a longstanding misperception about the public school feeder pattern. Many Ave Maria buyers believed, and many real estate listings repeated, that Ave Maria families were assigned to Immokalee Elementary as their default public elementary school. That was never accurate. The assignment through the 2025-26 school year was Estates Elementary in Naples, not Immokalee. As of August 11, 2026, the assignment is Ave Maria Elementary, in town. The myth originated in a misreading of the Collier County School District’s attendance boundaries, and the correction matters because the demographic and academic profile of Estates Elementary differs materially from Immokalee Elementary. If you are reading an Ave Maria listing that still names Immokalee Elementary, the listing is two boundary cycles out of date.
As of the 2026-27 school year, the public school feeder pattern for Ave Maria addresses is:
This is a substantially different feeder than many buyers assume. Palmetto Ridge High School is a well-regarded comprehensive public high school within Collier County Public Schools. Corkscrew Middle School similarly carries a stronger academic and community profile than the “Immokalee feeder pattern” assumption would suggest. Buyers evaluating Ave Maria for public-school families should consult CCPS attendance boundary maps directly for current address assignments, as bus routing can vary by specific Ave Maria address.
For Catholic families and other families seeking classical or religious K-12 education, Donahue Academy of Ave Maria is the in-town private option. The school opened in 2007 as an independent private school, then was adopted by Ave Maria Parish (now Ave Maria Catholic Church) under the Diocese of Venice in 2013.
Snapshot:
Donahue Academy is one of the schools listed in the Cardinal Newman Society’s review of classical Catholic education and represents one of the more developed examples of the classical-Catholic K-12 movement in Florida. For Catholic families relocating to Ave Maria, Donahue is often a primary draw, and for families who choose Donahue, the school removes the question of public-school feeder concerns entirely.
Tuition runs in the typical Catholic K-12 range for the Southwest Florida region (approximately $8,000 to $15,000 per year for full-pay; parish-member discounts and tuition assistance are available, verify current rates with the school).
For families weighing Ave Maria against other Southwest Florida communities specifically on the school question, August 11, 2026 is the inflection point. For nineteen years, “the school question” was one of Ave Maria’s structural weaknesses in the buyer-decision equation: a good private Catholic option, a good university, and a 30-minute bus ride to the nearest public elementary. That weakness is now gone, and it went away this week.
For most of Ave Maria’s history, the nearest acute-care hospital was approximately 30 to 45 minutes away, at the NCH North Naples Hospital or Physicians Regional Medical Center in Naples, or a similar drive to facilities in Bonita Springs and Fort Myers. For routine medical needs, that distance was manageable. For genuine emergencies, it was a real concern that surfaced repeatedly in buyer due diligence.
The healthcare situation in Ave Maria is in the middle of a substantial transformation. Two distinct projects matter, and they have been somewhat conflated in popular coverage:
In 2018, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) approved Certificate of Need #10522 for Braden Clinic, LLC, authorizing construction of a 25-bed acute-care “micro-hospital” in Ave Maria. The site was designated at 5068 Annunciation Circle, Suite 111, Ave Maria, FL 34142, near the town’s commercial center.
However, Braden Hospital was never built. The project faced a series of regulatory and competitive challenges (including a lawsuit from NCH), and the original Braden Clinic entity was ultimately acquired by South Health in 2023. The Annunciation Circle site now operates as Mater Dei Clinic, providing outpatient primary-care, urgent-care, and ambulatory services to the Ave Maria community. The 25-bed inpatient capacity that the original CON authorized has not materialized at this location.
The actual hospital project moving forward in Ave Maria is substantially larger and is being developed by Naples Comprehensive Healthcare (NCH), the regional health system that operates NCH North Naples Hospital, NCH Baker Hospital Downtown, and a growing portfolio of outpatient locations across Collier and Lee Counties.
In October 2025, NCH publicly announced plans for a 150-bed hospital in Ave Maria, to be developed in four phases on 18 acres donated by Barron Collier Companies and Ave Maria Development, at the northeast corner of Oil Well Road and Arthrex Commerce Park Drive. Key details from the announcement and follow-up coverage:
Collier County Commissioner Bill McDaniel called the project “a godsend” in coverage of the announcement.
While the 150-bed hospital is under development, NCH has already established a presence in town. The NCH Immediate Care Center in Ave Maria opened in Spring 2025. This facility provides walk-in immediate medical care for non-emergency conditions (injuries, illnesses, diagnostic imaging, lab services) that previously would have required a 30-to-45-minute drive to a Naples NCH facility. It does not have inpatient capacity and is not a substitute for an emergency room for serious emergencies, but it materially shortens the distance for routine acute care.
For a buyer in 2026, the practical state of Ave Maria healthcare is:
The healthcare picture for Ave Maria has improved meaningfully in 2025 with NCH Immediate Care opening, and will improve dramatically when the Phase 1 hospital ER opens later this decade. By the time the full 150-bed campus is operational, Ave Maria will have moved from “no hospital nearby” to “regional medical anchor”, a transformation that should be one of the most-watched developments in Southwest Florida real estate over the next decade.
Hurricane resilience is the single most-asked-about feature of any Southwest Florida community by buyers in 2026, and rightly so. Hurricane Ian (September 2022) caused catastrophic damage to coastal Lee and Collier counties (Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, Estero, parts of Naples), and reshaped insurance and construction markets across the region. Hurricane Helene (September 2024) and Hurricane Milton (October 2024) compounded the regional uncertainty even though both stayed north of Naples-Marco. Buyers need to know how a specific community holds up.
For Ave Maria, the answer is documented in writing by the developer itself, in a press release dated June 4, 2025, titled “Ave Maria Preps for 2025 Hurricane Season”:
“Ave Maria experienced zero damage despite the extreme 2024 season.”
That single sentence covers Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. The same press release notes:
This is a three-storm, decade-long resilience track record verified in a publicly-issued statement by the developer.
The performance was not luck. Seven decisions baked into the town’s original design make the outcome predictable:
1. Distance from the coast. Ave Maria sits approximately 24 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, far enough that storm surge does not reach the town. Storm surge is the single most destructive force in a landfalling Gulf hurricane (Hurricane Ian’s surge along the Lee County coast reached 12-18 feet in some areas; Hurricane Helene’s surge at Cedar Key reached over 9 feet). Inland communities like Ave Maria are completely outside the storm surge envelope of even Category 5 storms.
2. Elevation of 23 feet above mean sea level. Per U.S. Census Bureau / Geographic Names Information System data, the town’s central coordinates sit at 23 feet of elevation. By comparison, coastal Naples and Marco Island sit at 5 to 15 feet. Twenty-three feet is sufficient to place virtually all parcels above any conceivable storm-surge or extreme-rainfall flooding scenario from a Florida hurricane.
3. FEMA Flood Zones X and AH, mapped parcel by parcel. Ave Maria parcels are mapped in a mix of FEMA Zone X (minimal flood hazard) and Zone AH (shallow flooding). Zone AH is a Special Flood Hazard Area, so a federally backed mortgage on an AH parcel requires flood insurance, while a Zone X parcel does not. The mix runs parcel by parcel: on FEMA’s effective map most sampled points at The National fall in Zone AH, and two adjacent homesites there are mapped differently. A home built above base flood elevation may qualify for a Letter of Map Amendment that removes the requirement. Buyers should verify the specific flood zone designation by parcel via the FEMA Map Service Center at msc.fema.gov before purchase.
4. All underground utilities, community-wide. Every utility wire in Ave Maria runs underground: power, telecommunications, water, sewer. There is nothing for high winds to knock down, no power poles to fall, no overhead lines to short. This decision was baked into Ave Maria’s master plan from the beginning, which is unusual in Florida (most residential development uses cheaper overhead lines). The same design decision is what gave Babcock Ranch national attention after Hurricane Ian; Ave Maria has had it since 2007.
5. The Ave Maria Utility Company (AMUC), with onsite power generation at critical facilities. Ave Maria is served by its own water and wastewater utility, the Ave Maria Utility Company (AMUC). Critically, AMUC operates onsite power generation at three key facilities: the water treatment plant, the wastewater treatment plant, and the master sanitary pump stations. Even when the broader Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC) grid is down regionally, Ave Maria’s water and sewer infrastructure continues operating on dedicated backup power. The town does not rely entirely on the broader grid for utility continuity.
6. Building codes: a 160-mph wind rating, and one foot above base flood elevation. All Pulte homes built in Ave Maria (Del Webb Naples, Avalon Park, Gatherpoint) are built to a 160-mph wind rating with impact-rated glass and steel-reinforced concrete block walls, per Pulte Division President Josh Graeve’s December 2024 statement. Every home in Ave Maria is built at least one foot above the FEMA-determined base flood elevation. These specifications meet or exceed current Florida Building Code (which is already among the strictest residential building codes in the United States after the post-Andrew reforms of the 1990s).
7. Onsite emergency services, and now an onsite shelter. Ave Maria hosts Immokalee Fire Control District Station 32 at 5368 Useppa Drive, with Collier County EMS Medic 32 co-located at the same facility. As of August 11, 2026 the town also has a purpose-built public shelter of its own: Ave Maria Elementary School at 4050 Anthem Parkway North doubles as the hurricane shelter for the Ave Maria area, so residents no longer have to leave town to reach one. Response times for routine medical calls within Ave Maria are typically under 5 minutes. During a storm event, the co-located fire and EMS infrastructure stays within town boundaries rather than relying on responding units from Immokalee or Naples that may face their own access issues.
For a concrete data point: when Hurricane Milton crossed central Florida as a Category 3-4 hurricane on the morning of October 10, 2024, Ave Maria experienced sustained tropical-storm to low-end hurricane-force winds for several hours but maintained:
Resident testimony bears this out. Long-time Del Webb resident Peter Clouet (who relocated to Ave Maria from Miami with his wife Judy) said publicly: “We bought this place because it is 24 miles inland. We just stay in the house and watch the wind blow. We have no fear at all.”
The resilience profile manifests financially in homeowners insurance cost. A typical Ave Maria single-family home (new construction or recent build, $400K-$700K replacement value) insures in 2026 for approximately $2,500 to $5,000 per year depending on coverage selections, deductibles, and dwelling specifications.
Comparable coastal Collier homes (same square footage, same value, same age) routinely insure for $8,000 to $20,000 per year and increasingly require either Citizens Property Insurance (the state’s insurer of last resort) or surplus-lines carriers with extreme rate volatility.
Over a 20-year ownership period, the insurance differential alone runs $100,000 to $300,000 in favor of Ave Maria. For long-term residents, this is one of the largest single financial differentiators between Ave Maria and coastal Collier, quietly compounding year over year, regardless of whether a major hurricane actually occurs.
Selling? A documented zero-damage record from the 2024 season belongs in your listing, and we lead with it. Get a free home valuation to see what that record is worth in today’s market. Buying? Ask us for real insurance quotes on a specific Ave Maria address before you contract. Start with our buyer resources.
The biggest real estate story in Ave Maria in 2026 is the approved 2,042-acre / 6,738-home expansion of the Ave Maria Stewardship Receiving Area. Approved by the Collier County Board of County Commissioners 4-1 on June 9, 2026, the expansion reshapes Ave Maria’s footprint from roughly 5,928 acres to approximately 7,970 acres and raises the residential cap from 11,000 homes to 17,738 homes.
This section documents exactly what was approved, how it moved through the approval process, who supported it, who opposed it, and the broader Rural Lands Stewardship Area pipeline that surrounds it.
The petition (designated PL20240012290) was filed by Ave Maria Development, LLLP through land-use attorney Rich Yovanovich of Coleman, Yovanovich & Koester, with planning by Christopher Scott of Peninsula Engineering. The project team includes Barron Collier Companies, Trebilcock Consulting Solutions PA, Earth Tech Environmental LLC, and Development Planning and Financing Group Inc.
What the expansion adds, per the staff report and developer FAQ:
The developer’s submission includes commitments to road improvements as part of the project:
The Collier County Planning Commission heard the petition on May 7, 2026 and voted 8-1 to recommend approval to the Board of County Commissioners. The motion was made by Joseph Schmitt and seconded by Paul Shea. The one dissenting vote was Mike Petscher, citing inadequate road infrastructure, specifically, that the widening of Immokalee Road in the affected area is not currently scheduled for completion until 2040. Petscher said: “I can’t support it knowing it could bring more homes and more traffic to an already busy area within two years, with ‘zero’ improvements to Immokalee Road.”
Three residents (and one sitting AMSCD board member) spoke against the expansion at the May 7 hearing:
Yovanovich, the land-use attorney, made the following case for the expansion at the hearing:
The Planning Commission’s vote was a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners, which held its own public hearing and voted independently. Because the petition is an SRA expansion rather than a rezoning, it needed only a simple majority of the five-member BoCC, not the 4-of-5 supermajority required for most major land-use changes.
On June 9, 2026 the Board approved the expansion 4-1. Commissioner Chris Hall cast the only no vote, and his objection was to timing rather than to the project: “I’m not saying no to this project. I’m just saying not now.” His concern, and the one residents raised at the hearing, is whether roads and services keep pace with the new homes. That is the thing to watch as the approved phases come forward, and it is the question we ask builders on behalf of every buyer we represent here.
Ave Maria’s expansion is the most-immediate development story, but it sits inside a much larger context. The Collier County Rural Lands Stewardship Area (RLSA) program (adopted in 2002 as a state-recognized program for managing growth in agricultural lands) has now approved eight Stewardship Receiving Areas in eastern Collier:
Total approved residential capacity across the corridor (including Ave Maria at the pre-expansion 11,000 figure): approximately 27,912 dwelling units / 66,449 projected residents at full buildout over the coming 20-40 years.
The Town of Big Cypress is the most consequential project beyond Ave Maria, a planned town of similar scale to Ave Maria with multiple villages within (Rivergrass, Longwater, Bellmar being component villages). It is being developed by Collier Enterprises (the cousin company to Barron Collier from the 1976 family split: Collier Enterprises got the Town of Big Cypress portfolio, and Barron Collier kept the Ave Maria portfolio). Together, the two developers are reshaping eastern Collier County’s rural-to-urban gradient, and the absorption pace of all of this development is the largest single uncertainty in the long-term Ave Maria real estate equation.
The RLSA program has been controversial since its adoption. Rivergrass Village in particular generated organized resident opposition: the Collier County Planning Commission recommended denial of Rivergrass in 2019, but the BoCC approved it 3-2 on January 28, 2020. The Conservancy of Southwest Florida filed suit; the case settled in 2023 with additional panther-protection commitments. The pattern of “Planning Commission skepticism / BoCC approval / environmental-group litigation” has recurred across multiple RLSA projects.
For an Ave Maria buyer, the broader RLSA pipeline matters for three reasons: (1) it determines what the surrounding agricultural and conservation landscape will look like in 10-20 years; (2) it determines the trajectory of road and infrastructure capacity in eastern Collier; and (3) it determines whether the broader corridor remains a “value alternative” to coastal Collier or compresses upward as eastern Collier’s housing density grows.
Selling? 6,738 approved homes means more new supply competing with resales for years. Get a free home valuation and a plan for timing your sale around the builder phases. Buying? The approval also means more amenities, commercial space and a hospital footprint coming to town. Start with our buyer resources and we will map which phases affect which villages.
What does daily life in Ave Maria actually look like? For a buyer evaluating the town against alternatives, this section answers that question concretely, not in abstractions about “community feel” but in named businesses, scheduled events, working amenities, and the lived experience of residents.
The commercial and social heart of Ave Maria is La Piazza, a designed town center of approximately 21 acres at the geographic center of town with The Oratory at the eastern end and commercial buildings arranged around a central pedestrian-friendly plaza. La Piazza was built as an integrated mixed-use environment with retail and restaurant tenants at ground level, professional offices and residential condominiums above, and pedestrian-oriented circulation between buildings.
Current major tenants (2026):
In 2024, Ave Maria Development opened the Midtown Plaza (a 21,000-square-foot mixed-use addition to La Piazza on the southern edge of the town center) bringing additional restaurant and retail capacity. The total commercial buildout target for Ave Maria is 1.8 million square feet at the pre-expansion buildout (with the 2,042-acre expansion potentially adding up to another ~1 million square feet of community goods and services on top of that).
The architectural and liturgical centerpiece of Ave Maria is The Oratory, also known as Ave Maria Catholic Church. Some facts about the building:
Critical update in 2017: On January 19, 2017, the Diocese of Venice purchased The Oratory from Ave Maria University, and Bishop Frank Dewane formally elevated the institution from quasi-parish status to a full canonical parish, Ave Maria Catholic Church. Per Diocese canon law, this means: “baptisms, weddings and funerals can now be performed without exemption from the Bishop.” At the time of the 2017 purchase, AMU donated a 2.5-acre adjacent lot and Ave Maria Development donated a 10-acre parcel to the Diocese for future parish-related development.
Current pastor (installed February 1, 2021): Rev. David Mariano Vidal, PhD, Argentine-born, Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. Father Vidal is the parish’s first pastor of full parish standing (i.e., post the 2017 elevation).
Mass and confession schedules are published on the parish website and bulletin. The parish operates as a normal Catholic parish: daily Mass, Sunday Mass, sacramental ministry, parish faith formation programs, social ministries. It is open to all visitors regardless of religious affiliation.
Ave Maria has invested heavily in a parks-and-recreation infrastructure that serves both residents and visitors:
Ave Maria runs a meaningful annual events calendar. Highlights:
Ave Maria’s town center (La Piazza, the Oratory, the parks) is genuinely walkable, designed to be so from the master plan stage. Within the town center, residents can walk between residences (La Piazza Residences), restaurants, retail, parish, parks, and the Donahue Academy campus. The individual villages outside the town core (Maple Ridge, Del Webb, The National, Avalon Park) are designed as suburban-density residential, requiring car travel to reach the town center, typical drive times within town are 3 to 8 minutes.
This dual character (walkable urban core + car-required suburban perimeter) is consistent with traditional planned-town design and contrasts with the strip-mall + single-pod architecture of most Southwest Florida master-planned communities.
For buyers evaluating Ave Maria against alternatives, the “true cost of ownership” picture is often less obvious than the list price suggests. Ave Maria has multiple overlapping fee structures (the AMSCD special assessment, the Ave Maria Master Association fee, the village-specific HOA fees, the property tax, the homeowners insurance), and understanding the stack matters before signing a contract.
Every Ave Maria homeowner pays five distinct ongoing housing costs:
The property tax stack for an Ave Maria home includes Collier County BoCC millage, Collier County Public Schools millage, dependent district millage (mosquito control, library, water management, etc.), and the AMSCD assessment as a separate non-ad-valorem line item. For a typical $450K Ave Maria home in 2026, the total annual ad-valorem property tax (excluding AMSCD) typically runs $4,000-$6,000 depending on homestead exemption status. The AMSCD special assessment runs roughly $2,000-$4,000 additional per year, depending on the specific bond-debt allocation for that parcel.
Florida homestead exemption of $50,000 (combining the state $25K + $25K) applies to primary residences and significantly reduces the property tax bill. Florida also has the Save Our Homes 3% cap on annual increases in assessed value, which protects long-term homestead owners from rising market values.
The Ave Maria Stewardship Community District levies a non-ad-valorem special assessment that appears on the property tax bill sent in November each year. This assessment has two components:
The 2024 AMSCD assessment roll certified approximately $10.25 million in total assessments across all parcels. Per-parcel exposure varies materially based on which infrastructure phase a home sits within and which bond issuances are allocated to that parcel, newer phases tend to carry more residual debt-service obligation than older phases that have substantially paid down their associated bonds.
For a typical Ave Maria single-family home, the AMSCD assessment runs in the range of $2,000 to $4,500 per year, paid via escrow with the mortgage or directly as part of the November tax bill.
The full per-parcel debt-service exposure is documented in the Series 2022A Refunding Bond Official Statement (hosted in our Downloadable Documents section). Buyers should verify the exact assessment for any parcel before contract via the Collier County Tax Collector website or the AMSCD’s FAQ page (avemariastewardshipcd.org/faqs).
The Ave Maria Master Association (AMMA) is the town-wide HOA covering shared common areas, streetscape, town-center landscaping, town-level reserve accounts, and master-level community functions. The Executive Director is Kim Twiss; the office shares an address with AMSCD at 5080 Annunciation Circle.
Master Association fees are typically modest relative to village HOA fees (running in the range of $50 to $150 per month), but they are universal across all Ave Maria homes and stack on top of village-specific dues.
This is where the cost varies most dramatically by village:
Village | Approx. Monthly HOA |
|---|---|
Maple Ridge (CC Homes) | Under $200/month |
Hampton Village (Pulte) | ~$84/month |
Del Webb Naples | ~$300-500/month (varies by product type) |
Avalon Park (Pulte) | ~$200-300/month |
Gatherpoint (Pulte + Lennar) | Varies by builder |
The National Golf & Country Club (Lennar, Executive Homes) | $605.83/month (2026 fee sheet, non-golf) |
The National Golf & Country Club (Lennar, Terraces/Verandas) | $781.17/month for Terrace VI (2026 fee sheet, non-golf, includes condo association) |
Those National figures come from Lennar’s 2026 non-golf fee sheets and cover the Master Association, The National’s POA, landscaping, cable and a $750-a-year food and beverage minimum. Homes that carry a golf membership pay golf dues on top, and Lennar has not posted a 2026 golf-version fee sheet, so confirm the membership type and the dues on any specific home before you compare it with a coastal club.
Per Winslow Homes’ Ave Maria real estate market summary, typical homeowners insurance for an Ave Maria home runs $2,500-$5,000 per year, depending on:
Compared to coastal Collier (where comparable homes routinely insure at $8,000-$20,000+), this is one of the largest single financial advantages of Ave Maria. Over a 20-year ownership period, the insurance differential alone can run $100,000-$300,000 in Ave Maria’s favor.
For a hypothetical buyer purchasing a $450,000 Maple Ridge single-family home in 2026 with a 20% down payment and a 30-year fixed mortgage at 7.0%:
Cost Component | Monthly |
|---|---|
Mortgage principal + interest (20% down, 7.0%, 30-yr fixed) | ~$2,395 |
Property tax (Collier ad-valorem) | ~$400 |
AMSCD special assessment | ~$250 |
Ave Maria Master Association fee | ~$100 |
Maple Ridge village HOA | ~$150 |
Homeowners insurance | ~$300 |
Total monthly | ~$3,595 |
For the same $450K home at Del Webb Naples (with optional golf membership), or at The National Golf & Country Club, the total monthly cost runs $4,200-$5,000+ depending on the village and amenity bundle.
These are illustrative numbers. Actual numbers depend on the specific parcel, the specific lender, the specific insurer, the specific village, and the buyer’s individual financial profile. We’re happy to walk through the cost stack on any specific Ave Maria home a buyer is considering.
Selling? Buyers close faster when your five-layer cost stack is documented in writing. Get a free home valuation and we will help you assemble it. Buying? We build the full cost stack for a specific home before you make an offer, not after. Start with our buyer resources.
Ave Maria sits inside one of the largest contiguous agricultural and conservation landscapes east of the Mississippi River, the eastern Collier County portion of the Greater Everglades ecosystem and the agricultural reserves managed by Barron Collier Companies, Collier Enterprises, and the State of Florida. For buyers who care about open space, wildlife, equestrian access, hunting, fishing, and birdwatching, the broader Ave Maria-area context matters meaningfully.
Note for buyers researching Ave Maria online: some older guides reference a “Big Cypress Polo Club” near or adjacent to Ave Maria. No such organization exists in the current Collier County equestrian registry. Targeted research surfaces no club with that name operating in or near Ave Maria.
The actual equestrian story in Ave Maria has two components:
For residents and visitors who want a deeper equestrian or polo experience, the broader Naples-area equestrian market includes facilities such as Naples Polo & Saddle Club (verify current operating status), Quarter Notes Equestrian in Naples, and several private barns. Standardbred and Quarter Horse breeding operations remain active across Barron Collier-affiliated agricultural lands east and north of Ave Maria.
Ave Maria is bordered by, or proximate to, several major conservation properties:
For nature-oriented residents, this combined access to panther refuge + cypress swamp + watershed conservation + national preserve is genuinely uncommon in master-planned-community Florida. Most coastal Collier communities sit hours from this scale of wilderness; Ave Maria is positioned within easy day-trip range.
Adjacent to Ave Maria’s western boundary lies the Big Cypress Stewardship District, a separate Florida special-purpose government created by Chapter 2004-423, Laws of Florida. It governs approximately 22,211 acres of land primarily owned by Collier Enterprises (the cousin company to Barron Collier). The District’s president is Patrick Utter; Vice President is David Pensabene. The District is managed by PFM Management Services (Lynne Mullins). It has no bonded debt at present, being landowner-funded, and exists primarily as the governance framework that will manage the buildout of the Town of Big Cypress, including the Rivergrass, Longwater, and Bellmar village components.
Buyers should understand the distinction: AMSCD governs Ave Maria; Big Cypress Stewardship District governs adjacent lands that will eventually be developed into the Town of Big Cypress and its component villages. The two districts share a geographic and regulatory context but are not the same entity and do not have overlapping financial obligations to Ave Maria homeowners.
Beyond the Ave Maria 2,042-acre expansion, Barron Collier Companies has at least one additional master-planned community in active development announcement. Per the company’s own master-planned-communities page: a “Coming Soon” project of approximately 2,000 homes plus over 100,000 square feet of commercial development, located northwest of Ave Maria along Immokalee Road in eastern Collier County. This is a separate project from the Ave Maria SRA expansion. Specifics (project name, timing, builder commitments) should be confirmed with Barron Collier directly.
The cumulative effect of all of this active development (Ave Maria expansion + Barron Collier’s adjacent new community + the Collier Enterprises Town of Big Cypress pipeline + the smaller approved RLSA villages) is that eastern Collier County is undergoing the most concentrated period of master-planned-community development in its history. For an Ave Maria buyer in 2026, this is both opportunity (a working town that is increasingly self-sufficient with infrastructure, retail, medical, education) and consideration (the broader eastern Collier landscape will look meaningfully different in 10-20 years than it does today).
Ave Maria’s civic life runs through a combination of parish ministries, university service learning, dedicated civic associations, and broader Catholic charitable infrastructure. For residents who want to participate in community life beyond residential ownership, the town offers more entry points than many small Florida communities.
The Knights of Columbus Ave Maria Council #14697 is the town’s most-active Catholic men’s fraternal and service organization. The Council operates with approximately 200 Brother Knights. The current Grand Knight is John Lanham ([email protected] per public listing). Council website: avemariakofc.org.
The Knights organize charitable events, support parish needs, provide men’s faith formation programming, and operate as a volunteer base for community service work in Ave Maria and adjacent Immokalee.
The Ave Maria Civic Association, founded in summer 2024 by Collier County Commissioner Bill McDaniel (BoCC District 5 Vice Chairman, who is also a year-round Ave Maria resident), is a newer organization focused specifically on civic engagement and political representation for Ave Maria residents.
AMCA operates with a 5-member volunteer board, $10/year membership, and an active engagement posture with the Collier County BoCC. The organization formed in part as a response to the perceived gap between Ave Maria residents and the developer-controlled AMSCD board, and has been visible in BoCC discussions of the 2,042-acre expansion and other Ave Maria-related policy questions.
AMU integrates service learning into its undergraduate experience. Many student-led organizations run service projects in Ave Maria and Immokalee, including tutoring, food distribution, parish-based outreach, and disaster recovery work. For families with college-age students, AMU’s service learning programs provide structured volunteer opportunities for students directly within the community.
As a full Catholic parish under the Diocese of Venice, Ave Maria Catholic Church operates the standard suite of parish volunteer ministries: liturgical ministries (lectors, altar servers, music ministry, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion), social ministries (St. Vincent de Paul Society chapter, parish food drives, prison and hospital ministry), youth and family programs (faith formation, sacramental preparation, youth group), and seasonal observances (Lenten Fish Fry, Advent giving tree, Easter triduum, Christmas concert).
For Catholic families, parish ministry participation is often the primary point of community engagement. The parish website (avemariaparish.org) lists current ministries.
The Diocese of Venice operates Catholic Charities branches across its ten-county service area, including programming that touches Ave Maria and the broader Immokalee corridor. Volunteer opportunities include food assistance, emergency aid, immigration support, and adoption services.
Donahue Academy runs an active parent volunteer network supporting school programming, fundraising, athletic teams, school events, classical-Catholic education advocacy.
The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida serves all of Collier and Lee Counties including the Ave Maria/Immokalee corridor. The Food Bank operates partner-agency networks and direct-service distribution events; Ave Maria volunteers regularly participate in Immokalee-area distribution.
The Stable Life of Ave Maria runs youth equestrian programming. Programs include summer camps, lesson packages, and trail-ride experiences. Verify current programming and capacity directly with Katie O’Hare’s team.
For new residents looking for a volunteer entry point, we typically recommend starting with the Knights of Columbus (men), parish ministry (everyone), the Civic Association (politically engaged residents), or AMU service learning (university-affiliated families). All of these organizations actively recruit new members and welcome newcomers.
Selling a resale home in Ave Maria is not the same job as selling a resale home in an established Naples neighborhood. In Ave Maria your competition is not only the other listings on the street. It is the builder sales offices still selling new inventory inside the same villages, on 2,042 acres approved for 6,738 more homes. A builder can offer a rate buydown or a design centre credit that a private seller cannot match, and pricing against that without understanding it is how Ave Maria listings sit.
The second thing that moves an Ave Maria sale is the cost stack. Buyers ask what the CDD assessment and the HOA actually cover, and a seller who can answer that in writing, village by village, closes faster than one who cannot. That is the gap this page closes.
Answer a few questions about your home and get a free home valuation in about a minute. Then call Jesse McGreevy at (239) 898-6072, and we will price it against the resale listings and the builder inventory you are actually competing with in your village.
In ZIP 34142, which Ave Maria shares with Immokalee, the August 2026 SunStats median was 54 days to contract and 105 days to closing. New-construction closings stretch that second number, because buyers wait on the build. A resale has no construction wait, which is one of the things you sell against.
Builders in your village can offer rate buydowns, closing-cost contributions and design credits that a private seller cannot match dollar for dollar. What a resale offers instead is a finished home: grown-in landscaping, upgrades already installed, and a move-in date measured in weeks. We price your home against the builder’s net price after incentives, not its list price, because that is the number a buyer is really comparing.
Every Ave Maria buyer pays the AMSCD assessment on the property tax bill, the Master Association fee and a village HOA, and they will ask for all three in writing. Not every village publishes a current fee schedule. Pulte, for example, does not publish one for Avalon Park the way Lennar does for The National, so the buyer’s title company relies on an estoppel certificate. Have your latest tax bill and HOA statements ready, and order the estoppel early.
USPS assigns ZIP 34142 the city name Immokalee, and Ave Maria has no municipal government to request a separate one. It does not affect your value, but it does affect search. We market your home under the Ave Maria name so buyers looking for Ave Maria find it, whichever name their search uses.
Beyond commission, the largest seller cost in Florida is documentary stamp tax on the deed, $0.70 per $100 of sale price, customarily paid by the seller in Collier County, along with prorated taxes and assessments. In Collier County the buyer customarily pays the owner's title policy. Our Florida seller closing costs guide walks through every line so you can estimate your net before you list.
It is a good time to sell a well-priced home and a hard time to sell an overpriced one. ZIP 34142 carried 264 active listings and 9.3 months of supply in August 2026, so buyers have choice and they use it. Homes priced to today’s inventory are still going under contract, which is why we start every Ave Maria listing with the comparison, not the hope.
Ave Maria prices against builder inventory in the same villages, so there is little margin for a pricing error in either direction. If you are buying, start with our Southwest Florida buying guide and then call us about the specific village, because the CDD assessment, the HOA tier and the builder incentive on offer that month all move the number. If you are selling, start with a home valuation and we will price your village against both the resale board and the builder price sheets. Either way, call Jesse McGreevy at (239) 898-6072 or Marc Comisar at (239) 287-5873, or email [email protected]. Office: 24031 S Tamiami Trl #101, Bonita Springs, FL 34134
When you’re ready to evaluate Ave Maria as a place to live or invest, you need a brokerage team that knows every village, every builder, every amenity, every fee, every cost-stack nuance, and every off-market opportunity in the town and the surrounding Naples-Marco market. That team is McGreevy and Comisar at Domain Realty Group.
Jesse McGreevy (FL license SL3101296) and Marc Comisar (FL license BK3060671) are Southwest Florida listing and buyer agents with McGreevy and Comisar, brokered by Domain Realty. They lead Domain Realty Group, a full-service Southwest Florida real estate team. Learn more about McGreevy and Comisar or at DomainRealtyGroup.com.
McGreevy and Comisar are part of Domain Realty, Southwest Florida’s full-service brokerage, regulated by the Florida Real Estate Commission (FREC), licenses SL3101296 and BK3060671.
We sell across every Ave Maria builder (CC Homes, Del Webb, Lennar and Pulte). We track resale inventory across every village. We know the AMSCD assessment per parcel. We know which Del Webb lots back up to the Panther Run golf course. We know which Maple Ridge homes are closest to Donahue Academy and which are closest to Ave Maria Elementary on Anthem Parkway North. We know how to evaluate The National Golf & Country Club’s bundled-membership value against a comparable Naples country club purchase. And we know how to position an Ave Maria home for sale into the broader Naples MSA buyer pool.
Reach out directly:
Whether you’re a first-time Ave Maria buyer, an investor evaluating new construction inventory, a Naples-area buyer considering a move east for value, or an existing Ave Maria homeowner preparing to sell, we’d welcome the conversation. There is no obligation. We will tell you honestly what we think, including when the honest answer is that this is not the right town for you.
Ready to start? Call Jesse McGreevy at (239) 898-6072, or read more about McGreevy and Comisar. You are calling Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008.
McGreevy and Comisar is a top-reviewed Ave Maria realtor and a top-reviewed Southwest Florida real estate team. Every quote below is a genuine five star review from our Google Business Profile, and we are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008.
★★★★★ “Marc is one of the most down to earth realtors that really listens to your needs and is exceptional at finding the right house.”
Ian Matheson
★★★★★ “We have used his services for 5 transactions and every one has gone smoothly. He is a fantastic communicator, offers great representation, and is extremely honest.”
Michael Kaprove
★★★★★ “Working with Jesse and his team was truly an amazing experience. From the very beginning, they were professional, attentive, and incredibly knowledgeable. They guided us through every step of the process with patience and clarity, always making sure we felt comfortable and informed with every decision.”
Leonardo Silva
★★★★★ “We love working with Marc and Jesse at Domain. The entire team is professional and top notch. They go above and beyond for their clients. Highly recommend”
Rochelle Joslin
★★★★★ “Jesse and his team were the most professional and communicative people throughout the entire process! Always available and helpful! Highly recommended!”
Matt Haines
★★★★★ “Marc and Jess were so helpful!! Fantastic experience start to finish they were truly knowledgeable and went above and beyond through the entire process.”
Madelena Urban
Ave Maria is a master-planned town in eastern Collier County, Florida, built around Ave Maria University by Tom Monaghan (founder of Domino’s Pizza) and Barron Collier Companies. The town opened in 2007 and has sold approximately 5,500 homes to date, with an original buildout target of 11,000 homes and a county-approved expansion (June 9, 2026) that raises capacity to 17,738 homes.
Ave Maria is in eastern Collier County, approximately 37 miles east of downtown Naples (about 53 minutes by car), 37 miles east of Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW), and 24 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
No. Ave Maria is unincorporated. There is no mayor, no city council, and no city government. The town is governed through a combination of (1) Collier County BoCC for county-level matters, (2) the Ave Maria Stewardship Community District (a special-purpose state government created by Florida statute), and (3) the Ave Maria Master Association plus per-village neighborhood associations.
Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza, with a $250 million founding donation to Ave Maria University and a partnership with Barron Collier Companies (which donated the land). Monaghan and Barron Collier Companies created Ave Maria Development, LLLP in July 2003 as the entity that developed the town.
Per the 2020 U.S. Census, Ave Maria’s CDP population was 6,242, but the town has grown substantially since then. Current estimates run 7,000-8,500+ depending on the source and methodology. With approximately 5,500 homes sold and an average household size of 2-3 residents, the working population is likely in the 11,000-15,000 range as of 2026.
ZIP 34142 covers both Ave Maria and Immokalee, with USPS using Immokalee as the post office of record. This is a common situation in unincorporated Florida communities, the ZIP code is administered by USPS based on postal service routing, not municipal boundaries. Ave Maria parcels show as “Immokalee, FL 34142” in USPS addressing and on most property listings. This is a postal convention, not a reflection of the actual community location.
No. Tom Monaghan said publicly in a 2007 CNN interview that the town “is open to everyone, not just Catholics.” The town’s HOA, the Master Association, the Stewardship District, the public-school assignment (to Ave Maria Elementary, open since August 11, 2026), the public-utility infrastructure, and the commercial center all serve residents on identical terms regardless of religious affiliation. Del Webb Naples, the 55+ section planned for 2,449 homes, has a substantially secular resident base.
No. See above. The town’s identity is Catholic-anchored (university, parish church, classical Catholic K-12 school), but residence is open to all faiths and to no faith.
Yes, per resident testimony and visible demographic mix. Del Webb Naples in particular has many non-Catholic residents. The town center, the restaurants, the parks, the retail, and the public school all operate without religious requirements. Catholic identity is present (mass schedules, town Feast Day on March 25, parish events) but not imposing.
Depending on what you value, yes. Strengths: safety, hurricane resilience, value pricing (~30-35% below MSA median), strong educational options (AMU + Donahue Academy + the new Ave Maria Elementary, open in town since August 11, 2026), low insurance costs, walkable town center, low crime, family-friendly amenities, and a strong sense of community. Weaknesses: distance from Gulf beaches (37 miles to Naples coast, ~50 minutes), no full hospital yet (until NCH 150-bed campus opens), public-school feeder skews toward suburban Naples-area schools rather than coastal Collier schools, very hot and humid summers.
Yes. Crime rates in Ave Maria are very low compared to Collier County and Southwest Florida averages. The town has the Collier County Sheriff’s Office presence, and the residential character (largely owner-occupied, family-oriented) supports a strong baseline safety profile.
Subtropical. Summers run hot and humid (June-September): average highs 90-95°F, frequent afternoon thunderstorms, peak humidity. Winters are mild (December-February): average highs 70-78°F, low humidity, plentiful sunshine. The annual mean temperature is in the high 70s.
For Ave Maria-specific new construction: approximately $445,000 (public new-construction listing median). For ZIP 34142 (which includes neighboring Immokalee): $394,500 median sale price in August 2026 (SunStats). The broader Naples-Immokalee-Marco MSA median is $595,000, Ave Maria runs roughly 30-34% below the MSA median.
Four builder brands as of 2026: (1) CC Homes (Maple Ridge), (2) Del Webb, Pulte’s active-adult brand (Del Webb Naples, 55+), (3) Lennar (The National Golf & Country Club and Gatherpoint), (4) Pulte Homes (Gatherpoint; Pulte reports Avalon Park sold out). The name “Liberty Park” in county records is Avalon Park’s plat name, not a fifth builder.
Del Webb Naples is 55+ active adult (2,449 homes planned, secular-leaning, amenity-heavy with two clubhouses + 18-hole optional-membership golf + 12 pickleball courts). Maple Ridge is all-ages family-focused (largest village, CC Homes builder, $200/month HOA, 10,000-sf private clubhouse, designed for school-age families). They are functionally different communities within the same town.
A Lennar golf country club community within Ave Maria, with 1,284 homes planned across four phases. Earlier homes carry a bundled golf membership, while current sales carry a social membership, so membership depends on the specific home. Lennar’s 2026 non-golf fee sheets put total association costs at $605.83 a month for an Executive Home. The 18-hole par-72 course was designed by Gordon Lewis. Product mix runs from Terrace Condominiums through Estate Homes.
Up year-over-year (4.6% on ZIP 34142 median per August 2026 SunStats). Contracts are now being written faster (54 days to contract, down from 58) while closings take longer (105 days to sale, up from 79 days), which is a new-construction completion and financing signal rather than a demand one. The market is still buyer-favorable in 2026: ZIP 34142 active inventory is up 9.1% year over year and months supply rose to 9.3, even as the broader MSA tightened to 5.7. Builders are offering incentives.
For owner-occupants seeking value within the Naples-Marco MSA, yes. For pure-investment second-home or rental purposes, the math depends on rental yield in your specific village; verify current rental rates against carrying cost.
Five-layer cost stack: (1) Property tax (~$400/month for a $450K home), (2) AMSCD special assessment (~$200-400/month), (3) Ave Maria Master Association fee ($50-150/month), (4) Village-specific HOA (varies from $84/month at Hampton Village to $781.17/month all-in for a Terrace VI condominium at The National G&CC, before golf dues), (5) Homeowners insurance ($200-400/month). Total monthly housing cost for a $450K Maple Ridge home: ~$3,500-$3,700 (with 20% down + 7% mortgage).
For a $450,000 home with Florida homestead exemption: approximately $4,000-$6,000/year for the ad-valorem portion (Collier County millage), plus $2,000-$4,500/year for the AMSCD special assessment. The Save Our Homes 3% cap limits annual increases on the assessed value for primary residences.
Approximately $2,500-$5,000/year in Ave Maria vs. $8,000-$20,000+/year in coastal Collier, a $5,500-$15,000+/year differential. Over a 20-year ownership period, that’s $100,000-$300,000 in favor of Ave Maria. Drivers: inland location, 23-foot elevation, no coastal storm-surge zone, all underground utilities, newer construction to 160-mph wind rating.
Ave Maria parcels are mapped in a mix of FEMA Zone X (minimal flood hazard) and Zone AH (shallow flooding). Zone AH is a Special Flood Hazard Area, so a federally backed mortgage on an AH parcel requires flood insurance, while a Zone X parcel does not. The mix runs parcel by parcel: on FEMA’s effective map most sampled points at The National fall in Zone AH, and two adjacent homesites there are mapped differently. A home built above base flood elevation may qualify for a Letter of Map Amendment that removes the requirement. Buyers should verify the specific flood zone for any parcel via FEMA’s Map Service Center (msc.fema.gov).
Three options: (1) Ave Maria Elementary School, the first public elementary in Ave Maria, which opened August 11, 2026 at 4050 Anthem Parkway North with roughly 400 students against a 900-student capacity, pre-K through 5, mascot the Cardinals; (2) Rhodora J. Donahue Academy, Catholic classical Pre-K-12 (~376 students); (3) Ave Maria University, undergraduate and graduate Catholic university (~1,260 students). Plus Catholic Montessori School, Palm Preschool, and other small private/specialty options.
Since August 11, 2026 the pattern is Ave Maria Elementary, then Corkscrew Middle School, then Palmetto Ridge High School. Before that date, elementary students were bused to Estates Elementary in Naples, roughly 30 minutes each way. The persistent “Immokalee feeder” myth that some real estate listings still repeat was never accurate.
Rhodora J. Donahue Academy of Ave Maria is a private Catholic K-12 school operated by Ave Maria Parish (under the Diocese of Venice). Founded 2007, adopted by the parish in 2013. Approximately 376 students. Classical Catholic curriculum integrating faith and learning in the liberal arts trivium/quadrivium model. Newman Society recognized.
A private Catholic liberal arts university founded by Tom Monaghan in 1998 with a $250 million donation. Permanent campus opened in 2007. SACSCOC accredited for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Approximately 1,260 students from all 50 states + 20 countries. 53 degree programs across 8 areas including Mechanical Engineering, Nursing, and a Ph.D. in Theology. Newman Guide Recommended College. NAIA Division I athletics in The Sun Conference (Gyrenes).
Per Ave Maria Development’s June 4, 2025 official statement: “Ave Maria experienced zero damage despite the extreme 2024 season” (Helene + Milton). Ian (2022): “only minor landscape damage.” Irma (2017): “no interruptions.” Three storms, decade-long record of minimal Ave Maria impact.
Seven structural reasons: (1) ~24 miles inland from the Gulf, outside storm surge envelope; (2) 23-foot elevation per US Census/GNIS; (3) no coastal storm-surge zones, with flood zones X and AH mapped parcel by parcel; (4) All underground utilities community-wide, nothing for wind to knock down; (5) AMUC onsite power generation at water/wastewater/pump stations; (6) Pulte homes built to 160-mph wind rating, all homes 1+ foot above base flood elevation; (7) Onsite fire station + EMS unit for fast response.
Yes. Ave Maria Elementary School, which opened at 4050 Anthem Parkway North on August 11, 2026, doubles as the hurricane shelter for the Ave Maria area. Onsite emergency services are provided by Immokalee Fire Control District Station 32 and Collier County EMS Medic 32. AMU’s Tom Golisano Field House has also been used as a regional shelter during prior storm events, with capacity for several hundred displaced residents.
Yes. On May 7, 2026, the Collier County Planning Commission voted 8-1 to recommend approval of a 2,042-acre / 6,738-home expansion of Ave Maria’s Stewardship Receiving Area boundary. On June 9, 2026 the Board of County Commissioners approved it 4-1. The expansion brings total town capacity to 17,738 homes on approximately 7,970 acres and includes 511 mandated affordable-housing units, additional commercial development, a 1,000-acre senior living community east of Camp Keais Road, and a larger hospital footprint.
At the current pace of approximately 300-400 home closings per year and a current buildout target of 11,000 homes (with ~5,500 sold to date), Ave Maria’s existing buildout would complete in approximately 12-18 years from 2026. If the 2,042-acre expansion is approved (raising the cap to 17,738), buildout extends substantially further, likely into the 2050s.
The NCH 150-bed hospital is planned as a four-phase project. Construction is expected to begin in late 2027. Phase 1 (a 25,000-sf freestanding 24/7 emergency department) would be operational a year or two thereafter. Full 150-bed buildout is projected over a ~10-year span. In the interim, NCH Immediate Care Center has been operational in Ave Maria since Spring 2025.
Yes. The broader Collier County Rural Lands Stewardship Area program has approved seven additional Stewardship Receiving Areas beyond Ave Maria, totaling approximately 16,912 additional dwelling units across the eastern Collier corridor. The largest is the Town of Big Cypress (with Rivergrass, Longwater, and Bellmar as component villages), being developed by Collier Enterprises (the cousin company to Barron Collier from a 1976 family split).
Both are newer master-planned towns by single developers (Ave Maria by Barron Collier; Babcock Ranch by Kitson & Partners). Both emphasize hurricane resilience (Ave Maria via inland location + buried utilities + AMUC; Babcock Ranch via solar farm + buried utilities + Charlotte County location). Differences: Ave Maria is Catholic-anchored with a university; Babcock Ranch is sustainability-anchored with America’s first solar-powered town positioning. Ave Maria has four builder brands; Babcock Ranch has five+ builders. Ave Maria is ~37 miles from Naples; Babcock Ranch is ~30 miles from Fort Myers. Both are buyer-favorable in 2026; both are top-20 master-planned communities nationally.
Different value propositions. Coastal Naples offers Gulf beaches, 5th Avenue South dining and luxury retail, NCH North Naples Hospital, world-class golf clubs, and a denser luxury market, at a 30-35% price premium to Ave Maria. Ave Maria offers value, hurricane resilience, lower insurance, a Catholic-anchored town identity, and a top-rated 55+ section, at a 30-50 minute drive to coastal Naples for the things Naples uniquely offers.
Yes. The drive from Ave Maria to downtown Naples is approximately 37 miles / 53 minutes. To North Naples / Mercato: ~40 miles / 50-55 minutes. To Marco Island: ~50 miles / 65-70 minutes. Many Ave Maria residents commute to Naples for work; others work remotely; others work at Ave Maria University, in town businesses, or in Immokalee. Traffic on Immokalee Road can extend the drive substantially during winter snowbird-season rush hours.
Still have a question about Ave Maria that this guide does not answer? Call Jesse McGreevy at (239) 898-6072 or email [email protected]. If we do not know the answer we will tell you that, and then we will go find it.
This guide cites primary sources only, government records, official developer publications, accredited universities, official Catholic parish and diocesan sources, recognized news media (Naples Daily News, Gulfshore Business, South Florida Hospital News, AveMariaSun), state agencies (Florida Realtors SunStats, Florida AHCA, Florida Department of Education, Florida Auditor General, Florida Department of State / Sunbiz), federal agencies (FEMA, U.S. Census, EMMA/MSRB municipal bond filings), and authoritative third parties (Cardinal Newman Society, Newman Guide). We do not cite competitor realtor sites, real estate aggregators, or unverified third-party data sources.
Expansion approval vote (4-1, June 9, 2026) and the timing concerns raised at the hearing: WINK News, “Ave Maria approved for 6,738 more homes despite concerns over timing”.
For maximum-depth research on Ave Maria, the following primary-source documents are linked here. All are public records or developer-published documents. The first four are particularly important for understanding the town’s governance, financial structure, and pipeline.
# | Document | Source | What It Is |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Avemariastewardshipcd.org | The Florida special act that created the Ave Maria Stewardship Community District in 2004, the foundational governance document. | |
2 | MBS Capital Markets | $22,950,000 Refunding Bonds Limited Offering Memorandum, January 28, 2022. Full disclosure of District financial structure, special-assessment methodology, debt schedule, and parcel-level exposure. | |
3 | Ave Maria Development 2,042-Acre Expansion FAQ (October 24, 2025) | Avemaria.com | The developer’s own FAQ on the proposed 2,042-acre expansion and affordable-housing provisions, released ahead of the May 7, 2026 Planning Commission hearing. |
4 | AMSCD Contraction Special Act (Collier Delegation, September 2025) | Collier County Legislative Delegation | The 2025 Florida special act contracting AMSCD’s district boundary by approximately 1,000 acres. |
5 | Ave Maria University | The university’s complete academic catalog covering faculty, programs, admissions, and accreditation. | |
6 | Florida AHCA | The 2018 Certificate of Need application for the Braden Clinic micro-hospital (not built; site now Mater Dei Clinic). Provides regulatory background on the Ave Maria healthcare pipeline. | |
7 | AMSCD FY2023 Audited Financial Statements | Florida Auditor General | Audited financials including the District’s $99.94M outstanding bond ladder, special-assessment revenue, and debt service detail. |
8 | Collier County RLSA Town Hall Presentation (September 10, 2025) | Colliercountyfl.gov | Comprehensive presentation of all 8 approved eastern Collier Stewardship Receiving Areas including Ave Maria, Town of Big Cypress, Rivergrass, Longwater, Bellmar, Hyde Park, Brightshore, Horse Trials. |
9 | Collier County Planning Commission May 7, 2026 Meeting Packet | Colliercountyfl.gov | The agenda packet, staff report, and supporting materials for the 2,042-acre Ave Maria SRA Amendment recommendation hearing. |
10 | FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) for ZIP 34142 | msc.fema.gov | The federal flood-zone designation for Ave Maria parcels. Parcels are mapped Zone X or Zone AH, and Zone AH requires flood insurance on a federally backed mortgage. Verify the specific parcel before purchase. |
For buyers who want even deeper documentation (including AMSCD board meeting minutes, agendas, audited financials by year, and historical bond official statements) visit the AMSCD’s own archive at avemariastewardshipcd.org/financials/ which hosts FY2019 through FY2024 audited financial reports plus all adopted budgets back to FY2017-2018.
Last updated: September 23, 2026. The Collier County Planning Commission recommended approval of the 2,042-acre, 6,738-home SRA expansion on May 7, 2026, and the Board of County Commissioners approved it 4-1 on June 9, 2026. We will also update it as the NCH 150-bed hospital project moves through its development phases.
Prepared by McGreevy and Comisar, Domain Realty Group. Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008.
McGreevy and Comisar are part of Domain Realty, Southwest Florida’s full-service brokerage, regulated by the Florida Real Estate Commission (FREC), licenses SL3101296 and BK3060671.
Market data from Florida Realtors SunStats, pulled September 21, 2026. Brokered by Domain Realty.
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