Rookery Lake is 45 single-family homes on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court in Bonita Bay, Bonita Springs, built 1998 to 2004, with 11 recorded sales in 60 months at a $3,600,000 median. Sell or buy with McGreevy and Comisar.
McGreevy and Comisar are the #1 real estate team in Southwest Florida selling and buying homes in Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay. Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay is a neighborhood of 45 detached estate houses on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court, in the northern part of the master-planned community of Bonita Bay in Bonita Springs, Florida. The Lee County Property Appraiser records every one of its homes as a detached single-family house on one recorded plat, Bonita Bay Unit 44, built from 1998 to 2004 on lots of 0.52 to 1.44 acres, and every lot line meets a Bonita Bay Club golf course parcel, one of the three lake tracts the master association owns inside the plat, or a tidal wetland. Whether you’re ready to sell your Rookery Lake home or buy your next one, we’re the team that delivers: Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, the #1 team in Southwest Florida since 2012, and over $900 million in personal sales between Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar.
The Lee County qualified-deed record shows 11 Rookery Lake sales in the 60 months since November 2021 at a median of $3,600,000, ranging from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000, and the newest of them was recorded on December 5, 2025. The Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026, counted one Rookery Lake closing in the 12 months to that date and no home listed or under contract on the pull date. If you are choosing an agent to sell or buy here, our comparison of the best real estate agents in Bonita Springs shows how local agents stack up on the public record.
This guide is built from the Lee County Property Appraiser parcel roll, all 45 Rookery Lake home field cards, its qualified-sale file (index dated November 3, 2026), Lee County’s parcel and hydrography map layers, the Bonita Bay Community Association’s recorded Declaration, street table and public pages, FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer, Lee County’s evacuation layer, the City of Bonita Springs, Florida’s homeowners’ association statute and the Southwest Florida MLS figures pulled on September 30, 2026. Where the public record stops, we say so and name the document that answers the question.
By Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar, McGreevy and Comisar, Domain Realty Group. Updated November 2026.
McGreevy and Comisar are the best realtor for Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay because the case is on the record: the #1 team in Southwest Florida since 2012, Top 1% of agents nationally since 2008, over $900 million in personal sales, and a Rookery Lake market read built from every qualified Rookery Lake deed of the last five years, all 45 county home cards, the county’s golf, lake and wetland parcels and FEMA’s flood layer at every lot.
If you’re searching for the best realtor for Rookery Lake in Bonita Bay, Bonita Springs, whether you’re ready to sell your Rookery Lake home or buy your next one, McGreevy and Comisar is the team that delivers. We lead Domain Realty Group, the #1 real estate team in Southwest Florida since 2012, Top 1% Nationally since 2008, with over $2.5 billion sold as a team and $900 million in personal sales between Jesse and Marc.
That matters in Rookery Lake for a specific reason. Forty-five estate houses on one plat do not price themselves. The 11 qualified deeds of the last 60 months run from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000, a spread of $1,750,000, among homes that share one gate system, one flood zone and the same golf and lake setting. The spread follows the house more than the street: the county records heated areas from 3,713 to 8,951 square feet, and the price per heated square foot in the window runs from $464 to $799. The two smallest houses that sold, 4020 Arrowwood Court (4,177 square feet) and 26450 Rookery Lake Drive (4,133), recorded $3,200,000 and $3,300,000 in April 2024, while 26531 Rookery Lake Drive, more than twice their size at 8,843 square feet, recorded $4,100,000 a year later. A listing agent who prices a Rookery Lake house from a Bonita Bay average, or from square footage alone, can miss by more than a million dollars in either direction.
Recent Rookery Lake track record (last 12 months): In the 12 months to September 30, 2026 the Lee County record holds one qualified Rookery Lake deed: 26570 Rookery Lake Drive at $3,000,000 on December 5, 2025. The Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026, shows the same closing at $3,000,000 against a $3,500,000 asking price (85.7% of list), with no Rookery Lake home active or pending on the pull date. We will walk you through that sale and every deed of the last five years.
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Selling your Rookery Lake home? Get a free home valuation → mcgreevyandcomisar.com/home-valuation OR call Jesse direct at (239) 898-6072.
Buying a home in Rookery Lake? Call Marc at (239) 287-5873 for a personalized buyer consultation, or read how we represent buyers in Southwest Florida.
Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay, section by section. Each link below jumps to its part of this guide, from the 60-month county deed record and the one plat on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court to the estate homes, the lots and the master association streets and lakes, the golf, lake and wetland edges, the flood zone at every lot, the comparison with Spring Ridge, the seller section and the sources behind every figure.
Living in Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay means a detached estate house, most often with its own pool, on a lot of half an acre to nearly an acre and a half, on one of three streets in the northern part of Bonita Bay, with a Bonita Bay Club golf course, a master association lake or a tidal wetland along every lot line and the whole Bonita Bay setting through the master association.
Every Rookery Lake home carries a Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court or Pineshadow Court address. The Bonita Bay Community Association’s own street table lists exactly those three streets under “Rookery Lake” (BBCA Street and Neighborhoods). On the Lee County roll the parcels addressed on the three streets are the 45 Rookery Lake homes, and the same plat holds four more parcels, all master association land: the road right of way and three lake tracts. By our straight-line measurement from the center of the neighborhood, the Bonita Bay Club address on Country Club Drive is about 0.5 mile away, the shops and restaurants of the Promenade at Bonita Bay about 0.7 mile and the master association’s office at 3451 Bonita Bay Boulevard about 0.9 mile.
Three streets, one plat, 45 estate homes. The Lee County roll records every Rookery Lake home on Bonita Bay Unit 44, recorded at Plat Book 59, Page 79. Rookery Lake Drive runs from 26311 at its northern end to 26691 at its southern end, with homes on both sides; Arrowwood Court (4000 to 4080) branches west off the northern half and Pineshadow Court (3900 to 3940) east off the southern half. The plat numbers 47 lots: Lots 41 and 42 carry one house at 4041 Arrowwood Court, the largest lot in the neighborhood after 4080 Arrowwood Court, and Lot 31 is divided between its neighbors, its north half joined to Lot 32 at 26570 Rookery Lake Drive and its south half to Lot 30 at 26610. The plat itself carries the name Bonita Bay Unit 44; the name Rookery Lake comes from the master association’s street table and the MLS, so a county search by the name alone finds nothing.
The Property Appraiser codes every Rookery Lake home with the single-family use code, records one living unit per building on every card that carries the field, and places all 45 in its “Bonita Bay single-family sub” appraisal neighborhoods. The parcel layer carries every lot as planned development (PUD) zoning inside the City of Bonita Springs.
Rookery Lake is not a villa or attached-home neighborhood, not a condominium and not a boating street. Every card records a detached house on its own lot, the smallest of them at 3,713 heated square feet. No Rookery Lake card records a dock, boat lift or seawall, and the lakes behind many lots are stormwater lakes inside the master plan, not navigable water. The houses differ from one another: the county assigns three improvement types across the 45 cards (29 single-family ranch, 11 Mediterranean and 5 colonial), and the heated areas run from 3,713 to 8,951 square feet. Rookery Lake is also not Rookery Pointe, a separate community in Estero, and not the Rookery at Marco on Marco Island; neither is counted anywhere on this page.
The lots sold vacant first. On the county sale file, the first qualified sales of the Unit 44 lots were vacant-land deeds recorded from June 1997, and the qualified vacant-land deeds of 1997 to 2002 ran from $260,000 to $925,000, a median of $395,000. The houses then went up one at a time: ten in 1998, six in 1999, nine in 2000, ten in 2001, six in 2002, three in 2003 and one in 2004. The roll shows no Rookery Lake house replaced by a newer one: each home’s year built follows the vacant sale of its lot, so the newest house on the three streets is 22 years old.
Measured edge to edge on Lee County’s parcel and hydrography layers, 23 of the 45 lots touch a parcel owned by the Bonita Bay Club and recorded as golf course land: 17 touch the Marsh course parcel (the odd-numbered southern half of Rookery Lake Drive, 26690 and all five Pineshadow Court lots) and 6 the parcel the county describes as Bonita Bay Golf Course Area 7 and 8, North Central Area (26311 Rookery Lake Drive and the five even-numbered Arrowwood Court lots). Twenty-five lots touch one of the three lake tracts the master association owns on the plat, and four of those also touch golf land. The county’s own land classes record 29 Rookery Lake lots as “single family residential, golf course”, 14 as “single family residential, lake” and 2 without a view class. Bonita Bay itself has 12 miles of walking and biking paths connecting its neighborhoods, parks and the Club campuses, inside a gated community of 3,346 residences on about 2,400 acres (BBCA Media Brochure, January 2026).
McGreevy and Comisar, Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, sell and buy in Rookery Lake, a 45-home plat inside Bonita Bay where the finished size, one story or two, the golf or lake view, the age and condition of the roof, the pool and the openings, and the degree of updating since the turn of the century decide most of the price. Selling a Rookery Lake home? Start with a free Rookery Lake home valuation, or call Jesse direct at (239) 898-6072. Buying on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court or Pineshadow Court? Call Marc at (239) 287-5873, or read how we represent buyers in Southwest Florida. If you want to see what is listed right now, our Domain Realty Group team keeps the current Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay homes for sale on its own site.
Data updated: November 2026. Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay recorded 11 qualified sales in the 60 months since November 2021 at a $3,600,000 median, from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000, in the Lee County Property Appraiser recorded sales, through September 2026. The newest Rookery Lake sale in that index is December 5, 2025 (the index’s newest Lee County sale overall is September 25, 2026), and the MLS figures below are from the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026.
Two sources describe the same market from two angles. The Lee County Property Appraiser’s qualified-sale file records the deed consideration for every arm’s-length sale the Property Appraiser accepts as a market sale, and it is the primary recent-sales source on this page. The Southwest Florida MLS records the reported closing price of homes marketed through the MLS, plus asking prices, days on market and pending sales, which the deed record cannot show. Where the two disagree on a sale, this page publishes the deed figure as the sale price and names the MLS figure once with its date; the county records the deed consideration, while the MLS records the reported closing price. They are never averaged. Eleven sales in five years on a 45-home neighborhood is a small sample, fewer than ten in any shorter window, and we say so wherever a figure leans on it.
A 12-month window, since November 2025, holds one qualified Rookery Lake sale; a 24-month window holds four, a 36-month window seven, a 48-month window eight and the 60-month window eleven. We use the 60-month window, since November 2021, and list every sale in it rather than lean on the median alone. Every sale in the window was a resale; the newest house on the roll was finished in 2004. The county’s summary for all recorded history, 109 qualified deeds back to the first lot sales of 1997 (51 of them vacant-land sales), is not a current price and we do not present it as one.
| Recorded | Address | Built | Lot class (county) | Stories (card) | Lot (acres) | Heated sq ft | Deed price | Per heated sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 3, 2021 | 26451 Rookery Lake Dr | 2000 | Lake | 2 | 0.579 | 8,951 | $4,750,000 | $531 |
| December 17, 2021 | 26551 Rookery Lake Dr | 2000 | Golf | 1 | 0.624 | 5,914 | $4,000,000 | $676 |
| January 31, 2022 | 26490 Rookery Lake Dr | 2001 | Lake | 2 | 0.830 | 5,956 | $4,100,000 | $688 |
| March 1, 2023 | 26431 Rookery Lake Dr | 1998 | Golf | 2 | 0.651 | 5,076 | $3,600,000 | $709 |
| April 5, 2024 | 4020 Arrowwood Ct | 1999 | Golf | 1 | 0.590 | 4,177 | $3,200,000 | $766 |
| April 8, 2024 | 26450 Rookery Lake Dr | 2003 | Lake | 1 | 0.621 | 4,133 | $3,300,000 | $798 |
| June 11, 2024 | 26630 Rookery Lake Dr | 2002 | Lake | 2 | 0.671 | 6,237 | $3,295,000 | $528 |
| November 30, 2024 | 4080 Arrowwood Ct | 2001 | Golf | 2 | 1.435 | 6,398 | $3,900,000 | $610 |
| February 7, 2025 | 26610 Rookery Lake Dr | 1998 | Lake | 1 | 0.962 | 5,093 | $3,200,000 | $628 |
| April 16, 2025 | 26531 Rookery Lake Dr | 2002 | Golf | 2 | 0.865 | 8,843 | $4,100,000 | $464 |
| December 5, 2025 | 26570 Rookery Lake Dr | 2000 | Lake | 2 | 0.916 | 6,327 | $3,000,000 | $474 |
The eleven deeds total $40,445,000. Eleven is an odd count, so the median is the sixth price in order: sorted, the prices run $3,000,000, $3,200,000, $3,200,000, $3,295,000, $3,300,000, $3,600,000, $3,900,000, $4,000,000, $4,100,000, $4,100,000 and $4,750,000, and the sixth is $3,600,000. The per-square-foot median works the same way: sorted, the eleven values run $463.6, $474.2, $528.3, $530.7, $609.6, $628.3, $676.4, $688.4, $709.2, $766.1 and $798.5, and the sixth is $628.3, a median of $628 per county heated square foot. Each deed is on a different house, so the eleven cover eleven of the 45 homes, about one in four.
Rookery Lake Drive recorded nine of the eleven deeds, a median of $3,600,000. Arrowwood Court recorded two: $3,200,000 (4020, April 2024) and $3,900,000 (4080, November 2024). Pineshadow Court recorded none in the window. By the county’s lot class, the six lake-class deeds recorded $3,000,000, $3,200,000, $3,295,000, $3,300,000, $4,100,000 and $4,750,000, a median of $3,297,500 (the midpoint of $3,295,000 and $3,300,000), and the five golf-class deeds $3,200,000, $3,600,000, $3,900,000, $4,000,000 and $4,100,000, a median of $3,900,000. Six and five deeds are counts, not price levels for a view: the spread inside each class is wider than the gap between them.
One qualified Rookery Lake deed was recorded in the 12 months to September 30, 2026: 26570 Rookery Lake Drive at $3,000,000 on December 5, 2025. The county card describes a house built in 2000 of 6,327 heated square feet, recorded as two stories with a “three quarter story” of 816 square feet over a finished lower garage, on a lake-class lot of 0.916 acre (Lot 32 and the north half of Lot 31) behind which lies the largest of the three lake tracts. At $474 per county heated square foot it is the second-lowest per-square-foot deed of the window. It was the house’s first qualified sale since its lot sold vacant for $510,000 in June 1997. Neither the deed nor the county card tells us what was inside the house, and we do not guess.
The Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026, counted one Rookery Lake closing in the 12 months to that date: 26570 Rookery Lake Drive, listed at $3,500,000 and sold for $3,000,000 on December 5, 2025, 85.7% of the asking price, with 6,939 MLS living square feet, four bedrooms plus a den and four full baths and one half bath, $432 per MLS living square foot. The MLS row records 0 days on market, and the row alone does not show how the home was marketed. On the pull date no Rookery Lake home was listed for sale and none was pending. The same pull’s 12-month rental search returned no leased Rookery Lake record. One closing is a count, not a trend, and the listing picture may have changed since the pull date.
On the one recent sale both records hold, they agree on the price ($3,000,000) and the date (December 5, 2025), so the deed-versus-MLS rule has nothing to settle on price. They disagree on size: the county records 6,327 heated square feet and the MLS 6,939 living square feet. This page uses the deed price and the county heated area for every per-square-foot figure in the county tables, and names the MLS figure, Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026, once, here. The county records the deed consideration and its own measured heated area; the MLS records the reported closing price and the listing’s living area. Neither is averaged with the other.
The 26570 gap has a visible cause on its county card: a three-quarter story of 816 square feet above a finished lower garage of 619 square feet, areas the appraiser values and counts differently from a listing. Fourteen Rookery Lake cards record a finished lower garage and eight a three-quarter story, so the same gap can appear on other listings. A buyer comparing price per square foot across Rookery Lake listings should know which number each listing uses, and should ask how any upper or lower-level room is built and permitted.
The one closing on the September 30, 2026 pull sold $500,000 under its $3,500,000 asking price, at 85.7% of list. One ratio is a data point, not a rule, but it is a reminder that in a neighborhood that records two or three deeds a year, the asking prices of other Rookery Lake homes are a weak guide to value, and the deeds are a better one.
The eleven deeds span $1,750,000, and the county record explains part of that spread without guessing at the rest. Size: the two largest houses that sold, 26451 Rookery Lake Drive (8,951 heated square feet, the largest house on the roll) and 26531 (8,843), recorded $4,750,000 and $4,100,000, while the two smallest, 26450 (4,133) and 4020 Arrowwood Court (4,177), recorded $3,300,000 and $3,200,000. Size moves the price, but much less than in proportion, so the per-square-foot figure falls as the house grows. Stories: the four one-story deeds recorded a median of $3,250,000 and the seven two-story deeds $3,900,000. Date: the three deeds of late 2021 and January 2022 recorded $4,000,000 to $4,750,000; the eight since March 2023 ran from $3,000,000 to $4,100,000, a median of $3,297,500. The deed record does not say what was inside any house; renovation, finishes and condition are the likely remaining variables, and with every house built from 1998 to 2004 they matter more here than in a newer neighborhood, but only the listing, the disclosures and a showing establish them for a specific sale. The county’s 2025 just values, which cover all 45 homes rather than the few that sold, run from $2,074,386 to $4,732,825, a median of $2,779,298: Rookery Lake Drive at a median of $2,716,155, Arrowwood Court at $2,826,333.50 and Pineshadow Court at $2,539,826.
Five of the eleven houses that sold in the window had sold as finished homes before, and the pairs show the direction of the decade without giving a rate. 26551 Rookery Lake Drive went from $2,160,000 in May 2008 to $4,000,000 in December 2021; 26490 from $2,675,000 in April 2017 to $4,100,000 in January 2022; 4020 Arrowwood Court from $2,720,000 in September 2005 to $3,200,000 in April 2024; 26450 Rookery Lake Drive from $1,980,000 in April 2015 to $3,300,000 in April 2024; and 26630 from $2,500,000 in June 2011 and $3,150,000 in April 2021 to $3,295,000 in June 2024. The other six were the first qualified sale of the house itself, after vacant-lot deeds of $430,000 to $550,000 in 1997 to 1999. The deeds do not say whether any house was improved between sales, so we read them as data points, not as a rate for the neighborhood.
The same county file holds 19 deeds on 15 Rookery Lake homes in the 60-month window that the Property Appraiser did not qualify as market sales, each recorded at a consideration of $0 or $100. Deeds of that kind usually move a home between related parties or into or out of a trust, but the record does not say why any of them was made, and a nominal consideration is not a price. We do not count them in any figure on this page.
The county record shows how far Rookery Lake prices moved before this window. The home lots sold vacant from 1997 to 2002 for $260,000 to $925,000, and the first qualified house sales on the file recorded $1,720,000 (4020 Arrowwood Court, April 1999), $2,616,800 (26670 Rookery Lake Drive, May 2001), $1,900,000 (4060 Arrowwood Court, January 2002) and $2,475,000 (26550 Rookery Lake Drive, March 2002). The 14 qualified house deeds of 2004 to 2008 ran from $1,645,000 to $4,900,000, a median of $2,280,000; the 12 of 2009 to 2014 from $1,300,000 to $3,500,000, a median of $2,000,000; and the 9 of 2015 to 2020 from $1,480,000 to $3,550,000, a median of $1,980,000. The highest qualified deed on file is still $4,900,000, recorded for 26491 Rookery Lake Drive in May 2005. Year by year the medians of the qualified house deeds read $2,200,000 in 2011 (5 deeds), $1,980,000 in 2015 (5), $3,150,000 in 2021 (7), $3,297,500 in 2024 (4) and $3,200,000 in 2025 (3), small handfuls of sales that show a level, not a precise rate. The deed record does not say why a price moved, and we do not guess.
The table below runs the same county measure for nearby Bonita Bay single-family neighborhoods: qualified improved deeds recorded in the 60 months since November 3, 2021, from the same Lee County index (built November 3, 2026), with each neighborhood matched by the streets the master association’s street table assigns to it. Each neighborhood’s own guide may quote a slightly different window; this table keeps one window for all of them.
| Neighborhood | Homes | Built | Heated sq ft (median) | Lots, acres (median) | Deeds (60 months) | Median | Range | Median per heated sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bay Woods (Woodlyn Drive) | 48 | 1999 to 2019 | 3,693 to 13,815 (4,981) | 0.478 to 1.624 (0.704) | 14 | $3,875,000 | $2,900,000 to $5,900,000 | $804 |
| Spring Ridge (Fawnwood Court, Mandevilla Drive) | 59 | 1996 to 2003 | 3,443 to 11,347 (4,928) | 0.509 to 1.361 (0.671) | 12 | $3,800,000 | $2,875,000 to $4,500,000 | $707 |
| Rookery Lake (Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood and Pineshadow Courts) | 45 | 1998 to 2004 | 3,713 to 8,951 (5,093) | 0.523 to 1.435 (0.671) | 11 | $3,600,000 | $3,000,000 to $4,750,000 | $628 |
| Augusta Creek (Augusta Creek Court) | 28 | 1997 to 2000 | 2,903 to 5,204 (3,403) | 0.217 to 0.586 (0.264) | 8 | $1,924,500 | $1,775,000 to $2,700,000 | $640 |
Rookery Lake sits in Bonita Bay’s top single-family price band with Spring Ridge and Bay Woods, three neighborhoods of similar lot scale within about 0.7 mile of one another. Its 60-month median is $200,000 below Spring Ridge’s and $275,000 below Bay Woods’, and its median per square foot, $628, is the lowest of the three, because its houses are on average the largest (a median of 5,093 heated square feet). Augusta Creek, whose lots adjoin the northern end of Rookery Lake Drive, is a different product: smaller houses on lots of about a quarter acre.
For a buyer, the record says Rookery Lake trades a few times a year at most (11 deeds in 60 months on 45 homes, one in the last 12) and that nothing was listed for sale on September 30, 2026, so the choice at any moment is narrow and a buyer should be ready when the right house comes up. For a seller, the same record says the neighborhood supports prices from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000 for houses of the same era, and that the per-square-foot figure has run from $464 to $799: 26450 recorded $3,300,000 on 4,133 county square feet in April 2024, while 26531 recorded $4,100,000 on 8,843 a year later. With so few sales, the closest matching deeds, the county’s values for all 45 homes and the condition and updating of the house carry more weight than any neighborhood median.
Rookery Lake grew out of the Bonita Bay master plan in the late 1990s on one numbered plat, Bonita Bay Unit 44, recorded at Plat Book 59, Page 79. The lots sold vacant from 1997 to 2002, one buyer at a time, and the houses were built individually from 1998 to 2004 around three platted lakes, between the Bonita Bay Club’s Marsh course and its North Central golf land.
The Bonita Bay Community Association was established in 1985, and the community now covers about 2,400 acres with 3,346 residences across condominiums, high-rises, coach homes and single-family neighborhoods (BBCA Media Brochure, January 2026). The developer’s successor describes Bonita Bay as opened in 1985, with 2,400 acres, 3,300 permitted units, more than 1,400 acres of open space including 230 acres of lakes, and more than 12 miles of paths; it records that the Club was sold to its members in 2010 and the master association turned over to the residents in 2011 (Phoenix Bay Ventures, Bonita Bay). The original Declaration of General Protective Covenants and Restrictions for Bonita Bay was recorded on April 3, 1985 at Official Records Book 1778, Page 3516, and the current master Declaration was recorded on June 22, 2011 as Lee County Instrument 2011000142834. The master association frames the community between Spring Creek to the north, the Imperial River to the south and Estero Bay to the west (BBCA, vision); Rookery Lake sits in the northern half, between the community’s golf land and the tidal wetlands that run toward Estero Bay. The City of Bonita Springs, which incorporated in 1999, now governs the land (City of Bonita Springs, history).
The county sale file shows every Unit 44 parcel passing in a single 1985 deed recorded at Official Records Book 1763, Page 567, a transfer the Property Appraiser did not qualify as a lot sale, and then the Rookery Lake lots selling vacant, one buyer at a time. Sixteen lot deeds were recorded in June and July 1997 alone, and the qualified vacant-land deeds ran from June 1997 to February 2002, at $260,000 to $925,000 (median $395,000). Some lots sold vacant twice before a house went up: 4080 Arrowwood Court recorded $465,000 in December 1998 and $525,000 in May 1999, and 26450 Rookery Lake Drive $380,000 in June 1998 and $698,000 in February 2002, before its house was finished in 2003.
The roll dates the houses ten in 1998, six in 1999, nine in 2000, ten in 2001, six in 2002, three in 2003 and one in 2004 (26491 Rookery Lake Drive, the house on the highest 2025 just value). Pineshadow Court’s five houses date from 1998 to 2002, Arrowwood Court’s eight from 1998 to 2003 and Rookery Lake Drive’s from 1998 to 2004. Every card records concrete block and stucco walls under a concrete tile roof, but the improvement types (ranch, Mediterranean, colonial), the story counts and the sizes differ from house to house, which is what a neighborhood of individually built houses looks like on the county record. We do not name builders, because no primary record we read identifies them.
Rookery Lake owners belong to the Bonita Bay Community Association, a Florida not-for-profit corporation (document N07041, filed January 10, 1985) operating as a homeowners’ association under Chapter 720, Florida Statutes. On the Lee County parcel layer, every common parcel on the Unit 44 plat, the road right of way (Tract R, 5.22 acres) and the three lake tracts (Tracts A, B and C, 11.61 acres together), is owned by the master association, and the county file shows those four parcels moving together under one 2010 instrument (2010000316519) at no consideration. We found no separate Rookery Lake neighborhood association on a primary record or in a search of public business registers. The state’s corporate search refused our automated check on November 3, 2026; confirm the current record with the Division of Corporations, and confirm in the estoppel certificate and disclosure documents of a sale whether any neighborhood association or neighborhood assessment applies to a specific Rookery Lake home.
Rookery Lake homes are 45 detached single-family houses of concrete block and stucco under concrete tile roofs, 44 of them with a private pool on the county parcel layer, built from 1998 to 2004 on one Bonita Bay plat, with 3,713 to 8,951 heated square feet, a median of 5,093, and four bedrooms on 25 of them and three on 12.
The Lee County roll and the 45 field cards we read on November 3, 2026 record the following.
| Measure | Rookery Lake Drive (32 homes) | Arrowwood Court (8 homes) | Pineshadow Court (5 homes) | All 45 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Street numbers | 26311 to 26691 | 4000 to 4080 | 3900 to 3940 | All three streets |
| Year built | 1998 to 2004 | 1998 to 2003 | 1998 to 2002 | 1998 to 2004 |
| Heated sq ft (median) | 5,069.5 | 5,940 | 5,610 | 5,093 (3,713 to 8,951) |
| Lot size, acres (median) | 0.659 | 0.766 | 0.770 | 0.671 (0.523 to 1.435) |
| 2025 just value (median) | $2,716,155 | $2,826,333.50 | $2,539,826 | $2,779,298 |
| Qualified deeds, 60 months | 9 | 2 | 0 | 11 |
Bedrooms on the roll: four on 25 homes, three on 12, five on 7 and six on 1 (26491 Rookery Lake Drive). Bathrooms run from three to eight. The largest house, 26451 Rookery Lake Drive, records 8,951 heated square feet, built in 2000; the smallest, 26530 Rookery Lake Drive, records 3,713, built in 1998. Five houses record more than 8,000 square feet (26451, 26531, 26491 and 26471 Rookery Lake Drive and 4041 Arrowwood Court), and 38 of the 45 record between 4,000 and 7,200.
Every Rookery Lake card records concrete block walls with a stucco finish (“CB STUCCO”), two of them with common brick as well (26311 and 26451 Rookery Lake Drive), and a concrete tile roof over an irregular roof structure. Forty-four cards record a stem-wall foundation and one a slab on grade (26450 Rookery Lake Drive); 44 record a brick, tile or similar paver driveway. The county grades the construction quality “above average” on 34 cards, “excellent” on 7 (26311, 26371, 26490, 26551 and 26650 Rookery Lake Drive, 4021 Arrowwood Court and 3901 Pineshadow Court) and “average” on 4, and the condition “average” on 42 and “good” on 3 (26371, 26450 and 26571 Rookery Lake Drive). The cards assign the improvement type “single-family ranch” to 29 houses, “Mediterranean” to 11 and “colonial” to 5; those are county appraisal classes, not architectural descriptions, and the houses themselves are best judged in person.
On the cards, 24 houses record two living stories, 18 record one and 3 record 1.8 stories (26510 and 26650 Rookery Lake Drive and 4021 Arrowwood Court), the county’s notation for a house with a partial upper level. Eight cards record a “three quarter story” and fourteen a finished lower garage. The one-story houses record 3,713 to 5,914 heated square feet (median 4,282), the two-story houses 4,400 to 8,951 (median 6,282). Forty-three cards record ceilings of 11 to 13 feet, one 14 to 16 feet and one 8 to 10 feet. Twenty-six record a split floor plan, eighteen a traditional plan and one a courtyard plan, and fifteen record a “cathedral” floor area, a volume ceiling over part of the main floor. No card records an elevator.
Every card records a garage, from about 640 to 1,500 square feet of garage area per house (median about 1,000), and one adds a detached garage (26351 Rookery Lake Drive). The county parcel layer flags a private pool on 44 of the 45 parcels; the one without, 4020 Arrowwood Court, records none on its card either. The cards’ extra-feature lists record pool heaters on 20 houses, a disappearing-edge pool feature on 6, waterfall pool features on 4 and fountains on 7. Outdoor kitchens appear on 24 cards, lawn irrigation on 44, whole-house generators on 3 and outdoor showers on 3; one card records a wine room (26491) and one a rooftop deck (26451). Covered outdoor rooms are the rule: every card records a finished open porch, 24 record screened porches, 11 custom pool enclosures and 16 balconies.
Every Rookery Lake house was built from 1998 to 2004 and is now 22 to 28 years old. Most predate the Florida Building Code, which took effect statewide in 2002 (Florida Building Commission), so the roof (an original tile roof is now 22 to 28 years old), the pool shell and equipment, the air-conditioning systems (most cards record additional units), the windows and doors, the electrical panel and the plumbing are the first questions. On opening protection, 28 of the 45 cards record something: panel and electric shutters on 13, panel or accordion shutters on 6, impact glass and shutters on 4, shutters on part of the house on 3, impact glass on 1 and panel and manual shutters on 1; 17 cards record none. Seventeen cards record pest-control tubes in the walls. A card is a starting point, not an inspection: the wind mitigation report, the permit history and the inspector’s findings settle what a specific house has, including any renovation since it was built.
The Property Appraiser’s 2025 just values for the 45 homes run from $2,074,386 (26530 Rookery Lake Drive) to $4,732,825 (26491 Rookery Lake Drive), a median of $2,779,298 and a total of $130,665,314. Land is valued at $397,427 to $683,218 per lot (median $473,340), and the land line on the card classes 29 lots as golf frontage, 14 as lake frontage and 2 without a view class. The 14 lake-class homes carry a median just value of $2,932,742.50 and the 29 golf-class homes $2,539,826. Just value is a mass-appraisal figure set as of January 1, and it trails the deed record here: the 11 deeds of the 60-month window recorded a median of $3,600,000. A buyer’s tax bill follows the new assessed value after the sale, not the seller’s.
Rookery Lake is 45 privately owned home lots of 0.523 to 1.435 acres, 33.16 acres in all, on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court; the Bonita Bay Community Association owns the road right of way and three lake tracts on the same plat, 16.82 acres together on the Lee County parcel layer.
Measured on Lee County’s parcel layer, the Rookery Lake home lots run from 0.523 acre (26311 Rookery Lake Drive) to 1.435 acres (4080 Arrowwood Court), a median of 0.671 acre, about 29,200 square feet. Two lots measure an acre or more: 4080 Arrowwood Court and 4041 Arrowwood Court (1.232, platted Lots 41 and 42). Sixteen more measure 0.75 acre or more. Rookery Lake Drive’s 32 lots carry a median of 0.659 acre; Arrowwood Court (median 0.766) and Pineshadow Court (median 0.770) are larger.
On the Lee County parcel layer, the master association owns these four parcels on the Bonita Bay Unit 44 plat:
| Parcel | Plat or legal | County land use | Acres |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tract R, road right of way | Bonita Bay Unit 44 (Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood and Pineshadow Courts) | Right of way | 5.215 |
| Tract A | Bonita Bay Unit 44, recorded as submerged land | Lake | 4.741 |
| Tract B | Bonita Bay Unit 44, recorded as submerged land | Lake | 1.476 |
| Tract C | Bonita Bay Unit 44, recorded as submerged land | Lake | 5.390 |
That is 16.82 acres in all. The streets and the three lakes are master association land. The golf course parcels that 23 lots touch belong to the Bonita Bay Club, a separate owner, not to the master association or to the lot owners.
A Rookery Lake owner owns a house and a lot outright, and the land beyond the back lot line is, for most lots, a master association lake tract or Bonita Bay Club golf land, and for a few a tidal wetland. The plat and the master Declaration set what an owner may do at the lot line: fences, landscaping, pool enclosures, anything that touches a lake bank and any exterior change go through master association Design Review under §9.2 of the master Declaration, and the golf course edge carries the usual exposure of a golf lot (stray balls, maintenance hours, cart traffic). Read the recorded plat for the lot you are buying, and ask the title agent for a survey that shows the lot lines against the lake tracts and the golf parcels.
On Lee County’s parcel and hydrography layers, 23 Rookery Lake lots touch a Bonita Bay Club golf course parcel, 25 touch one of the three master association lake tracts on the plat (4 touch both), and the one lot that touches neither, 26470 Rookery Lake Drive, lies within 3 feet of a natural tidal wetland. Every one of the 45 lots therefore meets golf land, a lake or the wetland at its line. No county record shows a dock or seawall on any Rookery Lake lot.
On November 3, 2026 we measured the shortest edge-to-edge distance from every Rookery Lake lot outline on Lee County’s parcel layer to the golf course parcels on the same layer, to the three lake tracts on the plat and to the county’s mapped water bodies (HydroPoly). A lot “touches” when its outline meets or comes within 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) of the other parcel or polygon. These are measurements on county map layers, not surveys, and the plat and a survey control any boundary question.
Twenty-three of the 45 lots touch a golf course parcel owned by the Bonita Bay Club. Seventeen touch the parcel the county’s legal description calls the “Marsh Golf Course, Area 1 and Area 2”: the eleven odd-numbered lots from 26491 to 26691 Rookery Lake Drive, 26690 Rookery Lake Drive and all five Pineshadow Court lots. Six touch the parcel the county calls “Bonita Bay Golf Course Area 7 + 8, North Central Area”: 26311 Rookery Lake Drive and the five even-numbered Arrowwood Court lots (4000 to 4080). The county’s land classification counts more golf lots than the boundary does, classing 29 lots as golf frontage, because the appraiser classes a lot by its view and value: the odd-numbered lots from 26331 to 26471 Rookery Lake Drive back onto Tract A with Club golf land 14 to 69 meters (about 45 to 225 feet) beyond the water, and the county classes most of them as golf lots. A shared boundary with a golf parcel does not by itself mean a fairway view, and a view across a lake can be a golf view, so a buyer who wants a particular outlook should walk the lot.
The three lake tracts of the plat are master association land, recorded on the county roll as submerged land: Tract A (4.74 acres) behind the ten odd-numbered lots from 26311 to 26491 Rookery Lake Drive; Tract B (1.48 acres) behind 26450 Rookery Lake Drive and 4001, 4021 and 4041 Arrowwood Court; and Tract C (5.39 acres) behind the ten even-numbered lots from 26490 to 26690 Rookery Lake Drive and 26691. That is 25 lots on the three lakes. The county classes 14 lots as lake frontage. The lakes are part of Bonita Bay’s stormwater system, not navigable water, and the plat does not record which of them, if any, carries the name Rookery Lake.
On the hydrography layer, the nearest tidal water is a natural tidal wetland of about 655 acres on the county’s hydrography layer. Five lots lie within 5 meters (about 16 feet) of it: 26490 Rookery Lake Drive (0.4 meters), 26470 (0.8), 4041 Arrowwood Court (1.3), 26690 Rookery Lake Drive (1.5) and 4080 Arrowwood Court (3.2), and 26691 is about 9 meters away. The wetland is part of the open land of the master plan, not a channel a boat can use from a Rookery Lake lot.
At the northern end of Rookery Lake Drive, the lots of Augusta Creek (Bonita Bay Unit 42, on Augusta Creek Court) adjoin the Rookery Lake lots, one of them touching a Rookery Lake lot line on the county map. The remaining edges are Club golf land, the master association’s lakes and open land, and the tidal wetland.
No Rookery Lake parcel records a boat dock or a seawall on the county parcel layer, and no field card records one. Owners who keep a boat use the separately owned Bonita Bay Marina or a slip elsewhere.
The Bonita Bay Marina is a semi-private, full-service marina on the Imperial River with direct access to Estero Bay and the Gulf, “created and owned by a group of resident investors” and operated separately from both the master association and the Club. The master association lists 326 dry storage spaces for boats up to 36 feet and 98 wet slips for vessels up to 16,000 pounds, with a ship’s store, boat launch, bait, fuel and on-site repair; additional fees apply (BBCA, marina and Backwater Jacks). The January 2026 brochure confirms that the Marina and the Club “operate as separately owned and managed member-exclusive entities.” Spotlight News reported that 39 resident investors bought the marina and restaurant in July 2013 (Spotlight News). By our straight-line measurement the marina is about 1.2 miles from the center of Rookery Lake.
The specification that matters most is draft: the marina publishes a maximum draft of 36 inches, set by its permitting agreement (Bonita Bay Marina, about the marina). Check your boat’s draft and length against the marina’s rules before you buy around a boat. Backwater Jacks, the waterfront restaurant at the marina, is open for dining to all residents (Backwater Jacks; Bonita Bay Marina). Slip and storage availability and fees are set by the marina, not by the master association, and a slip or rack space is never part of a Rookery Lake home.
A Rookery Lake home comes, on 44 of 45 parcels, with its own private pool, and with Bonita Bay’s paths, three waterside parks, gated entry, Community Patrol and Private Beach through the master association; the Bonita Bay Club’s golf, racquet sports, fitness and dining come only if you join, and marina slips and storage only if you rent them.
Rookery Lake has no neighborhood clubhouse or shared pool on the county record; 44 of the 45 parcels carry their own pool on the county parcel layer, and the amenities of the three streets are the lots themselves, the lakes and the golf views. The pools, lanais, outdoor kitchens and screened enclosures recorded on the cards are each owner’s to maintain and insure.
Every Rookery Lake owner is automatically a member of the Bonita Bay Community Association, which maintains “grounds, roads, streetlights, lake and storm water management, plus all of our recreational parks including the Private Beach,” runs the Community Patrol and staffs the Design Review Department (BBCA, Community Association). Homeowners “gain membership and access to all Association amenities” (BBCA, realtor and buyer resources). None of this requires a Club membership, even though 23 Rookery Lake lots back onto Club golf land.
Bonita Bay is gated, and the master association’s Community Patrol works inside the gates (BBCA, Community Association). We found no record of a separate Rookery Lake gate. Visitor and vendor access runs through the master association’s procedures, delivered with the documents at purchase. Law enforcement is the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.
Bonita Bay has “three onsite parks and a Private Beach located only a short drive from the front gates” (BBCA, the parks of Bonita Bay). Spring Creek Park, on the creek that forms Bonita Bay’s northern border, has a kayak and canoe launch dock, a bocce court, a playground, a gazebo, nature trails and an observation deck. Estero Bay Park, in the northwestern corner, has an 800-foot boardwalk through coastal mangroves to a private pier on Estero Bay, a butterfly garden, nature trails and shell mounds the association dates to 5,000 years ago. Riverwalk Park, on the Imperial River at the southern edge, has a boat ramp, kayak launch, bocce and pickleball. The master association’s maps show where they are (BBCA property maps; facilities and amenities map).
Bonita Bay’s Private Beach is a Gulf-front facility owned by the master association on Hickory Boulevard, outside the main gates. It “sustained total destruction during Hurricane Ian,” was rebuilt in concrete with breakaway walls and reopened on November 13 (BBCA, Private Beach). It is an amenity of every Rookery Lake owner through the master association, with a resident shuttle; the master association’s facilities map shows the shuttle stops.
The 12 miles of paths (trails map) connect Rookery Lake Drive to the parks and the Club campuses. The master association lists its grounds and environmental awards, including its Audubon certification, in its 2026 awards summary (BBCA Awards and Recognitions 2026), and its lifestyle page describes community programming (BBCA, style of living).
The Bonita Bay Club is an optional, separately owned, member-owned private club inside Bonita Bay, with five championship golf courses on two campuses, a sports center, a Lifestyle Center and dining. Buying a Rookery Lake home does not make you a Club member and does not require you to join; membership is a separate decision with its own fees.
“Bonita Bay Club is a separate entity within the community of Bonita Bay,” the Club says (Bonita Bay Club, our community). The master association describes the Club as operating independently, with five courses (three designed by Arthur Hills and two by Tom Fazio), 16 Har-Tru tennis courts and 15 pickleball courts (BBCA, Bonita Bay Club). The two Fazio courses, Cypress and Sabal, are on the Club’s Naples campus (Bonita Bay Club, golf); the Sports Center, Lifestyle Center and dining pages describe the rest. By our straight-line measurement the Club address at 26660 Country Club Drive is about 0.5 mile from the center of Rookery Lake. On the county map 23 Rookery Lake lots touch Club golf land: 17 touch the Marsh course parcel and 6 the parcel the county calls the North Central Area. A lot on a fairway does not make its owner a Club member.
Members bought the Club from the developer in 2010 for $11.5 million, $7.5 million of it real estate, as the Business Observer reported (Business Observer, April 2, 2010). A Club release says members approved a $110 million clubhouse project in May 2026 and that about $250 million has been reinvested since members acquired the Club (Hunter PR release).
Bonita Bay Club membership is optional and separate from home ownership. The Club does not publish initiation fees or dues on its public website; the Club’s membership office provides the current schedule. A Rookery Lake owner can skip the Club entirely and use the pool at home (44 of the 45 parcels have one) and the master association’s paths, parks and Private Beach, or join for golf or racquet sports; owning a golf-frontage lot gives no right to play the course. Either way, the Club is a cost only if you choose it, and a membership does not transfer with a Rookery Lake deed unless the Club’s own rules say so.
Rookery Lake owners pay the Bonita Bay Community Association master assessment, plus their own property taxes, insurance and the upkeep of a house, a pool and a lot of half an acre or more. The master association does not publish its assessment on a public page, we found no separate Rookery Lake association on a primary record, and Bonita Bay has no CDD, so the real numbers come from the estoppel certificate in the sale.
Bonita Bay Community Association does not publish its master assessment or resale charges on its public website. Every owner pays the master assessment plus any neighborhood or condominium association assessment that applies to the home. Current figures, including any charge due at closing, appear in the estoppel certificate and the §720.401 disclosure summary provided in the sale (Section 720.401, Florida Statutes), and Florida law requires an association to issue an estoppel certificate on request within a set time and fee schedule (Section 720.30851, Florida Statutes).
The Bonita Bay Community Association (Florida not-for-profit corporation, document N07041, active, filed January 10, 1985) operates as a homeowners’ association under Chapter 720, Florida Statutes. Its assessment funds the common areas and roads, streetlights, lake and stormwater management, the three parks, the Private Beach, the Community Patrol, the Design Review Department and community programming. In Rookery Lake that includes the streets and the lakes themselves: on the county parcel layer the master association owns the Unit 44 road right of way (Tract R) and the three lake tracts behind 25 of the lots (Tracts A, B and C), 16.82 acres together. The dollar amount is not published.
We found no separate Rookery Lake association on the Lee County parcel layer (no common parcel on the Unit 44 plat is owned by one) or in a search of public business registers. That points to a neighborhood governed directly by the master association, but the public record cannot rule out a neighborhood budget or a voluntary group. The estoppel certificate for the specific home, and the disclosure documents delivered with it, state every association that levies an assessment on that lot. Owners may inspect an association’s budget and official records under Section 720.303 (Section 720.303, Florida Statutes).
Club membership is optional and separate from home ownership, and the Club does not publish its initiation fees or dues. It is a cost only if you choose to join, including on a lot that touches a Club fairway.
Bonita Bay has no Community Development District and no special taxing district. Lee County’s published list of special districts names nearby CDDs, including Bay Creek, Bayside Improvement, the two Brooks of Bonita Springs districts, Bonita Landing and Saltleaf, but no district for Bonita Bay. The Bonita Springs Fire Control and Rescue District on that list is an independent fire district covering the area, not a Bonita Bay district, and it appears on every Bonita Springs tax bill; the Rookery Lake parcels carry the tax district “City of Bonita Springs / Bonita Springs Fire” on the county parcel layer.
Property taxes are set by the City of Bonita Springs, Lee County, the School District and the other taxing authorities on the Lee County bill; the parcel’s TRIM notice and tax bill from the Lee County Tax Collector itemize every line for a specific home. A buyer’s bill depends on the buyer’s exemptions and the new assessed value after the sale, not the seller’s bill: the 2025 just values of the 45 homes run from $2,074,386 to $4,732,825, while the 11 deeds of the last 60 months recorded a $3,600,000 median, so a new owner’s assessed value can sit well above the seller’s. Insurance on a Rookery Lake house, its pool and its contents is the owner’s to carry, with flood a separate policy. Every owner pays electricity to Florida Power and Light and water and sewer to Bonita Springs Utilities (Bonita Springs Utilities).
The recorded 2011 master Declaration contains a buyer-paid resale reserve assessment, and a later master association written statement describes a different formula; no recorded amendment reconciling the two has been located. We therefore do not publish either figure as the current charge. The master association’s estoppel certificate states what is due at a Rookery Lake closing (Section 720.30851, Florida Statutes).
Budget the master assessment from its estoppel certificate, a homeowner’s and windstorm quote and a flood quote for the specific address, the property tax on your new assessed value, utilities, and the upkeep of a large house, a pool and a lot of half an acre or more: lawn and landscape, irrigation, pool service, screen enclosures and the roof. On a house built from 1998 to 2004, the roof, the openings, the air-conditioning and the pool shell and equipment drive the cost of ownership, and 17 of the 45 cards record no opening protection at all. The state’s insurance consumer offices explain the policy types (Florida Office of Insurance Regulation; Florida Department of Financial Services, consumer services).
Special assessments at Rookery Lake come from the Bonita Bay Community Association, whose board approved a $500 per unit beach-rebuild assessment on March 20, 2025, due June 30, 2025, and from any other association the estoppel certificate names for the home.
A recap of the master association’s March 20, 2025 special board meeting, posted on March 26, 2025 by the Wild Pines of Bonita Bay association, reports that the board approved a special assessment of $500 per unit for the rebuild of the Private Beach facility, with payment due by June 30, 2025 (Wild Pines of Bonita Bay, recap of the March 20, 2025 meetings). That assessment is past; a Rookery Lake buyer’s title agent confirms on the master estoppel that nothing remains owed on the home being purchased.
Because the master association owns the Unit 44 right of way and the three lake tracts, the cost of resurfacing Rookery Lake Drive and the two courts, or of maintaining the lake banks and the stormwater system they belong to, falls within the master association’s budget and reserves rather than a neighborhood fund, as far as the public record shows. Whether the master association has approved or is considering any assessment is a question for its estoppel certificate, its budget and its board records, which owners can inspect under Section 720.303. We do not state what those records contain. Florida law requires the estoppel certificate to list assessments due and any pending special assessment.
Rookery Lake is governed by its recorded plat, Bonita Bay Unit 44 at Plat Book 59, Page 79, and by the Bonita Bay master Declaration, recorded June 22, 2011 as Lee County Instrument 2011000142834, with the master association’s By-Laws, Rules and Regulations and Design Guidelines.
The Lee County Clerk’s search portals block automated access, so a buyer or title agent retrieves these by book and page or instrument number at the Clerk. Any neighborhood restrictions recorded against the Unit 44 plat would appear in the title commitment for the specific lot.
Every Rookery Lake home is a single-family parcel inside the Bonita Bay master association, so the homeowners’ association statute applies. Section 720.401 requires the seller to give a prospective buyer a disclosure summary before the contract is signed, stating that the buyer must join the association, that assessments are owed and may change, and that restrictive covenants govern the property; a contract signed without it is voidable by the buyer before closing (Section 720.401, Florida Statutes). The master Declaration (§12.13) repeats that duty for every Bonita Bay transfer. Section 720.303 governs an association’s official records and an owner’s right to inspect them (Section 720.303, Florida Statutes), and Section 720.3085 makes a buyer jointly liable with the seller for assessments unpaid at the transfer, which is why the estoppel certificate matters (Section 720.3085, Florida Statutes). Florida’s real estate contract forms also carry the state-required flood disclosure for residential sales (Section 689.302, Florida Statutes).
On three streets of individually built houses now 22 to 28 years old, the exterior changes owners make most often, a new roof, a pool enclosure, an outdoor kitchen, a generator, impact windows, landscaping toward a lake or the golf course, or an addition, all go to master association Design Review under §9.2 before they go to the City for a permit. A complete teardown and rebuild would go through the same two stages, and the City’s floodplain rules would apply to the new house (see the flood section). Begin the approvals before you order materials; Design Review standards may be stricter than the building code.
Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay is not described as a 55-and-over community in any source we reviewed: the master Declaration provisions summarized on this page, the Lee County roll, the recorded Unit 44 plat and the master association’s public pages set no age restriction, so buyers of any age can purchase a Rookery Lake home.
If an age restriction ever mattered to a purchase or sale, it would have to appear in the recorded documents and meet the federal housing-for-older-persons rules, so confirm it in the documents delivered with the sale rather than relying on marketing. Federal fair housing law protects every buyer regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or disability (HUD, fair housing).
A Rookery Lake owner can lease the home subject to the Bonita Bay master Declaration, which sets no minimum lease term but binds every tenant to the governing documents, and to any neighborhood restriction recorded against the lot. The Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026 showed no leased Rookery Lake record in the prior 12 months.
Data updated: November 2026. The Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026, returned no Rookery Lake row in its 12-month rental pull: no lease closed through the MLS and no rental listing was active on the pull date. That is not proof that no Rookery Lake home is leased, because a lease arranged privately never reaches the MLS, but it does mean there is no recent MLS rent figure for the neighborhood. A buyer modeling rental income should test any assumption against comparable Bonita Bay single-family leases and the documents.
The master Declaration’s leasing language provides that any lease “shall provide or be deemed to provide that the tenant and all occupants of the leased Unit are bound by” the governing documents; it sets no minimum lease term, no cap on leases and no lease approval, and where a neighborhood’s documents are more restrictive, the more restrictive controls. Read the title commitment and the disclosure package for anything recorded against the specific lot before you plan a rental.
No public Bonita Bay document we reviewed authorizes nightly or weekly rentals, and the master association’s rules bind tenants like owners. At Rookery Lake prices, with no recent MLS lease on the street, the realistic case is an owner who uses the home part of the year and may lease it for a season, offsetting carrying costs rather than producing a year-round yield.
Pet rules at Rookery Lake come from the master association’s Rules and Regulations and any neighborhood restriction recorded against the lot, not from the recorded Bonita Bay master Declaration, which contains no pet provision. We found no published Rookery Lake pet rule, so the number, size and type of pets must be read in the documents before you buy.
Leash, waste and nuisance rules apply in Bonita Bay’s common areas, parks and paths. With 25 Rookery Lake lots on a lake tract, 23 backing onto golf land and five within 16 feet of a tidal wetland, keep dogs away from the water’s edge, where alligators live, and off the golf course. Under federal fair housing law, properly documented assistance animals are protected regardless of any pet rule (HUD, fair housing). Request the current rules early in your inspection period if you have a pet.
Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay sits entirely in FEMA Zone AE with a base flood elevation of 10 feet (NAVD88): all 45 home lot centers and all 45 lot outlines measure AE 10, on FIRM panel 12071C0652G, effective November 17, 2022, inside the City of Bonita Springs (NFIP community 120680) and Lee County Evacuation Zone A. The City’s CRS Class 5 rating gives NFIP policies a 25% discount.
On November 3, 2026 we took the center point of every Rookery Lake lot, and the bounding box of every lot outline, from Lee County’s parcel layer and intersected them with FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer (FEMA NFHL), and ran six of them, four on Rookery Lake Drive and one on each court, against FEMA’s panel index and community layer and Lee County’s evacuation zone layer (Lee County Evacuation Zones). We used the US Census geocoder (Census geocoder) to locate the offices and places whose distances this page gives.
| Address | Position | Flood zone at the lot center | Base flood elevation | FIRM panel | Evacuation zone |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26311 Rookery Lake Dr | Northern end, beside Tract A and the North Central golf parcel | AE, coastal floodplain | 10 ft | 12071C0652G | A |
| 26490 Rookery Lake Dr | Tract C lake lot beside the tidal wetland | AE, coastal floodplain | 10 ft | 12071C0652G | A |
| 26570 Rookery Lake Dr | Tract C lake lot, 0.916 acre | AE, coastal floodplain | 10 ft | 12071C0652G | A |
| 26691 Rookery Lake Dr | Southern end, beside Tract C and the Marsh course | AE, coastal floodplain | 10 ft | 12071C0652G | A |
| 4041 Arrowwood Ct | Tract B lake lot, Lots 41 and 42 | AE, coastal floodplain | 10 ft | 12071C0652G | A |
| 3920 Pineshadow Ct | Marsh course lot | AE, coastal floodplain | 10 ft | 12071C0652G | A |
Across all 45 home lots, the center point falls in Zone AE with a 10-foot base flood elevation on every one, and no lot’s outline reaches any other zone. An adjoining Collier County panel, 12021C0180H, also touches these points on FEMA’s index; the Lee County panel governs a Lee parcel. Zone AE is a Special Flood Hazard Area, and flood insurance is federally required for a federally backed mortgage on a structure in it. FEMA rates a building by where the building sits and how high its lowest floor is, so a Rookery Lake home’s rating is settled by its elevation certificate and the lender’s flood determination for the structure. The City’s flood page explains the map colors and the November 17, 2022 effective date (City of Bonita Springs flood protection information), and the NFIP’s consumer site explains the policy itself (FloodSmart).
A base flood elevation is the height FEMA expects the 1% annual chance flood to reach, and what matters for a Rookery Lake home is how its lowest floor compares with 10 feet. The cards record stem-wall foundations on 44 houses and a slab on grade on one, and grade the site elevation of the improvements at “1 to 2 feet” on 38 cards, “3 to 6 feet” on 3 and “under 1 foot” on 4. Those are county appraisal classes, not surveyed elevations, and the number that counts is on the elevation certificate. The City notes that “for each 1 foot above the required Base Flood Elevation your home or business is elevated, you will see a corresponding decrease of nearly 50% in your annual flood insurance premiums,” and that for each foot below, rates double (City flood protection information). Every Rookery Lake house was built from 1998 to 2004, to the flood maps of its day, and the 2022 maps were drawn later; ask for the elevation certificate before you rely on any quote.
For a Rookery Lake home in Zone AE, a renovation or repair whose cost reaches 50% of the structure’s market value counts as a substantial improvement under the City’s floodplain rules, and the whole building must then meet current flood requirements. On a 1998 to 2004 house with a lowest floor near or below 10 feet, a large remodel can trigger that rule, and it decides what a buyer planning a major renovation, or a teardown and rebuild, can do. The City explains how it applies the rule in its toolkit (City substantial improvement toolkit) and its floodplain ordinance (Ordinance 22-05).
Rookery Lake’s panel, 12071C0652G, is one of the November 17, 2022 G panels covering Bonita Bay. FEMA’s own flood layer is the live record; check the address again before closing and after any announced revision. WGCU’s January 2026 explainer describes how and why Lee County’s flood maps are revised (WGCU, January 27, 2026).
The City of Bonita Springs holds a Community Rating System Class 5 rating, a 25% discount on NFIP flood policies, and FEMA confirmed on November 21, 2024 that the City keeps it after the post-Ian review (City of Bonita Springs, FEMA CRS; City news release). WGCU covered the outcomes across Lee County in July and November 2024 (WGCU, July 19, 2024; WGCU, November 21, 2024), and WUSF reported the earlier April 2024 notice that put the discounts at risk (WUSF, April 1, 2024). The City’s floodplain management plan progress report describes the program behind the rating (CRS Floodplain Management Plan, FY 2025-26 progress report).
All six Rookery Lake points we ran fall in Lee County Evacuation Zone A (storm surge zone 1). Zone A is the first area Lee County orders to evacuate, often for any named storm approaching from the Gulf; the state’s Know Your Zone lookup confirms an address (Florida Division of Emergency Management, Know Your Zone; Lee County evacuation zones dataset). The hurricane plan (shutters or impact glass, the pool and its furniture, the generator on the three houses whose cards record one, and who checks the house after a storm) belongs in place before summer.
Hurricane Ian made landfall on September 28, 2022 (NOAA National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Ian report). In the City, surge came up the Imperial River and flooded homes along the river and creeks (WUSF, October 1, 2022; NPR, October 1, 2022), and the Gulf beaches took the worst of it (Tampa Bay Times, September 29, 2022). Inside Bonita Bay, the documented damage includes the total destruction of the master association’s Private Beach facility, since rebuilt (BBCA, Private Beach), and, per the Club’s October 13, 2022 update, a flooded cart barn and golf course bridges left “structurally undrivable” on the Bay Island and Marsh courses (Bonita Bay Club, Hurricane Ian update); the Marsh course is the golf land behind 17 Rookery Lake lots. We found no primary source documenting Ian damage to specific Rookery Lake homes; the seller’s disclosures, the City permit history by address and the insurance claim history are where a buyer confirms it. Eight of the eleven qualified Rookery Lake deeds of the 60-month window were recorded after the storm, from March 2023 to December 2025, at $3,000,000 to $4,100,000.
Helene and Milton in 2024 are documented at the City level (City of Bonita Springs, Milton; NHC Helene report; NHC Milton report); no Bonita Bay-specific damage from either was found in a primary source.
Insuring a Rookery Lake home means insuring a large detached house of 1998 to 2004 with a tile roof and, on all but one lot, a pool: a homeowner’s policy with windstorm, priced from the wind mitigation report, the roof and the replacement cost of a house of 3,713 to 8,951 heated square feet, plus a flood policy priced from the elevation certificate, which a federally backed lender will require for a house in Zone AE, where every Rookery Lake lot measures.
Each Rookery Lake home is a single-family house on its own lot, so the owner insures the structure, the pool and screen enclosure, the outdoor kitchen and the contents. At these sizes, replacement cost is the number to get right: an underinsured estate house is the most common gap, and an appraisal-based replacement estimate is worth ordering.
Florida insurers must offer discounts for documented wind-resistant features, and the standard wind mitigation inspection records them: roof covering and its permit date, roof deck attachment, roof-to-wall connection, roof shape and opening protection. Twenty-eight of the 45 cards record some opening protection, impact glass on 5 of them (alone or with shutters); 17 record none. On a house built from 1998 to 2004, a documented roof permit and full opening protection are usually the difference between an ordinary and an expensive windstorm quote, and the report has to document each feature. Citizens Property Insurance is the state’s insurer of last resort if the private market will not write a policy, and the state’s My Safe Florida Home program offers inspections and, for eligible homesteaded homes, hardening grants.
Flood is a separate policy, through the NFIP or a private carrier. All 45 lot centers measure in Zone AE, so a federally backed lender requires it on every financed Rookery Lake purchase, and an owner has every reason to carry flood cover inside Evacuation Zone A with or without a loan. NFIP building coverage has a federal limit that a Rookery Lake house can exceed, so owners often add excess flood coverage from a private carrier. The premium follows the elevation certificate, the foundation and the replacement cost; the City’s CRS Class 5 discount applies to NFIP policies. Get the flood quote during the inspection period, from the elevation certificate rather than an estimate, and ask whether the current policy can be transferred to you.
Insurers commonly ask for a four-point inspection (roof, electrical, plumbing, air conditioning) on homes the age of the Rookery Lake houses. Tile roofs need their underlayment and permit date documented, pool screen enclosures are often limited or excluded from windstorm coverage, and the three whole-house generators on the cards need their permits. Keep the permit for any roof, window, door or enclosure replacement with the house documents.
Lee County public schools serve Rookery Lake through proximity-based choice: a student ranks schools within the proximity zone for the address rather than being placed at one school by address. Under the district’s most recent published plan, nearby options include Spring Creek Elementary, Bonita Springs Middle and Bonita Springs High. Confirm an address’s zones with the School District of Lee County before relying on them.
Under the district’s most recent published plan (2025-2026), the elementary proximity zone that holds the Bonita Springs schools is Zone Q (Bonita Springs, Pinewoods, San Carlos, Spring Creek and Three Oaks elementary schools), the middle proximity zone is Zone GG (Bonita Springs Middle and Three Oaks Middle), and high school uses the South residential choice zone with sub-zones (2025-2026 Student Enrollment Plan). The School Board approved the 2026-2027 plan on December 1, 2025 (School District of Lee County, school zones); use the district’s school zone locator for a specific Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court or Pineshadow Court address. School sites: Bonita Springs High and Bonita Springs Middle, listed in the district’s middle school directory. WGCU reported the district’s 2024-25 school grades (WGCU, July 9, 2025).
Rookery Lake is not age-restricted, so school access works the same way here as at any Bonita Springs address: the proximity zones above are the starting point, and transportation follows the district’s zone rules.
Building permits for Rookery Lake homes are issued by the City of Bonita Springs Community Development Department, not by Lee County, because Bonita Bay lies inside the incorporated City of Bonita Springs (incorporated in 1999). Exterior work also needs master association Design Review approval under the master Declaration before the City permit is pulled.
Two approvals apply to most Rookery Lake projects: (1) master association Design Review under §9.2 of the master Declaration, for anything that changes the exterior, the pool, the enclosure, the landscaping or the lot toward a lake or the golf course; and (2) a City of Bonita Springs building permit for roofs, windows, doors, pools and enclosures, generators, electrical, plumbing, mechanical and similar work (City of Bonita Springs, apply for a building permit; City Community Development). The City’s online services guide covers its Citizen Access permit portal (how to use online services). Fire-related plan review is part of City permitting (Fire Prevention plan review application). Work that touches a lake bank, the tidal wetland edge or the stormwater system also involves the state and water management district rules (Florida DEP; South Florida Water Management District). A buyer can search a home’s permit history by its address through the City, which is the best way to see when the roof, air conditioning, windows, pool or generator was last permitted. On the county roll no Rookery Lake house has been replaced since it was built, so the permit file of each house runs back to its original construction.
Rookery Lake sits in the northern half of Bonita Bay: master association lakes behind 25 lots, Bonita Bay Club golf land (the Marsh course and the North Central Area) behind 23, a tidal wetland of about 655 acres along its western and southern edges, Augusta Creek adjoining the northern end of Rookery Lake Drive, Bay Woods about 0.5 mile and Spring Ridge about 0.7 mile away. Zoning and land use are set by the City of Bonita Springs, and the county roll carries every Rookery Lake lot as planned development (PUD).
The City’s Zoning District Map Book shows zoning districts by map sheet within city limits, and the City’s maps page links its current maps (City area maps). Zoning ordinances and resolutions are indexed on the City site (zoning ordinances; zoning resolutions), and the City’s stormwater program covers the drainage system Bonita Bay’s lakes feed (City stormwater and drainage). Because Bonita Bay is built out and the land beside Rookery Lake is golf course, master association lake or tidal wetland, the practical questions for a Rookery Lake buyer are changes on the Club’s courses and campuses (the members’ May 2026 clubhouse vote) and individual remodels on the three streets, not new subdivisions next door.
Daily life at Rookery Lake runs on City of Bonita Springs services: Florida Power and Light for electricity, Bonita Springs Utilities for water and sewer, Waste Management curbside collection in Bonita Springs, and the Bonita Springs Fire Control and Rescue District for fire and emergency response, with the master association handling the gates, the patrol, the three streets and the three lakes, and each owner handling the house, the pool and the lot.
Every Rookery Lake card records a garage, about 640 to 1,500 square feet of garage area per house, and one adds a detached garage. Whether a boat, trailer or commercial vehicle may be kept outside the garage is a question for the master association’s rules on traffic, parking and vehicle types; read them before you buy around a boat or a trailer. Golf carts on Bonita Bay’s roads and paths follow the master association’s rules. Vehicle registration and driver licensing for a new Florida resident run through the state (Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles).
Bonita Bay is a gated community. Guest and vendor access procedures, resident credentials and contractor rules are set by the master association and delivered with the association documents. Mail delivery on Rookery Lake Drive and the two courts follows the arrangement for the street; confirm it for the specific address when you tour.
Rookery Lake sits in the northern half of Bonita Bay, in ZIP 34134 in the City of Bonita Springs, between Fort Myers to the north and Naples to the south, with US 41 at the Bonita Bay gates and I-75 to the east. That position gives Rookery Lake owners both metro areas’ shopping, dining, healthcare and the region’s airport without living in either city, with the Club about 0.5 mile and the Promenade about 0.7 mile away inside the community.
Drive times depend heavily on season and time of day along US 41, so we do not publish minute figures; test the drives that matter to you during a winter visit. The National Weather Service office for the region posts storm and marine forecasts (NWS Miami; National Hurricane Center).
Rookery Lake is one of Bonita Bay’s three highest-priced single-family neighborhoods, 45 detached homes on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court with a 60-month deed median of $3,600,000: a step below Spring Ridge and Bay Woods on the median, with the largest houses of the three, and well above its smaller-lot neighbor Augusta Creek at $1,924,500.
Bonita Bay’s master association describes residences across condominiums, high-rises, coach homes and single-family neighborhoods. On the 60-month county yardstick in the market section, the top of the single-family ladder is Rookery Lake ($3,600,000 median), Spring Ridge ($3,800,000) and Bay Woods ($3,875,000), three neighborhoods with median lots of 0.67 to 0.70 acre and median houses of about 4,900 to 5,100 heated square feet. Rookery Lake’s median per heated square foot, $628, is the lowest of the three, behind Spring Ridge ($707) and Bay Woods ($804, whose houses of 2015 to 2019 lift its figure), because its houses are the largest at the median (5,093 heated square feet) and price per foot falls as houses grow. Rookery Lake is also the smallest of the three by number of homes.
Augusta Creek, whose lots adjoin the northern end of Rookery Lake Drive and whose center is about 0.3 mile away, is 28 detached pool homes built 1997 to 2000 on lots of about a quarter acre (median 0.264), with 8 deeds in 60 months at a $1,924,500 median and $640 per square foot. Bay Woods, about 0.5 mile away on Woodlyn Drive, is 48 homes with 14 deeds at $3,875,000, including the only houses of 2015 to 2019 in this price band. Spring Ridge, about 0.7 mile north on Fawnwood Court and Mandevilla Drive, is 59 homes with 12 deeds at $3,800,000, the closest neighborhood to Rookery Lake on the same yardstick. What sets Rookery Lake apart on the county record is the combination: one plat of 45 lots of half an acre to 1.44 acres (median 0.671), houses of a median 5,093 heated square feet, three master association lakes behind 25 of the lots, Club golf land behind 23, and every lot center in one flood zone.
Rookery Lake and Spring Ridge are two of Bonita Bay’s estate-home neighborhoods in the top price band, both detached houses of the late 1990s and early 2000s about 0.7 mile apart, and on the same 60-month county yardstick they sit $200,000 apart on the median deed ($3,600,000 against $3,800,000) and $79 apart per heated square foot ($628 against $707), on the same 0.671-acre median lot; the choice comes down to the setting behind the lot, the size of the house and the flood zone.
We picked Spring Ridge over Bay Woods as the comparison because it is the closer match on every measure we ran: its median deed is $200,000 from Rookery Lake’s (Bay Woods $275,000), its median per square foot $79 (Bay Woods $176), its median lot identical (Bay Woods 0.704 acre), and its houses of 1996 to 2003 the same generation (Bay Woods includes 16 houses of 2015 to 2019). Spring Ridge is 59 detached single-family homes on Fawnwood Court and Mandevilla Drive, on Bonita Bay Units 32, 34 and 35, from 3,443 to 11,347 heated square feet (median 4,928). In the 60 months since November 2021 Spring Ridge recorded 12 qualified deeds at a $3,800,000 median, from $2,875,000 to $4,500,000, at a median of $707 per heated square foot; Rookery Lake recorded 11 at $3,600,000, $3,000,000 to $4,750,000, $628 per heated square foot. Both medians come from the same Lee County index, built November 3, 2026, with each neighborhood matched by the streets the master association’s street table assigns to it.
| Question | Rookery Lake | Spring Ridge |
|---|---|---|
| Homes and streets | 45 homes: Rookery Lake Drive (32), Arrowwood Court (8), Pineshadow Court (5) | 59 homes: Fawnwood Court (43), Mandevilla Drive (16) |
| Recorded as | Bonita Bay Unit 44 (one plat) | Bonita Bay Units 32, 34 and 35 (three plats) |
| Construction (county cards) | Stucco on all 45 (2 with brick), concrete tile roof on all 45 | Stucco on 57, brick on 5 (3 both), concrete tile roof on all 59 |
| Built (county roll) | 1998 to 2004 | 1996 to 2003 |
| Heated area (county) | 3,713 to 8,951 sq ft (median 5,093) | 3,443 to 11,347 sq ft (median 4,928) |
| Lot size (county parcel layer) | 0.523 to 1.435 acres (median 0.671) | 0.509 to 1.361 acres (median 0.671) |
| Living stories (cards) | 2 on 24, 1 on 18, 1.8 on 3 | 2 on 31, 1 on 19, 1.8 on 9 |
| Private pool (county parcel layer) | 44 of 45 | 59 of 59 |
| Qualified deeds, 60 months since November 2021 | 11 | 12 |
| Median deed price | $3,600,000 | $3,800,000 |
| Deed range | $3,000,000 to $4,750,000 | $2,875,000 to $4,500,000 |
| Median per heated sq ft | $628 | $707 |
| Turnover (deeds per home, 60 months) | 24.4% (11 on 45) | 20.3% (12 on 59) |
| MLS, pulled September 30, 2026 | 1 closing in 12 months (85.7% of list), 0 active, 0 pending | 1 closing in 12 months (93.7% of list), 0 active, 0 pending |
| Golf alongside | 23 lots touch Club golf land (Marsh course 17, North Central Area 6) | All 59 lots touch Club golf land (North Central Area 50, Creekside course 9) |
| Water | 25 lots on three master association lake tracts; 5 within 16 feet of a tidal wetland | 15 lots beside a lake; Spring Creek Park at the end of Mandevilla Drive |
| Flood zone (FEMA NFHL, lot centers) | AE 10 ft on all 45; panel 12071C0652G | AE 10 ft on 49, AE 11 ft on 2, shaded X on 8; panel 12071C0652G |
| Evacuation zone | A | A |
| Associations | Bonita Bay Community Association, which owns the streets and the three lakes; no separate neighborhood association found | Bonita Bay Community Association; no separate neighborhood association found |
| Straight-line distance between centers | about 0.7 mile | about 0.7 mile |
Choose Rookery Lake if you want a lake behind the house (25 lots on master association lake tracts), a larger house for the money (median 5,093 heated square feet at a $628 median per square foot), a choice of three streets including two short courts, and a slightly lower entry point on the median deed. Choose Spring Ridge if you want Club golf land behind every lot, more houses to choose from over time (59 homes), a walk to Spring Creek Park and its kayak launch, and a few lots whose centers measure outside the AE zone (eight in shaded Zone X). In both, the age, condition and updating of the specific house, and its elevation certificate, move the price more than the neighborhood median does.
Rookery Lake’s strengths are documented ones (large lots, large detached houses, a private pool on 44 of 45 parcels, a lake or Club golf land behind almost every lot, master association streets and lakes, no CDD) and so are its limitations (every lot in Zone AE and Evacuation Zone A, houses of 1998 to 2004 that need updating, a thin resale market, a high carrying cost and unpublished fees).
If you’re searching for a Rookery Lake listing agent, or thinking, ‘I need someone to sell my Rookery Lake home…’, start with the record: 11 qualified Rookery Lake deeds in 60 months at a $3,600,000 median, from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000, one MLS closing in the 12 months to September 30, 2026 at 85.7% of its asking price, and no home listed for sale on that date. McGreevy and Comisar price, prepare and market Rookery Lake homes from that record, not from a Bonita Bay average.
Our credentials as your Rookery Lake listing agent:
In the 12 months to September 30, 2026 we tracked one qualified Rookery Lake deed in the Lee County record: 26570 Rookery Lake Drive at $3,000,000 (December 5, 2025). Before it, the window holds 26531 Rookery Lake Drive at $4,100,000 (April 16, 2025), 26610 Rookery Lake Drive at $3,200,000 (February 7, 2025), 4080 Arrowwood Court at $3,900,000 (November 30, 2024) and 26630 Rookery Lake Drive at $3,295,000 (June 11, 2024). Over 60 months the record shows 11 sales at a $3,600,000 median and $40,445,000 in volume. The Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026, shows the same December 2025 closing and no home listed or pending.
Four things. First, the buyer: a Rookery Lake buyer is comparing houses that are all 22 to 28 years old, so the listing has to document what has been replaced (roof, pool, openings, air conditioning, electrical and plumbing) and when, because the gap between the $464 and the $799 per-square-foot deeds of the last five years is largely a story of size, condition and updating that only the listing can tell. Second, the paperwork: Section 720.401 requires your disclosure summary before the contract is signed, Florida’s residential flood disclosure applies to every sale, every buyer with a mortgage will need flood insurance in Zone AE, and having the estoppel request, the elevation certificate, the wind mitigation report, the permit history and a survey showing the lot against the lake and golf parcels ready at listing protects your timeline. Third, Bonita Bay’s open house and sign rules: open houses need 72 hours’ notice to the master association with the listing agreement, run Monday to Saturday 9 to 5 and Sunday 1 to 4, use the master association’s sign standard, and allow no SOLD signs (BBCA Open House Guidelines). Fourth, the price: the one recent closing sold at 85.7% of its list price, so the first price decides how your sale goes.
Start with a free Rookery Lake home valuation, or use our Bonita Bay home valuation page. Or talk to Jesse direct: (239) 898-6072, text or call.
Buying rather than selling? Call Marc at (239) 287-5873, or read how we represent buyers in Southwest Florida.
Price a Rookery Lake home from the deeds that match its size, stories, lot and condition, not from the neighborhood median. On the county record the 60-month median is $3,600,000, but the deeds run from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000 and from $464 to $799 per heated square foot. We adjust from the closest matches for size, one story or two, lake or golf frontage and renovation, check the county’s values for all 45 homes, then test the price against Spring Ridge and Bay Woods sales on the day you list.
The one Rookery Lake closing on the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026, 26570 Rookery Lake Drive, closed at 85.7% of its asking price, and its MLS row records 0 days on market. One closing is not a pattern; on a 45-home neighborhood, time to sell depends mostly on the first price and the condition.
A Rookery Lake buyer usually asks first for the master association estoppel certificate, the §720.401 disclosure summary, the elevation certificate, the wind mitigation and four-point reports, the roof, pool, window and air-conditioning permits, a survey, the flood and windstorm policy declarations, and the master association’s rules on leasing, pets, vehicles and Design Review.
The master Declaration requires no sale approval that we found; it requires you to deliver the §720.401 disclosure summary, and the master association’s estoppel certificate is needed for closing. Whether anything recorded against your lot adds a notice step is set in your title documents, which we read for every listing before your home goes on the market.
A Bonita Bay Club membership is separate from your Rookery Lake deed, even if your lot touches Club golf land. The Club does not publish its initiation fees, dues or transfer rules on its public website, and whether a membership can pass to a buyer is the Club’s decision under its own rules. Your Rookery Lake sale itself never requires a Club membership on either side.
Rookery Lake’s long-run value rests on Bonita Bay’s fixed supply, its master-association amenities and land, the size of its lots and houses and its lake and golf setting; the recorded deeds show that Rookery Lake prices rise and fall with the wider market, from vacant lots at $260,000 to $925,000 in 1997 to 2002 to a $3,600,000 median over the last 60 months.
A master association that maintains roads, lakes, parks, the Private Beach and patrol, funded by every owner, protects the setting of every neighborhood inside the gates. In Rookery Lake it owns the streets and all three lakes outright. Bonita Bay’s recorded master Declaration and Design Review standards (§9.2) are what keep three streets of individually built houses consistent, lot by lot.
Bonita Bay is built out, and all 45 Rookery Lake homesites carry a house on the 2026 roll. That does not guarantee appreciation (the county record shows the qualified house deeds of 2015 to 2020 at a lower median than those of 2004 to 2008, and the deeds since 2023 below those of late 2021), but it means every buyer who wants an estate lot on a Bonita Bay lake or golf course competes for one of a fixed number.
For a buyer who wants a house of 3,700 square feet or more on half an acre or more inside Bonita Bay’s gates, Rookery Lake is one of three neighborhoods trading near $3,600,000 to $3,900,000 at the 60-month median, alongside Spring Ridge and Bay Woods, and the one with the largest houses at the median and the lowest price per square foot. The trade is a flood zone on every lot, a thin resale market, houses of 1998 to 2004 that need updating and the carrying cost of a large house.
Bonita Springs is the incorporated city that governs Rookery Lake’s permits, zoning, flood program and city taxes; its CRS Class 5 rating lowers NFIP premiums, and its location puts Rookery Lake Drive between Naples and Fort Myers with Gulf beaches, I-75 and US 41 close by.
Residents voted to incorporate the City in 1999, and the City marked its 25th anniversary in 2024 (City of Bonita Springs, history; 25th anniversary; City Charter). For the wider market, see our Bonita Springs guide and our Bonita Bay guide. Documentary stamp tax on Florida deeds is set by the state (Florida Department of Revenue, documentary stamp tax), and in Lee County the seller customarily pays the owner’s title policy, though the contract controls.
Rookery Lake owners and buyers work directly with Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar, the McGreevy and Comisar team at Domain Realty, whose office at 24031 S Tamiami Trl #101 in Bonita Springs is about 2.6 miles from Rookery Lake by straight line. For this Rookery Lake guide we read the county’s golf, lake and wetland parcels, the master Declaration, the master association’s street table, all 45 county home cards and every qualified Rookery Lake deed of the last five years in the Lee County record before writing a word.
McGreevy and Comisar are the Domain Realty team behind this Rookery Lake guide: Jesse McGreevy, Sales Associate, and Marc Comisar, Broker Associate, with over 45 years of combined direct real estate experience. You can read how the team was built on our about the McGreevy and Comisar team page. We tracked all 11 qualified Rookery Lake deeds recorded since November 2021 for this update, we read every one of the 45 Rookery Lake home cards to count the stories, walls, roofs, foundations, garages, pools and land classes, we searched public business registers for a Rookery Lake association, we measured each lot’s distance to the golf courses, the three lake tracts and the tidal wetland on the county map, and we measured the flood zone at all 45 Rookery Lake lots ourselves rather than repeating a map summary.
McGreevy and Comisar lead Domain Realty Group, a full-service Southwest Florida real estate team. Learn more about our team at DomainRealtyGroup.com.
McGreevy and Comisar are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, and the full record is below:
Rookery Lake is a single plat where specifics decide the price: one story or two, the finished size, whether the lot backs to a lake or a fairway, the age of the tile roof and the pool equipment, the opening protection, and whether the kitchen and baths have been redone in a house built from 1998 to 2004. With eleven qualified deeds in five years and a spread of $1,750,000 between them, a Rookery Lake price cannot lean on last month’s sale, and buyers moving from out of state often decide from photos, video and documents before they visit, so the listing has to explain the lot, the lake and golf parcels, the flood zone under the house and its elevation certificate, the wind mitigation report and the master association’s role in plain language. That is the work we do on every Bonita Bay listing.
McGreevy and Comisar is a top-reviewed Rookery Lake realtor on Google, and the quotes below are genuine five star client reviews reproduced in the reviewer’s own words. We publish no aggregate score and no star rating widget. Read the full set on the McGreevy and Comisar Google Business Profile.
★★★★★ “Their recommendation on pricing my unit was sound and proved prescient. I never questioned their integrity and found it easy to rely on their recommendations. I would work with them again in a heartbeat.” Charlie Carroll, verified Google review
★★★★★ “We had been on the market for several months with no offers. When we signed with Marc our house was sold in 2 weeks. He has a unique system for selling homes.” Sandra Decker, verified Google review
★★★★★ “Working with Jesse was easy, I was kept up to date on all feedback from showings and the many open houses. Highly recommend!” Ann Perez, verified Google review
★★★★★ “Marc is extremely knowledgeable, professional and a true pleasure to work with. He kept us informed throughout the process and went over and beyond our expectations to ensure an extremely smooth process.” Lori Crosby, verified Google review
Selling a Rookery Lake home? Get a free Rookery Lake home valuation, or call Jesse direct at (239) 898-6072.
Buying in Rookery Lake? Call Marc at (239) 287-5873, or read how we represent buyers in Southwest Florida. Buyers focused on Bonita Bay can also start at our Bonita Bay buyer guide.
Jesse McGreevy (Sales Associate) and Marc Comisar (Broker Associate) are licensed Florida real estate professionals with Domain Realty; Florida real estate licensure is regulated by the Florida Real Estate Commission (FREC).
Video walkthroughs, market updates and community tours are on McGreevy and Comisar on YouTube, and the team keeps a company page at McGreevy and Comisar on LinkedIn. For the wider market around Rookery Lake, see our Bonita Bay guide, our Bonita Springs guide and our guides to the nearby neighborhoods Spring Ridge, Bay Woods and Augusta Creek.
The best Rookery Lake buyers we work with ask the most questions before the offer and the fewest after closing. Order the estoppel certificate early, read the master association’s rules and the plat for your lot, get windstorm and flood quotes from the elevation certificate and wind mitigation report during your inspection period, and read the Design Review standards before you plan a remodel, a pool change or a rental. There is no obligation and no cost for an initial conversation.
The questions buyers ask us most about Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay, answered from the county record, the master association’s documents, FEMA’s flood layer and the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026.
Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay is a neighborhood of 45 detached single-family homes on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court inside the gated master-planned community of Bonita Bay in Bonita Springs, Florida. The homes stand on one recorded plat, Bonita Bay Unit 44, were built from 1998 to 2004, and every lot meets a master association lake, Bonita Bay Club golf land or a tidal wetland.
Single-family houses. Every one of the 45 Lee County field cards records a detached house on its own lot, with the single-family use code, from 3,713 to 8,951 heated square feet. Rookery Lake has no attached villas, duplexes or condominiums on the county record, and the master association’s street table lists only its three streets of houses.
No. Rookery Pointe is a separate community in Estero, and the Rookery at Marco is on Marco Island; neither has any tie to Bonita Bay. Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay is 45 homes on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court in Bonita Springs, ZIP 34134, inside the Bonita Bay gates. Search listings and county records by the street address to stay on the right one.
Rookery Lake sits in the northern half of Bonita Bay, between the Club’s Marsh course and its North Central golf land, with Augusta Creek adjoining its northern end. By straight line from the center of the neighborhood, the Club address on Country Club Drive is about 0.5 mile away, the Promenade at Bonita Bay about 0.7 mile, Bay Woods about 0.5 mile and Spring Ridge about 0.7 mile.
Rookery Lake has 45 homes on the Lee County roll: 32 on Rookery Lake Drive, 8 on Arrowwood Court and 5 on Pineshadow Court, all on Bonita Bay Unit 44. The plat numbers 47 lots, but one house stands on Lots 41 and 42 (4041 Arrowwood Court) and Lot 31 is split between its two neighbors, so every homesite is built.
The county roll dates the 45 homes from 1998 to 2004: ten in 1998, six in 1999, nine in 2000, ten in 2001, six in 2002, three in 2003 and one in 2004. The lots sold vacant first, from 1997 to 2002, and each house was built individually. No house on the roll has been replaced since it was built.
Rookery Lake homes record 3,713 to 8,951 heated square feet on the Lee County roll, a median of 5,093; five houses record more than 8,000. MLS living area can differ from the county figure because the two count upper and lower rooms differently: the one recent sale recorded 6,327 county heated square feet and 6,939 MLS living square feet.
On the Lee County roll, 25 Rookery Lake homes record four bedrooms, 12 record three, 7 record five and one records six. Bathrooms run from three to eight. Bedroom counts on the roll can differ from a listing’s description of dens and flex rooms, so read the floor plan and the listing for the specific house.
On the county field cards, 24 Rookery Lake homes record two living stories, 18 record one story and 3 record 1.8 stories, the county’s notation for a partial upper level. The one-story houses record 3,713 to 5,914 heated square feet and the two-story houses 4,400 to 8,951. No card records an elevator.
Rookery Lake lots measure 0.523 to 1.435 acres on Lee County’s parcel layer, a median of 0.671 acre, about 29,200 square feet. Two lots measure an acre or more, 4080 Arrowwood Court (1.435) and 4041 Arrowwood Court (1.232). The courts carry larger lots than Rookery Lake Drive, medians of 0.766 and 0.770 acre against 0.659.
Almost all do. The Lee County parcel layer flags a private pool on 44 of the 45 Rookery Lake parcels; 4020 Arrowwood Court records none. The field cards record pool heaters on 20 houses, custom pool enclosures on 11, disappearing-edge features on 6 and outdoor kitchens on 24. Rookery Lake has no shared neighborhood pool on the county record.
All 45 field cards record concrete block walls with a stucco finish (two with brick) and a concrete tile roof; 44 record a stem-wall foundation and one a slab on grade. The county grades construction quality “above average” on 34 cards, “excellent” on 7 and “average” on 4, and condition “average” on 42 and “good” on 3.
Twenty-three Rookery Lake lots touch a golf course parcel owned by the Bonita Bay Club on Lee County’s map: 17 the Marsh course and 6 the parcel the county calls the North Central Area. The county classes 29 lots as golf frontage, counting lake lots that look across the water to golf land. A shared boundary is not always a fairway view, so walk the lot.
Twenty-five Rookery Lake lots touch one of the three lake tracts the master association owns on the plat: ten on Tract A (4.74 acres), four on Tract B (1.48 acres) and eleven on Tract C (5.39 acres). The county classes 14 lots as lake frontage. The lakes are stormwater lakes, not navigable water.
No. No Rookery Lake parcel records a boat dock or seawall on the county parcel layer, and no field card records one. The lakes behind the lots are master association stormwater lakes, and the tidal wetland beside five lots is not a boating channel.
At the Bonita Bay Marina on the Imperial River, a separately owned, resident-investor marina with dry storage for boats up to 36 feet, wet slips and a published maximum draft of 36 inches, or at a marina elsewhere. Slip and rack fees are set by the marina, and no slip comes with a Rookery Lake home. Kayaks and canoes launch at the master association’s parks.
A Rookery Lake home comes with its own pool on 44 of 45 parcels and, through the Bonita Bay Community Association, Bonita Bay’s gated entry, Community Patrol, 12 miles of paths, three parks and the Private Beach with its shuttle. Bonita Bay Club golf, racquet sports and dining require a separate, optional membership.
Rookery Lake is inside Bonita Bay’s gates, and the master association’s Community Patrol works inside them. We found no record of a separate Rookery Lake gate. Visitor and vendor access runs through the master association’s procedures, delivered with the documents at purchase, and law enforcement is the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.
Rookery Lake owners pay the Bonita Bay Community Association master assessment, which the master association does not publish on a public page. We found no separate Rookery Lake association, and Bonita Bay has no CDD. The estoppel certificate and the §720.401 disclosure summary in a sale state the current assessment and any charge due at closing.
We found none on a primary record. Every common parcel on the Unit 44 plat on the Lee County parcel layer, the road right of way and the three lake tracts, is owned by the Bonita Bay Community Association, and a search of public business registers found no Rookery Lake association. The estoppel certificate confirms what applies.
The Bonita Bay Community Association. On the Lee County parcel layer the Unit 44 road right of way (Tract R, 5.22 acres) and the three lake tracts (Tracts A, B and C, 11.61 acres) are master association parcels, so street upkeep, streetlights and lake and stormwater management fall within the master association’s budget.
No. Bonita Bay has no Community Development District and no special taxing district; Lee County’s list of special districts names nearby CDDs but none for Bonita Bay. The Rookery Lake parcels carry the tax district “City of Bonita Springs / Bonita Springs Fire” on the county parcel layer, the same as other Bonita Springs addresses.
No source we reviewed describes Rookery Lake as a 55-and-over community. The master Declaration provisions summarized on this page, the Lee County roll, the recorded Unit 44 plat and the master association’s public pages set no age restriction, so buyers of any age can purchase a Rookery Lake home.
Yes, subject to the Bonita Bay master Declaration, which sets no minimum lease term, no lease cap and no lease approval but binds every tenant to the governing documents, and to anything recorded against the lot. The Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026 returned no leased Rookery Lake record in the prior 12 months.
Pet rules come from the master association’s Rules and Regulations and anything recorded against the lot; the recorded master Declaration contains no pet provision, and we found no published Rookery Lake pet rule. Leash and waste rules apply in common areas and parks. Request the current rules early in your inspection period if you have a pet.
Yes. On FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer, all 45 Rookery Lake lot centers, and every lot outline, measure Zone AE with a 10-foot base flood elevation, on panel 12071C0652G, effective November 17, 2022. The elevation certificate for the house, which shows how its lowest floor compares with 10 feet, decides the flood rating.
A federally backed lender requires flood insurance on a house in Zone AE, which covers every Rookery Lake house. Rookery Lake is also inside Evacuation Zone A, so owners without a loan have every reason to carry it. The City’s CRS Class 5 rating gives NFIP policies a 25% discount, and private excess cover can sit above the federal limit.
All six Rookery Lake points we ran on Lee County’s evacuation layer, four on Rookery Lake Drive and one on each court, fall in Evacuation Zone A (storm surge zone 1), the first zone Lee County orders to evacuate as a storm approaches. Confirm an address with the state’s Know Your Zone lookup.
We found no primary source documenting Hurricane Ian damage to specific Rookery Lake homes. Inside Bonita Bay, the documented damage includes the total destruction of the master association’s Private Beach facility, since rebuilt, and flooded Club facilities and bridges on the Marsh and Bay Island courses. The seller’s disclosures, City permit history and insurance claim history confirm a specific house’s record.
No. The Bonita Bay Club is a separate, member-owned, optional club, and buying a Rookery Lake home neither makes you a member nor requires you to join, even on one of the 23 lots that touch Club golf land. The Club does not publish its initiation fees or dues on its public website.
Yes. The Private Beach on Hickory Boulevard is owned by the Bonita Bay Community Association, not the Club, and every Rookery Lake owner has access through the master association, with a resident shuttle. It was destroyed by Hurricane Ian, rebuilt in concrete with breakaway walls and reopened on November 13.
None that we found on the public record. The master association’s $500 per unit beach-rebuild assessment, approved March 20, 2025, was due June 30, 2025 and is past. The estoppel certificate for the specific home lists any assessment due and any pending special assessment, and owners can inspect the master association’s records under Section 720.303.
The Lee County qualified-deed record shows 11 Rookery Lake sales in the 60 months since November 2021 at a $3,600,000 median, from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000, a median of $628 per county heated square foot. The newest, 26570 Rookery Lake Drive, recorded $3,000,000 on December 5, 2025. Eleven sales is a small sample, so match a house to its closest deeds.
The one Rookery Lake closing on the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026, 26570 Rookery Lake Drive, closed at 85.7% of its $3,500,000 asking price, and its MLS row records 0 days on market. One closing is a count, not a pattern; time to sell depends mostly on the first price and the condition.
None were listed for sale and none were pending on the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026, and that may have changed since. Our Domain Realty Group team keeps the current listings on its own site; a buyer who wants Rookery Lake should be ready when the right house comes up.
Expect the §720.401 disclosure summary before you sign, the master association’s estoppel certificate before closing, and on request the master Declaration, By-Laws, Rules and Regulations and Design Guidelines. Ask the seller for the elevation certificate, the wind mitigation and four-point reports, the permit history and a survey showing the lot against the lake and golf parcels.
Lee County public schools serve Rookery Lake through proximity-based choice: a student ranks schools within the proximity zone for the address. Under the district’s 2025-2026 plan the Bonita Springs elementary zone is Zone Q, the middle zone is Zone GG and high school uses the South choice zone. Confirm a specific address with the district’s zone locator.
On the same 60-month county yardstick, Rookery Lake recorded 11 deeds at a $3,600,000 median and $628 per heated square foot; Spring Ridge, about 0.7 mile north, recorded 12 at $3,800,000 and $707. Both have a 0.671-acre median lot and houses of the late 1990s and early 2000s; Rookery Lake’s houses are larger at the median, and more of its lots sit on a lake.
The questions Rookery Lake owners ask us before they list, answered from the Lee County deed record, the 45 county home cards, the master association’s documents, FEMA’s flood layer and the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026.
Your Rookery Lake home is worth what the closest matching deeds support, adjusted for its size, stories, lot and condition. The 11 qualified Rookery Lake deeds of the last 60 months recorded a $3,600,000 median, from $3,000,000 to $4,750,000, and from $464 to $799 per heated square foot, so the median alone can miss by a wide margin. Start with a free valuation and we will price it from the deeds that match your square footage, your story count and your lake or golf frontage.
The best listing agent for Rookery Lake knows every deed on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court and Pineshadow Court and can explain the neighborhood’s plat, its lake and golf lots and its flood zone to a buyer. McGreevy and Comisar are the #1 team in Southwest Florida since 2012 and Top 1% nationally since 2008, and this guide was built from all 45 Rookery Lake county cards, every qualified Rookery Lake deed since November 2021 and our own flood measurement at every lot.
One qualified Rookery Lake deed was recorded in the 12 months to September 30, 2026: 26570 Rookery Lake Drive at $3,000,000 on December 5, 2025. The Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026, shows the same single closing, at 85.7% of a $3,500,000 asking price. Before it, the county record shows three Rookery Lake deeds from November 2024 to April 2025.
Rookery Lake homes recorded a median of $3,600,000 across 11 qualified deeds in the 60 months since November 2021, and a median of $628 per county heated square foot. The nine Rookery Lake Drive deeds recorded a $3,600,000 median and the two Arrowwood Court deeds $3,200,000 and $3,900,000. With eleven deeds on 45 homes, the closest matching sales for size and condition matter more than any median.
The one Rookery Lake closing on the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026 records 0 days on market, and the MLS row alone does not show how the home was marketed. One closing is a count, not a pattern. In a neighborhood that records two or three deeds a year, a well-priced, well-documented Rookery Lake home finds its buyer far sooner than an ambitiously priced one.
The one Rookery Lake closing on the Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026 sold at 85.7% of its list price: $3,000,000 against $3,500,000. A single ratio is a data point, not a promise, so we read it alongside the deeds that match your home and the asking prices of Spring Ridge and Bay Woods listings competing for the same buyers on the day you list.
On the 60-month county record, the nine Rookery Lake Drive deeds recorded a $3,600,000 median and the two Arrowwood Court deeds $3,200,000 and $3,900,000; Pineshadow Court recorded none. Two deeds cannot set a level for a street. The county’s 2025 values put Arrowwood Court at a median of $2,826,333.50, Rookery Lake Drive at $2,716,155 and Pineshadow Court at $2,539,826.
The six lake-class deeds of the 60-month window recorded a $3,297,500 median and the five golf-class deeds $3,900,000, but the lake group includes both the highest deed ($4,750,000 at 26451) and the lowest ($3,000,000 at 26570), so view alone does not set the price. The county’s 2025 values put lake-class homes at a median of $2,932,742.50 against $2,539,826 for golf-class homes.
Twenty-three lots touch Club golf land and the county classes 29 as golf frontage, counting lake lots that look across to the course. The five golf-class deeds of the window recorded a median of $3,900,000, from $3,200,000 to $4,100,000, too few to price a view on their own. What a buyer pays for is the view itself, so we photograph and describe it accurately.
The 11 deeds span $1,750,000. Size explains part of it: the two largest houses that sold, at 8,951 and 8,843 square feet, recorded $4,750,000 and $4,100,000, and the two smallest, near 4,150 square feet, $3,200,000 and $3,300,000. Timing explains more: the three deeds of late 2021 and early 2022 ran $4,000,000 to $4,750,000. Condition and updating, which the deed record does not show, are the rest.
Describe it from the record: a detached single-family home on Rookery Lake Drive, Arrowwood Court or Pineshadow Court in Rookery Lake at Bonita Bay, built in the year on the county roll, with the heated area, stories, lot size, pool and lake or golf frontage the county records, plus every documented update. Never call it a villa or attached home; every Rookery Lake card records a detached house on its own lot.
Count them the way the measurement standard and the permits support, and say which number you are using. Fourteen Rookery Lake cards record a finished lower garage and eight a three-quarter story, and the one recent sale showed 6,327 county heated square feet against 6,939 MLS living square feet. Buyers compare price per square foot, so a clear, documented figure protects your price and your sale.
You can say the lot backs onto a master association lake if it is one of the 25 lots whose outline touches Tract A, B or C on the county map; the county classes 14 lots as lake frontage. Say the lake is a community stormwater lake owned by the master association, not private or navigable water, and let photographs taken from the lanai show what a buyer sees.
Describe what the record supports. The county shows the lots sold vacant one at a time from 1997 to 2002 and the houses built individually from 1998 to 2004, with three improvement types, varied story counts and sizes from 3,713 to 8,951 heated square feet on lots of 0.523 to 1.435 acres. If you hold the original plans or builder records, they support the description; we name no builder without a primary record.
You must deliver the §720.401 disclosure summary before the contract is signed, and Florida’s residential flood disclosure applies to every sale. The master association’s estoppel certificate is needed for closing. Buyers also ask for the elevation certificate, wind mitigation and four-point reports, roof, pool, window and air-conditioning permits, a survey and the current insurance declarations, so gather them before you list.
Under Section 720.401, a contract signed without the required disclosure summary is voidable by the buyer until closing, so a missing summary hands your buyer a way out. The master Declaration (§12.13) repeats the seller’s duty to deliver it. We attach the summary to every Rookery Lake contract package so the buyer signs it before or with the offer.
An estoppel certificate is the master association’s written statement of what is owed on your lot: assessments, any special assessment and any charge due at closing. Under Section 720.30851 the association must issue it within a set time for a set fee. The title agent usually requests it once you are under contract; ordering it early avoids closing-week surprises on a Rookery Lake sale.
A charge at transfer may apply. The recorded 2011 master Declaration contains a buyer-paid resale reserve assessment, and a later master association statement describes a different formula, with no recorded amendment located that reconciles them, so we do not publish either figure. The master association’s estoppel certificate states exactly what is due at your Rookery Lake closing and who pays it.
The master Declaration requires no sale approval that we found, and we found no separate Rookery Lake association that could add one. You must deliver the §720.401 disclosure summary, and the estoppel certificate is needed for closing. Whether anything recorded against your lot adds a notice step is shown in your title documents, which we read before your home goes on the market.
Yes. Bonita Bay’s open house guidelines require 72 hours’ notice to the master association with the listing agreement, limit hours to Monday through Saturday 9 to 5 and Sunday 1 to 4, require the master association’s sign standard, and allow no SOLD signs. Gate access for visitors follows the master association’s procedures, so every Rookery Lake open house is planned with the gate in mind.
The $500 per unit beach-rebuild assessment approved on March 20, 2025 was due June 30, 2025, so for most Rookery Lake owners it is paid and past. The estoppel certificate confirms that nothing remains owed on your lot. Disclose anything you know of that is owed or pending, and let the estoppel speak for the master association’s current charges.
Present it plainly and with documents. FEMA’s layer puts all 45 Rookery Lake lot centers and lot outlines in Zone AE with a 10-foot base flood elevation, on panel 12071C0652G, inside Evacuation Zone A. Give buyers that zone, your elevation certificate, a recent flood quote and the City’s CRS Class 5 discount before they ask, because a financed buyer will need the policy.
It matters more than almost any other document. A buyer’s flood premium follows the lowest floor’s height against the 10-foot base flood elevation, and the City notes premiums fall roughly half for each foot above it. With houses built from 1998 to 2004 on stem walls, a current certificate replaces guesses with a number. If you do not have one, order it before you list.
Fix what an inspector, an insurer and a lender will flag on a house built from 1998 to 2004: a roof near the end of its life, pool equipment, air-conditioning units, opening protection and any open permit. Seventeen Rookery Lake cards record no opening protection, so documented impact protection and a recent roof permit can move both the price and the buyer’s insurance quote.
In Zone AE, a renovation or repair costing 50% or more of the structure’s market value counts as a substantial improvement under the City’s floodplain rules, and the whole house must then meet current flood requirements. A buyer planning a major remodel of a Rookery Lake house will ask about it, so your elevation certificate and permit history help them plan, and help you hold the price.
Present it so a buyer sees the lot and the lake or golf view first and the house’s age last. Clear the lanai and pool deck, light the main rooms, and photograph the view from the rooms that face it. In a neighborhood where every house is 22 to 28 years old, clean, updated-looking rooms and a documented maintenance record do more than furniture alone.
Bonita Bay’s buyer traffic is strongest in the winter and spring season, when seasonal buyers are in town and can tour in person. The county record bears that out: six of the eleven Rookery Lake deeds of the 60-month window were recorded from January to April. A home that is ready, documented and priced well can sell in any month, so readiness matters more than the date.
Florida sellers usually pay documentary stamp tax on the deed (set by the state), the owner’s title insurance policy in Lee County by custom (the contract controls), the listing commission, any charge the estoppel certificate shows as the seller’s, prorated property taxes and assessments, and any repairs agreed in the contract. We give you a net sheet from the actual numbers before you sign a listing.
Yes, subject to the lease. The buyer takes the home subject to the tenant’s rights unless the lease says otherwise, and showings need the tenant’s cooperation under the lease’s notice terms. The master Declaration binds tenants to the governing documents. The Southwest Florida MLS pull of September 30, 2026 showed no leased Rookery Lake record in the prior 12 months.
Your Club membership is separate from your Rookery Lake deed, even if your lot touches Club golf land. Whether a membership can pass to a buyer, and on what terms, is the Club’s decision under its own rules, which it does not publish on its public website. Your Rookery Lake sale never requires a membership on either side, and we explain the separation to every buyer.
Financing a detached single-family home is routine, but lenders and insurers look hard at houses of this age. Every Rookery Lake lot measures Zone AE, so a lender will require flood insurance, and the insurer prices windstorm from the roof, the openings and the wind mitigation report. A documented roof, opening protection and a current elevation certificate keep a financed buyer’s approval on schedule.
With nothing listed in Rookery Lake on September 30, 2026, your listing competes mostly with the other top-priced single-family neighborhoods in Bonita Bay: Spring Ridge (a $3,800,000 median on 12 deeds in 60 months) and Bay Woods ($3,875,000 on 14), and with any other Rookery Lake home that comes to market. Buyers at this price compare all three, so we price against all three.
Compare on the same county yardstick and on the house itself. Rookery Lake recorded a $3,600,000 median and $628 per heated square foot over 60 months; Spring Ridge recorded $3,800,000 and $707 on the same median lot of 0.671 acre. Rookery Lake houses are larger at the median, so a well-updated Rookery Lake home offers a buyer more house for the price per foot.
Yes. Every Rookery Lake house has a concrete tile roof and was built from 1998 to 2004, so a buyer’s inspector and insurer will ask its age first. A documented roof replacement with its City permit and a wind mitigation report showing the roof deck and roof-to-wall connections can lower the buyer’s windstorm quote and remove the largest inspection question.
Gather the deed and survey, the elevation certificate, the wind mitigation and four-point reports, every City permit for roof, windows, doors, pool, generator and air conditioning, your insurance declarations, recent utility and pool service records, any Design Review approvals from the master association and the last master association statement. Those records let a buyer price the house rather than its age.
Under the standard Florida contract forms, the buyer’s inspection period lets the buyer ask for repairs or credits, or cancel within the period, depending on the form used. On a house built from 1998 to 2004, a pre-listing inspection shows you the roof, pool, electrical and air-conditioning findings first, so you can repair, price or disclose them before a buyer negotiates on them.
The county record shows the level rising over the decade and easing since its peak. Medians of the qualified house deeds read $1,980,000 in 2015, $3,150,000 in 2021, $3,297,500 in 2024 and $3,200,000 in 2025, and the three deeds of late 2021 and January 2022 ran $4,000,000 to $4,750,000. Each year holds one to seven deeds, so they show a level, not a precise rate.
Property taxes for the year are prorated between you and the buyer on the closing statement, and the master assessment is prorated or paid through the period the estoppel certificate shows. Any charge due at transfer appears on the estoppel. The buyer’s future taxes reset to a new assessed value after the sale, so your current bill is not theirs.
Every Rookery Lake fact on this page comes from a recorded instrument or state record, a county, city, state or federal record, the Bonita Bay Community Association’s, the developer’s successor’s or the Bonita Bay Club’s own published pages, a named news report, or the Southwest Florida MLS figures pulled on September 30, 2026. Every link below was checked and answered on November 3, 2026; recorded instruments are cited by book and page or instrument number in the text.
The official documents below are published by the Bonita Bay Community Association, the City of Bonita Springs, the School District of Lee County and NOAA. They are the documents we read for this page, and the ones a Rookery Lake buyer or seller should read before signing. Each link opens the issuing authority’s own copy.
| Document | Issued by | Date | What it covers | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Street and Neighborhoods | Bonita Bay Community Association | Current posting | Lists Arrowwood Court, Pineshadow Court and Rookery Lake Drive under Rookery Lake | View the street table |
| Media Brochure, January 2026 | Bonita Bay Community Association | January 2026 | 2,400 acres, 3,346 residences, 12 miles of paths, separately owned Club and Marina | View the brochure |
| Open House Guidelines | Bonita Bay Community Association | Current posting | Open house hours, 72-hour notice, sign standard, no SOLD signs | View the guidelines |
| Trails map | Bonita Bay Community Association | Current posting | The path network that connects Rookery Lake Drive to the parks and the Club | View the trails map |
| Neighborhoods map | Bonita Bay Community Association | Current posting | Where Rookery Lake sits among Bonita Bay’s neighborhoods | View the neighborhoods map |
| Facilities and amenities map | Bonita Bay Community Association | Current posting | Parks, beach shuttle points and community facilities | View the amenities map |
| Ordinance No. 22-05, Flood Hazard Reduction | City of Bonita Springs | 2022 | City floodplain rules that apply to Rookery Lake permits and remodels in Zone AE | View Ordinance 22-05 |
| Substantial improvement and damage toolkit | City of Bonita Springs | Revised May 25, 2024 | How the City applies the 50% rule to flood-zone buildings | View the toolkit |
| CRS Floodplain Management Plan, FY 2025-26 progress report | City of Bonita Springs | FY 2025-26 | The program behind the Class 5, 25% NFIP discount | View the report |
| Zoning District Map Book | City of Bonita Springs | July 6, 2011 | Zoning districts by map sheet within city limits | View the map book |
| How to use online services | City of Bonita Springs Community Development | Current posting | The City’s online permit portal, for a home’s permit history | View the guide |
| Student Enrollment Plan 2025-2026 | School District of Lee County | 2025 | Elementary Zone Q, middle Zone GG and the South high school choice zone | View the plan |
| Parks of Bonita Bay | Bonita Bay Community Association | Current posting | Spring Creek Park, Estero Bay Park and Riverwalk Park: kayak launch dock, observation deck, bocce, boardwalk, boat ramp | View the parks page |
| Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Ian | NOAA National Hurricane Center | 2023 | The official record of Hurricane Ian | View the report |
The Bonita Bay Unit 44 plat (Plat Book 59, Page 79), the recorded master Declaration (Lee County Instrument 2011000142834) and the master association’s By-Laws (Instrument 2020000126919) are public records at the Lee County Clerk, retrieved by book and page or instrument number; none is posted as a free copy online.
Market data from Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 30, 2026. County sales and parcel records from the Lee County Property Appraiser, recorded sales through September 2026. McGreevy and Comisar, Best Realtor for Rookery Lake. Brokered by Domain Realty. Jesse McGreevy, FL Lic. SL3101296 · Marc Comisar, FL Lic. BK3060671.
Thinking about buying or selling in Southwest Florida? Tell us what you are trying to do and we will tell you honestly what it will take. McGreevy and Comisar, Domain Realty Group.
