Babcock Ranch - The Preserve

Updated September 2026 · Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar, Brokered by Domain Realty

The Preserve is one of the Babcock Ranch communities we cover in depth. If you are buying or selling here, our comparison of the best real estate agents in Fort Myers shows how local agents stack up on the public record.

The Preserve at Babcock Ranch is a 154-home neighborhood of fee-simple attached twin villas built by D.R. Horton in Babcock Ranch, Charlotte County, Florida 33982. Every one of the 154 homes is the same house: the Carrington, D.R. Horton plan 1503, 1,503 square feet under air on the builder's plan and 1,516 air-conditioned square feet on the county card, two bedrooms plus a den, two baths, a two-car garage, one shared wall. The Charlotte County parcel roll stamped 10 September 2026 shows all 154 homesites built and conveyed, none remaining. In the twelve months to 31 August 2026 the neighborhood recorded 14 qualified arm’s-length closings at a median of $284,500, a range of $260,000 to $320,000 and $187.66 per square foot. Every one of those 14 was a resale. The builder sold nothing here in the last twelve months. McGreevy and Comisar are a top-reviewed Babcock Ranch real estate team and Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008. Call Jesse McGreevy direct at (239) 898-6072.

In This Guide

This guide is built from the Charlotte County recorded deed file and parcel roll dated 10 September 2026, the recorded Declaration and its First Amendment, the Babcock Ranch Charter, the Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District’s own adopted budget, FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer measured over this neighborhood’s own 164 parcels, and the builder’s own archived price sheets. Where a fact could not be sourced we say so and give you the authority and the phone number rather than a guess. Here is what it covers.

• What The Preserve actually is, and why the product type changes everything

• Key takeaways, the twelve facts that decide a purchase here

• Who are the best realtors for The Preserve at Babcock Ranch

• The Preserve at Babcock Ranch is not Babcock Ranch Preserve, and the difference matters

• What a Preserve villa sells for right now

• The resale record, and it is the hardest number on this page

• Why sellers here have lost money, and the date that pressure ends

• D.R. Horton, the builder, proven six ways

• The Carrington, the only floor plan in the neighborhood

• The den, the third bedroom, and what the builder did next

• What the association maintains and what you maintain

• The insurance question this product breaks, and it is the expensive one

• The party wall, and the document that says nothing about it

• Association dues, from the recorded liens rather than a brochure

• The special district, what the assessment buys and when the debt ends

• The total annual cost of owning one villa, worked line by line

• Every dollar due at closing, and who it goes to

• Leasing, the four-lease cap and the short-term rental ban

• Pets, vehicles and the golf cart that cannot sit in your driveway

• Architectural approval, and the amendment that reversed the default

• Which document governs when the neighborhood and the town disagree

• Flood, measured on The Preserve’s own 164 parcels

• Storm history, and what it does and does not tell you about these houses

• The D.R. Horton window story, and why it does not attach to this neighborhood

• The neighborhood amenity tract, and what the county can actually see there

• Distances, routed from this neighborhood’s own centroid

• Schools, and the enrolment tier a Preserve address actually sits in

• Utilities, providers and published rates

• The four streets, and which lots are not like the others

• The build wave, and why every roof here ages together

• Who controls the association now, and what your vote is worth

• Attached versus detached at Babcock Ranch, as an ownership question

• How to verify every number on this page yourself

• Your local real estate experts for The Preserve

• How The Preserve compares to the rest of Babcock Ranch

• Buyer Edition: questions answered from the record

• Seller Edition: every question an owner asks before listing

• About McGreevy and Comisar, and how to reach us

• What we could not source, and exactly who to call

• Sources

• Downloadable Documents

What The Preserve Actually Is, and Why the Product Type Changes Everything

The Preserve is the most uniform neighborhood at Babcock Ranch and probably the most uniform in Charlotte County. It is 154 attached twin villas, built in two years, all to one floor plan, all the same size, on four streets. Because there is only one plan, there is no mix. That single fact makes this the cleanest price series in the whole town: when the median moves here, it is the price that moved, not the houses that sold. On every other Babcock Ranch neighborhood this program has measured, a falling median had to be decomposed into what fell and what simply stopped selling. Here there is nothing to decompose.

The product is attached, and three independent records say so. The Charlotte County Property Appraiser codes all 154 homesites land use 0102, which is fee-simple cluster or attached, not detached single family. The Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District’s own assessment schedule lists the line item as “The Preserve. DR Horton. Twin Villa. 154.” The recorded Declaration’s own Exhibit D, the county permit at page 128, describes “154 two-family attached residences.” The builder describes a twin villa with one shared wall.

And yet the body of the Declaration calls them “single family homes” throughout. That is not a trivial drafting slip and we flag it here rather than bury it, because it is the reason the insurance section further down exists. A document that calls an attached house a single family home is a document that has not thought carefully about the wall, and when you read this one you will find it never mentions the wall at all.

Fee simple matters too. These are not condominiums. You own the lot, you own the building, you pay ad valorem tax on both, and you qualify for homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes assessment cap exactly as a detached owner does. Charlotte County account 422629106002 is taking both today. The word “villa” leads a lot of buyers to assume condominium rules and condominium insurance. Neither applies.

Key Takeaways for The Preserve at Babcock Ranch

Twelve facts, every one measured from a primary record rather than repeated from marketing, and every one of them changes a number in an offer. If you read nothing else on this page, read these, then call us on (239) 898-6072 and we will tell you which of them apply to the specific villa you are looking at, because several of them do not apply uniformly across all 154.

• One plan, 154 times. Every home is the D.R. Horton Carrington, plan 1503, 1,503 square feet under air, two bedrooms plus a den, two baths, two-car garage, one shared wall. There is no larger model and no smaller one.

• Fully built out, and the builder is gone from this neighborhood. 114 homes completed in 2023 and 40 in 2024. All 154 conveyed. D.R. Horton closed the neighborhood out in May 2024.

• But the builder is not gone from the market. D.R. Horton is selling the same Carrington twin villa line at Palmetto Landing, about three road miles away, from $274,999, at 1,543 square feet with a true third bedroom. That is the single most important fact on this page for a seller.

• 14 closings in the twelve months to 31 August 2026 at a median of $284,500, $260,000 to $320,000, $187.66 per square foot. Every one was a resale.

• 21 of the 22 resales in this neighborhood’s entire history sold for less than the seller paid, at a median outcome of minus $57,750 and a median hold of 26.6 months.

• The association replaces the roof at the end of its useful life and paints the exterior. You maintain, repair and insure the roof yourself, and a roof lost to a storm is yours, not the association’s.

• You need a full HO-3 on the whole structure, not the HO-6 walls-in policy buyers of attached homes reach for. There is no master structure policy.

• Mowing your lot is discretionary. The Declaration says the association may, in its sole discretion cut the grass on each lot. It is not a promised service.

• Sub-association dues are $937.80 a quarter, $3,751.20 a year, taken from a recorded claim of lien rather than from anyone’s brochure, and up 19.8 percent from $782.66 in about two years.

• The all-in annual cost of one villa at the trailing-twelve median is about $10,140 without homestead and $9,538 with it, of which roughly a third is not ad valorem tax at all.

• Every one of the 164 parcels sits dominantly in flood Zone X, outside the Special Flood Hazard Area, though 49 residential lots carry a sliver of Zone AE at the rear line.

• The nearest interstate interchange is in Lee County, 13.1 miles away. So is the nearest emergency room. This is a Lee County commute address that pays Charlotte County taxes.

Who Are the Best Realtors for The Preserve at Babcock Ranch, and What Should They Already Know

The right test for an agent on a street like this one is not whether they have sold at Babcock Ranch. It is whether they can tell you, before you ask, what the builder is charging for the newer version of your house this week, what the association does and does not insure, and how many of your neighbours have sold at a loss. Those three numbers decide your offer and your list price, and none of them appears on a listing sheet. McGreevy and Comisar are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, with more than $900 million in Sales, and this page is what that looks like in practice: the deeds counted one at a time, the 135-page Declaration read, and its First Amendment pulled even though the Clerk had indexed it under the wrong document type.

We are not going to tell you The Preserve is a good buy or a bad one, because that depends entirely on what you are trying to do. It is a difficult place to sell in 2026 and a straightforward place to buy, and those two sentences are the same fact seen from opposite sides of the closing table. What we will do is give you the record and tell you what it means for your side.

★★★★★ “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

★★★★★ “Marc has been a great help in securing a great price for our home during its build phase. Negotiated a much better deal from the builder.” Michael Gatz, verified Google review

What we bring to a Preserve sale specifically

A Preserve listing has exactly one comparable set and it is the other 153 identical houses, so pricing is unusually mechanical and unusually unforgiving. We price against the builder’s live sheet at Palmetto Landing rather than against the last Preserve closing, because that is what your buyer is actually choosing between. Call Jesse McGreevy direct at (239) 898-6072.

What we bring to a Preserve purchase

On the buy side the work is the opposite: establishing what the seller’s position actually is. Twenty-one of twenty-two sellers here have taken a loss, and a seller who bought at $375,800 and is looking at $285,000 is in a very different negotiation from one who bought at $311,000. Every one of those original purchase prices is public record and we pull it before we write.

The Preserve at Babcock Ranch Is Not Babcock Ranch Preserve, and Nobody Has Bothered to Say So

This is the cheapest piece of clarity on the page and it is worth putting near the top. Babcock Ranch Preserve is the state conservation land, roughly 73,000 acres of it, managed for public recreation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The Preserve at Babcock Ranch is this 154-villa neighborhood inside the town. They are different things, about twenty times as many people search for the conservation land, and the Babcock Ranch subreddit’s own sidebar has to tell people which one they are reading about.

If you have arrived here looking for hunting, hiking or the buggy tours, you want the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Babcock Ranch Preserve page, not us. If you are looking at a twin villa on Blue Heron Lane, Sparrow Drive, Hawk Court or Caracara Place, you are in the right place.

What Does a Preserve Villa Sell For Right Now?

In the twelve months to 31 August 2026, The Preserve recorded 14 qualified arm’s-length improved closings at a median of $284,500, ranging from $260,000 to $320,000, at a median of $187.66 per square foot. That median sits 18.7 percent below the Charlotte County single family and cluster benchmark of $349,900 across 5,952 closings over the same window. Every one of the 14 was a resale, because there is nothing left for the builder to sell here.

Data updated: September 2026, from the Charlotte County recorded deed file dated 10 September 2026 and the parcel roll dated 10 September 2026, restricted to qualified arm’s-length improved deeds on parcels carrying a residential land use, tax district 206.

The prior twelve months, to 31 August 2025, produced 7 closings at a median of $310,000 and $204.49 per square foot. So volume doubled while the median fell 8.2 percent and price per square foot fell by the identical 8.2 percent. Those two percentages being identical is not a coincidence, it is the whole point of this neighborhood. Everywhere else in this program a median and a price per square foot move by different amounts, and the gap between them is the mix: what sold changed. Here the houses are all the same size, so the two numbers cannot diverge. The Preserve is the only neighborhood at Babcock Ranch where the headline median is a pure price signal.

Every closing in the window, because there are only fourteen

Most pages give you a median and ask you to trust it. On a fourteen-sale year we can simply show you the fourteen, so you can see the shape of the distribution yourself rather than take a single number on faith.

Read the dates down the left and the trend is not subtle. The three closings in October 2025 averaged $310,000. The four closings from June onwards in 2026 averaged $276,875. The lowest price in the entire window is the second-most-recent sale. A seller listing here in late 2026 is not pricing against the $284,500 median, they are pricing against the last four sales, and those run $260,000 to $292,500.

Have Preserve Resales Made or Lost Money? This Is the Hardest Number on the Page

Almost all of them have lost money, and the scale of it is not comparable to anything else this program has measured at Babcock Ranch. Of the 176 qualified arm’s-length improved closings in The Preserve’s entire history, 154 were D.R. Horton selling a new villa and 22 were resales from one owner to another. Twenty-one of those twenty-two sold for less than the seller paid. The median outcome across all 22 was minus $57,750 and the median hold was 26.6 months.

Data updated: September 2026, from the Charlotte County recorded deed file dated 10 September 2026. Every row below is two entries on one parcel’s sales history and you can reproduce any of them from the Property Appraiser’s own record card.

The single winner is the last row and it is instructive. Somebody bought at $311,000 on 26 February 2024 and sold at $340,000 on 26 April 2024, a two-month hold at the exact top of the local market, while D.R. Horton was still selling and still setting the ceiling. Every other seller, on every other hold length, lost. There is no hold period in this table that reliably produced a gain. The longest hold, 38.8 months, produced the largest loss.

What this table does not mean, and we want to be careful here

It does not mean the houses are bad, and it does not mean Babcock Ranch is in trouble. The town recorded about 1,158 closings in the same twelve months at a $375,000 median, with volume down 13.4 percent and the median down 6.3 percent. That is a softening market, not a collapse. What this table measures is something narrower and more specific: what happens when 154 identical houses, bought new at the top of a builder’s price curve, all try to resell into a market where the same builder is still selling a newer version of the same house three miles away. That is a structural position, not a defect, and the next section is about when it ends.

Why Have Sellers Lost Money Here, and When Does That Pressure End?

The mechanism is specific, it is measurable, and unlike most explanations offered for a soft neighborhood it has an expiry date. D.R. Horton did not leave Babcock Ranch when it closed out The Preserve in May 2024. It moved three road miles to Palmetto Landing, where it is selling the same Carrington twin villa line today. The version it sells now is 1,543 square feet with a genuine third bedroom, from $274,999, with below-market financing and closing-cost incentives that a private seller cannot write into a contract.

Put the two side by side and the problem is obvious.

The Preserve’s own median is above the builder’s floor. That is the entire story of the resale table above, stated in one line. A buyer standing in a Preserve villa is being asked to pay more for a smaller, older house with one fewer bedroom and no rate buydown. Some of them do it, for the street, the lake, the trees or the specific villa. Most of them ask for a discount, and the record shows they get one.

The date this pressure ends, and it is published

Palmetto Landing has roughly 200 homes left to sell, and the master developer’s own community paper has put the expected sellout at late 2027 or early 2028. When the last D.R. Horton twin villa at Palmetto Landing closes, the competing price sheet disappears and the only Carrington twin villas available in Babcock Ranch are resales. That is a genuinely different market from the one the sellers in the table above were selling into, and it is roughly fifteen to twenty-eight months away at the time of writing.

We are not going to turn that into a prediction about prices, because we do not know what rates, insurance or the wider market will do in that window, and anybody who tells you otherwise is guessing. What we will say is that the specific, measurable, identifiable source of downward pressure on this neighborhood has a published end date, which is more than can be said for most explanations of a soft market. If you are a seller who can wait, that is the single most useful sentence on this page. Call Jesse McGreevy direct at (239) 898-6072 and we will tell you what waiting actually costs you in carry.

A second, smaller mechanism, and it is worth naming

All 154 villas are the same house, so every listing is a perfect substitute for every other listing. In a neighborhood of varied plans, a seller with the only three-bedroom on a cul-de-sac has something no competitor has. Here, nobody does. When several Preserve villas are listed at once the only lever any of them has is price, because there is no other axis to compete on. Uniformity is pleasant to look at and hard to sell into.

D.R. Horton Built Every Home Here, and We Proved It Six Ways

This program has published the wrong builder on a Babcock Ranch page before, so we no longer take a builder name from a listing or a community website. The builder here is D.R. Horton, Inc., a Delaware corporation, Southwest Florida Division, 10541 Ben C. Pratt / Six Mile Cypress Parkway, Suite 100, Fort Myers, Florida 33966, division phone (239) 225-2600, division president Justin Robbins. Six independent sources confirm it and four of them are primary records.

Two of those deserve a note. The Articles of Incorporation are the strongest single proof, because a declarant naming itself in a filed corporate document is not marketing. And the district budget line is an independent corroboration of the unit count as well as the builder: a governmental body that levies an assessment on 154 units has counted them for its own reasons, and it agrees with the Property Appraiser to the unit.

The Carrington: One Floor Plan, One Hundred and Fifty-Four Times

There is a single plan in The Preserve and knowing its specification precisely is worth more here than on any other page this program has written, because it is also the specification of every comparable sale and every competing listing. The plan is the Carrington, D.R. Horton internal plan number 1503, sold under the builder’s Tradition Series rather than the Express Series.

The 1,503 and the 1,516 are the same house measured two ways, and we say so explicitly because a buyer who pulls the parcel card after reading a builder brochure will otherwise think they have found a discrepancy. The builder measures under air to its own convention; the Property Appraiser measures assessed air-conditioned area to the county’s. Every price per square foot on this page is computed on the county’s 1,516, because the deed file and the roll share that field and we would rather be consistent than flattering.

How the shared wall was built

D.R. Horton’s Southwest Florida division president described noise-eliminating rake walls between each unit, allowing the homes to be insured as single-family. That is a construction claim rather than a legal one and we report it as the builder’s statement. The legal position on that wall is a separate question and the recorded documents answer it differently from what most buyers expect, which is why it has its own section further down.

Glazing is not uniform, and that is a per-address question

The county cards we pulled read High Impact Glass, and the builder’s own plan order lists “Add Impact Windows, Sliders” as an option rather than as standard. Those two facts together mean the correct answer for any particular villa is on that villa’s permit file, not in a generalisation. Charlotte County Building Construction Services will confirm the opening protection on a specific address: (941) 743-1201. Ask before you waive an inspection, and ask before you quote an insurance premium that assumes impact glazing.

The Den, the Third Bedroom, and What the Builder Did Next

The Carrington in The Preserve is a two-bedroom-plus-den plan. That distinction is not pedantry and it is not a marketing quibble: it changes the buyer pool, the appraisal comparables and the resale price, because a great many buyers filter on three bedrooms and never see a two-bedroom listing at all. The den has no closet, which is what stops it being counted as a bedroom.

D.R. Horton fixed this in the successor product. The Carrington II now selling at Palmetto Landing converts the den into a third bedroom with a walk-in closet. So a Preserve villa is not merely competing with a newer house at a lower price, it is competing with a corrected version of itself, and the correction addresses the single most common objection to the original. A seller here should know that before they price, and a buyer should know it before they assume the den is a fair substitute.

There is a reading of this that favours the buyer, and it is worth stating for balance. A den with no closet is a more flexible room than a small third bedroom for anybody who works from home, and the Preserve plan devotes the square footage to living space rather than to a corridor and a closet. If you do not need a third bedroom, you are being paid to not need one.

What the Association Maintains, What You Maintain, and the Document That Was Nearly Missed

This is the section most buyers of an attached villa get wrong, and the cost of getting it wrong is a roof. The governing text is in two recorded instruments and the second one reverses part of the first, so reading only the Declaration gives you an answer that has not been correct since March 2024.

There is no condominium at The Preserve. The First Amendment, the document that decides who pays for the roof, is indexed in the public records under a document type that does not describe it and would cause any search filtered by title to discard it. We are recording that here because the next person to research this neighborhood will hit the same trap, and because it is the third time this program has been saved by the same rule: open every candidate instrument and never discard one by its title.

What the amendment actually says

The Declaration as originally recorded put essentially everything on the owner. The First Amendment, describing its own changes as correcting scrivener’s errors, moved exactly two responsibilities to the association. Article XI section 6, at page 3 of 5:

“the Association shall be responsible for replacing the roof of the Homes at the end of the useful life of the roof of the Homes and for periodic painting the exterior of each Home. Each Owner shall be responsible for all other exterior maintenance, insurance, and repairs of the Home, including, but not limited to, maintaining, repairing, and insuring the roof... Replacement of roofs due to casualty or negligence of an Owner or its tenants, guests or invitees or other insured events shall be the responsibility of the impacted Owner.”

Read that last sentence twice, because it is the one that costs money. The association replaces your roof when it wears out. If a storm takes it, or hail damages it, or any other insured event destroys it, it is yours. In Southwest Florida the probability that a roof reaches the end of its useful life without an intervening named storm is not the probability most buyers assume.

The full split, line by line

The mowing clause, which is not what a villa buyer expects

Most people buying an attached villa in Florida believe lawn care is included, because in most attached-villa communities it is. Here the Declaration says at Article XI section 2, page 39, that “the Association may, in its sole discretion, maintain and cut the grass located on each Lot.” The word doing the work is may. Mandatory maintenance applies to the Common Areas, not to your lot.

That does not mean nobody is mowing today. It means the obligation is discretionary rather than contractual, so a board could stop, and a buyer who priced the villa on the assumption that lawn care is bundled has priced an assumption rather than a right. Ask RealManage what is actually being mowed this year and whether it is in the current budget: (866) 364-1281. We could not source the current answer and we are not going to guess it.

Is the roof reserved for? Nobody has answered this publicly

The association owes you a roof replacement at end of useful life on 154 houses built in 2023 and 2024. A shingle roof in Southwest Florida does not last forever, so that is a large future liability sitting on a young association. Whether it is being funded is the question, and it is not answerable from the recorded documents.

Florida law is permissive here rather than prescriptive. Under section 720.303(6) of the Florida Statutes reserves may be included in a homeowners association budget, they exist as statutory reserves only on a majority vote of the members, and they can be waived or terminated. There is no structural integrity reserve study and no milestone inspection requirement for a Chapter 720 homeowners association; those obligations attach to condominiums, and this is not one. The association’s own annual financial report has to state the reserve position in conspicuous type, so the answer exists, it is simply not public. Ask RealManage on (866) 364-1281 for the current budget and the reserve schedule, and read the answer before you write an offer.

The Insurance Question This Product Breaks, and It Is the Expensive One

Buyers of attached homes reach for an HO-6 policy, the walls-in product designed for a unit inside a building that somebody else insures. On this neighborhood that instinct is wrong, and it is wrong in the direction that leaves you uninsured on the most expensive component of the house. We have not found this stated anywhere else in public, which is the reason this section exists.

Declaration Article XI section 7, at pages 41 to 42, is explicit:

“Each Owner of a Lot shall obtain insurance coverage upon the Lot insuring the Home... in an amount equal to the maximum insurable replacement value... Such coverage shall name the Association as an additional insured.”

Article XV of the Declaration insures Association Property only. Master Charter section 6.3, at page 31, agrees. There is no master structure policy over these 154 buildings. Put those three facts together with the roof clause above and the position is unambiguous: you need a full HO-3 on the entire structure, including the roof, exactly as a detached owner does, with the association added as an additional insured. An HO-6 walls-in policy would leave the building and the roof uncovered.

What that costs in Charlotte County, with the caveats that travel with the number

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation publishes a rate comparison tool of its own, and its standard example closest to this house is labelled “HO-3 $300k New Const”: masonry construction, $300,000 replacement cost, a $500 all-other-perils deductible and a 2 percent hurricane deductible, no prior claims. For Charlotte County it returns 20 carriers ranging from $2,822 to $35,280, with Citizens at $3,668 and a median of $5,650. Setting aside the two high-net-worth carriers at the top, 18 carriers run $2,822 to $9,247 with a median of $4,926.

Three caveats travel with that range every single time it is quoted, and we will not quote it without them. First, the regulator’s example is a 2005 build with minimum wind-mitigation credits and no hip roof, so a 2023 or 2024 villa with impact glazing and a current-code roof deck should price below it, possibly well below. Second, the regulator’s example is a detached house, and there is no public Florida dataset that prices an attached twin villa; we looked. Third, carriers filing rates as trade secrets are excluded from the tool entirely. This is a framing range, not a quote, and the regulator says the same thing.

For a real number on a real address: the Florida Department of Financial Services Consumer Helpline is 1-877-693-5236, the Office of Insurance Regulation is (850) 413-3140, and Citizens Property Insurance is 866-411-2742. Get the wind-mitigation report and the four-point before you get the quote, because on a 2023 house they are the difference between the top and the bottom of that range.

The Party Wall, and the Document That Says Nothing About It

Every villa here shares one wall with one neighbour. We searched all 135 pages of the recorded Declaration for the terms party wall, common wall, villa and twin. There are zero occurrences of any of them. The neighborhood’s own governing document, the one your attorney will read at closing, does not mention the wall at all, while its own Exhibit D describes the buildings as two-family attached residences.

The governing terms are one level up, in the Babcock Ranch Charter at section 6.4, pages 31 to 32, Official Records 4966/1197-98. Any wall, fence or driveway built as part of the original construction and serving two units is a party structure. The Charter then provides:

“The cost of reasonable repair and maintenance... shall be shared equally”, and on casualty, “to the extent that such damage is not covered by insurance”, the owners “contribute to the restoration cost in equal proportions”, subject to a larger call against an owner whose negligence caused it.

The obligation runs with the land, so it binds whoever owns the villa next door, not the person who agreed to it. Disputes go to the master alternative dispute resolution procedure in Chapter 19 of the Charter rather than straight to court.

Read that alongside the insurance position and the practical consequence is clear. The phrase that matters is “to the extent that such damage is not covered by insurance.” Two owners, two separate HO-3 policies, one shared wall, and a shortfall split equally. If your neighbour is underinsured, the party structure clause reaches you for half of whatever their policy does not pay. That is a good reason to know what the villa attached to yours is insured for, and a better reason to get your own coverage right.

What Are the HOA Dues at The Preserve, and Where Does That Number Come From?

We take assessment figures from recorded claims of lien rather than from brochures, listing remarks or a management company’s front desk, because a lien is a sworn instrument filed in the public records and the others are not. Three liens against Preserve lots give us a three-year trajectory.

That is a 19.8 percent increase in about two years, from $782.66 to $937.80 a quarter, on a young association that has just taken on a roof replacement obligation across 154 buildings. The liens also record 18 percent interest on arrears, which is the statutory maximum and worth knowing before you fall behind. The management company named on the 2024 lien was Spires and Associates; the association is managed today by RealManage.

Data updated: September 2026, from the Charlotte County Clerk’s official records. Two things we could not source and will not invent: what the $937.80 includes, and the assessment after the first quarter of 2026. Both are questions for RealManage on (866) 364-1281, and if you are under contract your estoppel certificate answers the second one definitively.

The Special District, What the Assessment Buys, and When the Debt Ends

Babcock Ranch is governed in part by the Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District, created by a special act of the Florida Legislature, Chapter 2007-306, rather than by the general community development district statute. It is not a CDD and calling it one leads people to the wrong statute and the wrong assumptions. The district levies a per-unit assessment that arrives on your Charlotte County tax bill as a non-ad-valorem line, not as a separate invoice.

The step is $32.45 a year on operations with the debt component flat, which is worth noting because it is the same shape the district applied at Sabal Glen, where the step was also $32.45 with flat debt. That consistency suggests a district-wide operating escalator rather than a neighborhood-specific one.

What the operating assessment actually buys

The district’s adopted budget itemises it, and it is a more substantial list than most buyers expect: night safety patrol at about $435,600, field management at about $1.12 million, landscape and irrigation across the town, stormwater and littoral maintenance, more than thirty street-light leases, the trail network, the splash pad, prescribed burning at about $233,000, panther and wetland mitigation, and a $450,000 franchise-fee payment that the electric utility applies to the solar plant. The debt component is bond amortisation for the roads, stormwater system, lakes and utility mains that were built before the first house.

When the debt ends, and what we could not confirm

The strong inference from the district’s own bond documents is that The Preserve’s debt sits in the Series 2022 bonds, final maturity 1 May 2053. We are labelling that an inference rather than a fact, because the district does not publish a phase-to-series map and The Preserve appears in the assessment schedule as Phase 3E without a series reference. The district manager can confirm which series funds your lot, what the payoff balance is, and whether a mid-year prepayment is permitted: Wrathell, Hunt and Associates, (561) 571-0010 or 877-276-0889. If you are considering prepaying the debt portion, that call is worth making before you write an offer, because a prepaid lot and a non-prepaid lot are different products at the same list price.

What Does It Actually Cost to Own a Preserve Villa for a Year?

Here is the whole stack at the trailing-twelve-month median of $284,500, built from the Property Appraiser’s own by-district millage sheet rather than from an estimate. Tax district 206 carries exactly nine taxing authorities and no city, no county lighting district and no separate CDD.

Data updated: September 2026, using the 2025 final certified rates, which are the most recent certified set.

That is 2.25 percent of value without homestead and 2.03 percent with it. The number worth carrying away is this one: roughly a third of the tax notice is not ad valorem tax at all. The district assessment and the solid waste line are per-unit charges that do not fall when the assessed value falls and are not reduced by homestead. In a year when values soften, a Preserve owner’s bill softens by much less than they expect.

These are fee-simple homes, so homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes cap both apply. The figures above use the $25,000 and $26,411 exemptions actually appearing on Preserve accounts today. Add insurance from the range in the section above and a utility floor of about $85.71 a month in fixed charges before a drop of water is used, and you have the real carrying cost.

Every Dollar Due at Closing, and Exactly Who It Goes To

All of the following comes from the recorded text rather than from a title company’s estimate, so it is what the documents entitle each party to charge rather than what any particular closing happened to collect. Two associations levy charges here and they levy them cumulatively, which means a closing at The Preserve carries more line items than a closing in a Babcock Ranch neighborhood with no sub-association at all. Every figure below is cited to the clause that creates it.

Nothing at closing is paid to D.R. Horton. That is worth saying plainly because it is not the norm in this town: the recorded declaration at Sabal Glen directs $2,000 to Lennar on a first sale, for any purpose at the builder’s discretion. The Preserve’s documents contain no equivalent, and a buyer here is not funding the builder on the way in.

The working capital figure deserves a note on provenance. The Charter originally set it at one-sixth of the annual Base Assessment; instrument 3348888 raised it, and instrument 3475099, recorded 11 December 2024, is the operative amendment setting it at 50 percent. Our optical character recognition of that page read the figure as zero percent and the document image plainly reads 50 percent; we kept the image crop rather than trusting the machine, and we recommend you or your closing agent eyeball the same page. The current master Base Assessment amount, and therefore the actual dollar figure, is a question for the Babcock Ranch Residential Association, and if you are under contract your estoppel will state it.

Can You Rent Out a Preserve Villa? The Four-Lease Cap Nobody Mentions

You can lease, on terms that are more restrictive than most buyers assume and that are set in two documents rather than one. The recorded Declaration at Article IX section 22, pages 33 to 34, is the operative text and it imposes four separate constraints.

“No lease shall be for an initial term of less than two (2) months. No Home may be leased more than four (4) times in any calendar year.”

The short-term prohibition is worth quoting because it is broader than a minimum-term rule and it comes from the town rather than the neighborhood. Charter section 7.1(f) at page 35 bars a unit being “advertised or listed or otherwise offered to the public through the internet or any other form of media for overnight or transient lodging.” That reaches the listing, not merely the letting, so a villa cannot be advertised on a short-stay platform even if no booking is taken.

The four-lease cap is the one that surprises people. Two months is a short minimum by Florida standards and it reads like an investor-friendly community, until you notice that four leases a year on a two-month minimum caps you at eight months of occupancy in a twelve-month year if you run consecutive minimum terms. Combined with the $150 review fee on each one and the pre-execution filing requirement, this is a document that permits seasonal letting and discourages a rotation. If your plan is an annual tenant, none of it binds. If your plan is three winter seasons and a summer, read it again.

Pets, Vehicles, and the Golf Cart That Cannot Sit in Your Driveway

Every restriction in this section comes from the recorded Declaration rather than from a rules sheet, which matters because a rules sheet can be changed by a board at a meeting and a recorded covenant generally cannot. These are the rules that bind whoever owns the villa next to yours as much as they bind you, and two of them regularly catch buyers who did not read the document before closing: the total pet limit and the overnight golf cart rule.

Three pets total, and the neighborhood is stricter than the town

Declaration Article IX section 4, at page 27, permits “not more than a total of three (3) domestic dogs” or “three (3) domestic cats”, and states that “in no event may more than three (3) total pets” be kept. There is no weight limit and no breed list, though the board may exclude a specific dog it determines to be a threat. Pet liability insurance naming the association as an additional insured is mandatory, which is unusual and easy to overlook.

The Babcock Ranch Charter is more generous: its Exhibit C rule at page 101 allows three dogs and three cats and caged birds. The neighborhood rule is stricter and therefore governs, for the reason set out in the section below on which document wins. A household with two dogs and two cats complies with the town and breaches the neighborhood.

Vehicles, and a height limit that requires approval before you buy

Declaration Article IX section 9, pages 29 to 30: parking is driveway and garage only, and street parking is prohibited between midnight and 6:00 a.m. Trailers, commercial vehicles, recreational vehicles, boats, canoes, jet skis and boat trailers must be kept inside an enclosed garage. There is a dimensional limit as well: no vehicle taller than 80 inches or longer than 235 inches, with several common vans named explicitly, and written board approval is required before purchase rather than after delivery. If you drive a full-size van or a long pickup, measure it before you make an offer.

Golf carts, in a golf-cart town

Babcock Ranch is built around golf carts and The Preserve’s own Declaration regulates them at Article IX section 23, page 35. Carts may use the roads but not the sidewalks, the driver must be at least 14, operation is daylight only, and the cart must be registered. Low-speed vehicles are prohibited outright. Then the clause that catches people:

a golf cart “may not be stored or parked in any driveway overnight, rather they must be within an enclosed garage.”

The villa has one two-car garage. A household with two cars and a golf cart has three vehicles and two bays, and the covenant forbids the overflow sitting on the driveway after dark. That is a genuine planning constraint in a town where a golf cart is close to standard equipment, and it does not appear on any listing.

Architectural Approval, and the Amendment That Reversed the Default

You need approval before you change the exterior, and you need it from two bodies rather than one: the Preserve board by majority under Declaration Article VIII section 1 at page 23, and the master association under Article XI section 1 at page 39. The review period is 45 days.

The First Amendment changed what happens when the 45 days pass in silence, and it changed it against the owner. The Declaration as recorded carried a deemed-approval proviso, the usual protection that stops an inactive board blocking work by doing nothing. The First Amendment struck it. The operative text today reads:

“If an Owner’s plans are not approved within such 45-day period, said plans shall be deemed not approved.”

Silence is a refusal. There is no cure period and no second bite. An owner who submits plans and hears nothing has been declined, and the only route forward is to submit again. Budget for that timeline if you are buying with a renovation in mind, and get the submission in early.

This is the third different answer this program has measured on three Babcock Ranch neighborhoods, which is why we no longer assume. Sabal Glen’s declaration provides neither deemed approval nor deemed disapproval and sets no deadline at all. The Preserve provides deemed disapproval on a 45-day clock. The binary that the first pages in this program assumed turned out to be wrong twice.

Which Document Governs When the Neighborhood and the Town Disagree?

This program has learned not to assume the Babcock Ranch Charter wins, because on the three neighborhoods measured so far it has worked three different ways. The Preserve produces a third pattern again, and the mechanism is worth following because it decides several of the rules above.

The Preserve Declaration does not decide the question. At Article XVI section 16, page 61, it hands it over: “Conflicts between this Declaration, the Articles, the Bylaws or the Association’s Rules and the Master Declaration and other governing documents reference therein shall be resolved as set forth in the Master Declaration.”

The Charter then answers in two parts. Section 1.2 at page 12: “If the provisions of any such additional covenants are more restrictive than the provisions of this Charter, the more restrictive provisions control.” Section 1.3 at pages 11 to 12 defines the word conflict very narrowly: “a ‘conflict’ shall exist only when requirements of two or more documents or laws are inconsistent and mutually exclusive, making compliance with all such requirements impossible”, and where two documents address the same matter without being mutually exclusive, “both shall be complied with.”

So the Charter wins only where obeying both is literally impossible. Everywhere else both apply and the stricter one governs. Here is what that produces, subject by subject, rather than as a slogan.

There is no program constant here and a page that offers one is guessing. Sabal Glen’s declaration subordinates entirely, so the Charter’s two-month minimum governed there. Creekside Run’s carves out stricter terms and its own six-month minimum governed. The Preserve delegates the question to the Charter, which then answers it with an impossibility test. Read your own neighborhood’s conflict clause, every time.

Is The Preserve in a Flood Zone? Measured on Its Own 164 Parcels

This program does not carry a flood answer between Babcock Ranch neighborhoods, because doing so would be wrong on the single fact most likely to cost a buyer money. Sabal Glen has 227 of its 230 parcels inside the Special Flood Hazard Area in Zone AE. Creekside Run, four road miles away under a different map revision, is 256 of 317 entirely in Zone X. So we measured The Preserve on its own.

Method, stated so you can check it. We pulled the parcel polygons for all 164 Preserve parcels from the Florida Department of Revenue statewide cadastral, queried FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer over the neighborhood’s own bounding box, intersected every flood polygon against every lot, and computed the area share by zone for each parcel individually.

Which streets carry the sliver

The Charlotte County Property Appraiser’s own flood block corroborates this parcel by parcel: account 422629106095 shows “Zones AE and X, Floodway OUT”, and account 422629106149 shows “SFHA OUT, Flood Zone X”. Two independent sources, the same answer.

The gap we did not close, and it is the one that decides your premium

We measured lots, not buildings. Whether any particular villa’s structure footprint sits inside one of those AE slivers is a different question, and it is the question a lender and an insurer will ask, because a mandatory flood insurance requirement attaches to the building rather than to the lot. We could not resolve it from the public geospatial data and we are not going to guess it on a house-by-house basis. Charlotte County Floodplain Management will answer it for a specific address on (941) 743-1201, and FEMA’s Map Information eXchange is 1-877-336-2627. On a rear lot on Sparrow Drive or Blue Heron Lane, make that call before you budget for insurance, and consider an elevation certificate.

What Happened Here in Hurricane Ian, and What That Does and Does Not Tell You

Babcock Ranch came through Hurricane Ian with a reputation, and the reputation is largely deserved, but it needs to be stated precisely because the way it is usually stated does not apply to these 154 houses at all. The claim a buyer will hear is that homes here survived the storm undamaged. The homes in The Preserve did not survive it, because they did not exist. What survived was the site, and the distinction changes what the evidence actually supports.

The National Hurricane Center’s tropical cyclone report on Ian records the second landfall near Punta Gorda at 2035 UTC on 28 September 2022 at 125 knots, a research tower at Punta Gorda Airport measuring 78 knots sustained with a 96 knot gust, the airport’s own automated station at 76 knots sustained with a 117 knot gust, a minimum pressure of 951.2 millibars, and at least 200 homes destroyed in Charlotte County. We read the full report. It never mentions Babcock Ranch. That is a measured absence rather than a criticism of the report; the town simply was not a subject of it.

The engineering account comes from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which documents the site as sitting roughly 30 feet above sea level, with about 2.5 million cubic yards of earth moved to raise building pads three to six feet, the 320-acre Lake Babcock and its connected system designed to absorb surge and rainfall, two-foot sumps in every control structure, and power lines buried with concrete poles on the remaining overhead runs. Babcock Ranch did not flood and did not lose power.

What that means for these villas, stated carefully

None of the 154 homes in The Preserve existed during Hurricane Ian. 114 were completed in 2023 and 40 in 2024, all after the storm. So Ian validates the site, which is the grade, the pads, the lakes and the buried power, and the site is the same site. It does not validate these structures, because these structures were not there.

The structural argument is a different and better one: these houses were permitted in 2023 and 2024 under the eighth edition of the Florida Building Code, while the 200 Charlotte County homes destroyed in Ian were overwhelmingly stock from the 1970s through the 1990s. That is a genuine and substantial difference, and it is the honest version of the claim. Anyone telling you Babcock Ranch homes survived Ian is telling you about other houses.

The D.R. Horton Window Story, and Why It Does Not Attach to This Neighborhood

If you search the builder’s name and Babcock Ranch you will find local television coverage from March 2025 about homes delivered with non-impact glazing above entry doors, and a remediation that followed. A buyer looking at a D.R. Horton villa here will find that story and should know exactly what it covers.

It names Palmetto Landing only. The residents interviewed are Palmetto Landing residents. The builder’s remediation email on the public record is dated 21 February 2025. The scope stated publicly by the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners was “these 50 customers”. The builder’s Southwest Florida division president said the opening protection had been overlooked during the construction process. The Preserve closed out in May 2024, before that window opens, and neither The Preserve nor twin villas appear anywhere in the coverage.

We are flagging it rather than staying quiet about it for one specific reason: both neighborhoods sell a plan called the Carrington, so a buyer researching the plan name will land on the Palmetto Landing story and reasonably assume it applies. It does not, on any evidence available. What is true is that impact glazing was an option rather than a universal standard on this plan, so the correct answer for a specific villa is on that villa’s permit file at Charlotte County Building Construction Services, (941) 743-1201. Verify per address rather than by neighborhood, in either direction.

The Neighborhood Amenity Tract, and What the County Can Actually See There

The Preserve has its own private amenity area, separate from the town’s. It is Tract B50, Charlotte County account 422629106136, at 43760 Sparrow Drive, 0.9 acres, owned by the Preserve at Babcock Ranch Homeowners’ Association and carried at land use 0902, improved common area, assessed at zero so owners are not taxed twice on it. It is maintained by the sub-association out of the $3,751.20 a year.

The county’s improvement schedule for that tract itemises what it has assessed:

The county’s schedule does not itemise a swimming pool or a bocce court, though builder marketing described a lakefront campus with pool, cabana and bocce. We are publishing the county’s itemisation as the measured fact and flagging the rest as unconfirmed. A five-fixture cabana with a 3,599 square foot paver deck and dedicated parking is entirely consistent with a pool, and we will say that as an inference clearly labelled as one, but an inference is not a record and this program has published a builder’s claim as fact before and had to correct it. RealManage will confirm what is actually there and what it costs to run: (866) 364-1281. If the pool matters to your purchase, drive Sparrow Drive and look, or ask us to.

How Far Is Everything, Routed From The Preserve’s Own Centroid?

Distances on this page are routed from the computed union centroid of all 164 Preserve parcels, 26.795190 and minus 81.730572, which the routing engine snapped to Blue Heron Lane. The engine is OSRM on the driving profile, queried 15 September 2026, and the times are free-flow, so treat every one of them as a floor rather than a promise. We route from the neighborhood rather than from the town because on a site this large the two are materially different.

The honest one-line summary is that this is a Lee County commute address that pays Charlotte County taxes. The nearest interstate interchange, the nearest emergency room, the nearest major airport, the nearest beach and the nearest big-city downtown are all in Lee County. The county seat you pay taxes to is 46 minutes away and its nearest hospital emergency room is 56.

We also tested the northern alternative through State Road 31 and State Road 74, in case it beat the southern route to Punta Gorda. It does not: 32.5 miles and 54 minutes against 32.7 miles and 46 minutes going south and back up the interstate.

The interstate sentence this page does not repeat

A great deal of published material about Babcock Ranch says the nearest interstate access is at Tuckers Grade. Measured from this neighborhood’s own centroid, Tuckers Grade is 24.4 miles and about 34 minutes, while Exit 143 in Lee County is 13.1 miles and about 22 minutes. Tuckers Grade is nearly twice as far. This is the fourth Babcock Ranch neighborhood this program has routed and the fourth where a Lee County interchange came out closer. We name the engine, the date and the centroid so you can re-run it rather than take our word for it.

Healthcare inside the town

Babcock Ranch itself has urgent care and primary care but no emergency room, which is the distinction that matters at two in the morning. Note also that ShorePoint Health Punta Gorda is permanently closed and the former ShorePoint Port Charlotte now operates as AdventHealth, so older directions and older articles will send you to a hospital that is not there. An emergency department has been announced for Punta Gorda; its opening date is not published and AdventHealth Port Charlotte on (941) 766-4122 is the authority on it.

Schools, and the Enrolment Tier a Preserve Address Actually Sits In

There are two separate answers here and conflating them is the most common error in published material about Babcock Ranch. There is the charter school in the town, and there is the Charlotte County public school assignment, and they are 30 miles apart.

Babcock Neighborhood School, and the tier this address gets

The Babcock Neighborhood School is 2.3 road miles from The Preserve. Its own published enrolment policy states that it targets 50 percent of its student stations to students living within the boundaries of the Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District, and separately to students living within a four mile radius of the school property lines.

A Preserve address satisfies both prongs. The neighborhood is on the district’s own assessment schedule as Phase 3E, which is the proof of district membership, and it is 2.3 road miles from the campus, well inside four. That places a Preserve applicant in the top geographic tier, behind only the three statutory preferences for siblings, staff children and active-duty military families. It is still a lottery within the tier and it is not a guarantee of a place. Capacity and waitlist depth by grade for the current year are questions for the school and for Charlotte County Public Schools on 941-255-0808.

The Charlotte County public school assignment

We ran the district’s own boundary locator on all four Preserve streets and it returned the same result every time.

That is a real consideration and it is why the charter school tier above matters so much to families here. A household that does not get a place at the Babcock Neighborhood School is looking at a 45 minute school run each way into Punta Gorda, or at a private or a Lee County option.

Utilities, Providers and What They Actually Charge

Babcock Ranch runs its own water and wastewater system and buys electricity from the ordinary retail utility, which surprises a great many people who have read about the solar plant and assumed it changes the household bill. It does not. Here is who provides each service, what each one charges where a rate is published, and the number to call when something stops working.

Water, sewer and irrigation rates effective 1 February 2026: water base charge $34.40 on a three-quarter inch meter plus $6.81 per thousand gallons to 6,000 and $9.95 above; sewer base $40.25 plus $7.14 per thousand gallons capped at 10,000; irrigation base $11.06 plus $3.31 per thousand gallons. That is a fixed floor of about $85.71 a month before a single drop is used. Supply is groundwater treated by nanofiltration and ion exchange, and wastewater is reclaimed for irrigation. Waste collection is mandatory and carries an automatic 5 percent annual escalator.

On the solar plant, the honest answer is that residents are ordinary retail electricity customers. The Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center belongs to the utility, not to the town or to the residents, and there is no community-solar credit or surcharge on a Preserve bill. A resident put it plainly in a public forum recently: everyone here has an electric bill. The town’s solar generation is real and substantial and it is not a household discount.

The Four Streets, and Which Lots Are Not Like the Others

On a street of identical houses the only things that vary are the lot, the orientation and the position in the neighborhood, so those are worth more attention here than they would be anywhere else. The Preserve occupies four streets and the homesite count on each is set by the plat rather than by anyone’s estimate. The county roll stamped 10 September 2026 gives the following distribution across the 154 homesites.

Caracara Place is the only street in the neighborhood where no lot touches a flood zone at all, and it is also the smallest, at twelve homesites. That is the sort of distinction that does not appear in any listing and does appear in an insurance quote. Blue Heron Lane and Sparrow Drive between them hold 120 of the 154 homes and 43 of the 49 lots with an AE sliver, because those are the streets that back onto the lake and wetland edge.

The amenity tract sits on Sparrow Drive at number 43760, so the Sparrow Drive and Blue Heron Lane homes are closest to it. The builder’s model was at 43790 Sparrow Drive, which means the photography a buyer finds online of a Preserve villa is very often that specific house rather than the one being sold. On a neighborhood of identical plans that matters less than usual, but the landscaping and the upgrade level in a model are not the standard specification and should not be assumed.

Waterfront lots, and what the record shows they were worth

The highest builder sale we found in the entire neighborhood was $384,600 on 7 November 2023 at 43895 Blue Heron Lane, account 422629106149, and the county assigns that parcel a land value of $55,500. Since there is only one floor plan, the entire spread between that sale and the $311,000 at the bottom of the builder’s range is lot premium and timing, not house. That is an unusually clean measurement of what a water view was worth here at the top of the market, and it is worth carrying into any negotiation on a rear lot today.

The same lot that carries the water view carries the AE sliver and the lake bank slope maintenance obligation under Declaration Article XI section 9 at page 43. The view, the flood question and the slope are the same feature seen three ways, and a buyer should price all three rather than only the first.

The Build Wave, and Why Every Roof in the Neighborhood Ages Together

The county roll records the year every one of the 154 homes was completed, and the distribution is tighter than anything else this program has measured at Babcock Ranch. 114 homes were completed in 2023 and 40 in 2024. There are no homes from any other year, because the neighborhood was permitted, built and closed out inside roughly two years.

That produces a consequence most buyers do not think about at purchase and every owner thinks about later. Every roof, every air conditioner, every water heater and every appliance package in this neighborhood was installed within about a twenty-four month window. They will therefore reach the end of their service lives inside a similarly tight window, and the association’s obligation to replace roofs at end of useful life falls on 154 buildings at roughly the same time rather than spread across three decades.

That is not a defect and it is not unusual for a builder closeout, but it is a reason the reserve question in the maintenance section above is more pressing here than it would be in a neighborhood built out over fifteen years. An association that funds a roof reserve steadily from now has a manageable liability. One that does not is looking at a special assessment landing on 154 households in the same year. Ask RealManage for the reserve schedule and the most recent reserve study, if one exists, on (866) 364-1281. The answer is in the association’s annual financial report, which must state the reserve position in conspicuous type.

The warranty clock, and where the cohort sits on it

D.R. Horton’s limited warranty runs ten years on the structural tier and transfers automatically to a subsequent owner during that term, with no application and no fee, which is genuinely useful on a resale and is not true of every builder. The administrator is a third-party warranty company rather than the builder itself.

Two things void or limit it and both matter on a resale. Foreclosure voids the warranty, so a villa that changed hands through a foreclosure rather than a normal sale may carry nothing. And the usual exclusions for moisture, mould and owner negligence apply, which in Southwest Florida is not a small carve-out. Confirm the warranty status on the specific address with D.R. Horton’s Southwest Florida division on (239) 225-2600 before you treat it as a value.

Who Controls the Association Now, and What Your Vote Is Worth

The Preserve is governed by three layers and a buyer here is a member of two associations and a resident of one special district, each with its own assessment and its own rules. Confusing them is the most common source of bad information about this neighborhood, so here they are separated.

Turnover from the builder has already happened

The Declaration at Article IV, page 11, sets the turnover trigger as the earliest of three months after ninety percent of the lots have been conveyed to Class A members, thirty days after the declarant elects in writing to turn over, or the statutory trigger in section 720.307 of the Florida Statutes. The declarant may still appoint one director while it holds five percent of the lots for sale.

The recorded evidence puts turnover in or about the second quarter of 2024. The First Amendment recorded on 13 March 2024 still recites that the declarant is the Class B member and that the Class B membership exists. A quitclaim deed, instrument 3397637 recorded 25 April 2024, conveyed the common area tracts to the association, which is what a builder does on the way out. No turnover certificate appears in the public records, so the exact date is an inference from those two instruments rather than a recorded fact, and we label it as one. The board today is five residents and the association is professionally managed by RealManage.

The practical point for a buyer is that the builder no longer controls your assessments, your reserves or your architectural decisions. Your neighbours do. That is better than declarant control in most respects and it also means the roof reserve question above is now a decision your fellow owners are making on your behalf, which is a reason to read the minutes before you buy rather than after.

Your representation at the town level

The Charter Supplement recorded as instrument 3015900 on 29 October 2021 fixes The Preserve at a maximum of 154 units, assigns it to Delegate District 21 and places it in Service Area 10. The unit cap is worth noting: the neighborhood cannot be expanded, and the 154 figure in the county roll, in the district’s assessment schedule and in this recorded supplement are three independent records of the same number. That supplement imposes no use restrictions of its own, so the restrictions that bind you are the Declaration and the Charter, not it.

One practical note on finding that document. The Declaration cites the Charter Supplement with a blank book and page reference at page 8, and the instrument number appears only handwritten into the founder’s consent at page 70. It is also indexed under a tract designation rather than under the neighborhood name. A researcher who took the blank citation at face value would conclude the supplement was untraceable, which it is not. This program has a rule for exactly this: a defective citation is very often a book and page mislabelled or omitted rather than a missing document, and it should be tested before anything is called unavailable.

Attached Versus Detached at Babcock Ranch, as an Ownership Question

The Preserve is the cheapest way into Babcock Ranch by median price, and the reason is the product rather than the location, the finish or the neighborhood. It is worth setting out what you actually trade for the difference, because the trade is not the one most buyers assume and several parts of it run in the buyer’s favour.

The two entries that surprise people are the roof and the insurance, and they both run against the intuition that attached means maintained. You get the exterior paint and an eventual roof replacement, which is worth real money, and you keep the insurance obligation and the repair obligation on that same roof, which is worth more. Net, the maintenance benefit here is narrower than in a typical maintained-villa community, and the dues are not low.

What runs in the buyer’s favour is straightforward: a 1,516 square foot house on a small lot in a town with this level of infrastructure at a $284,500 median is genuinely inexpensive for what the town provides, and the ad valorem tax on a lower assessed value is lower in proportion. The district assessment is the same $1,797.70 whether you live here or in the most expensive house in Babcock Ranch, which is a fixed cost that weighs more heavily on a cheaper home. That single fact is why the non-ad-valorem share of the tax notice here is a third rather than a fifth.

How to Verify Every Number on This Page Without Taking Our Word for It

We would rather you checked. Everything on this page comes from records you can reach yourself, mostly free and mostly without an account, and a buyer who has checked two or three of these will negotiate better than one who has checked none. Here is how to reproduce the load-bearing figures.

The sales, the median and the resale table

Go to the Charlotte County Property Appraiser real property search and look up any Preserve account, for example 422629106096 or 422629106149. Each record card carries a sales history showing every recorded transfer with its date, price and instrument number. Every row in our resale table is two entries on one card. Pull five of them and you will have checked a quarter of the table. The full deed file and parcel roll we used are published as bulk downloads by the same office.

The covenants, the roof clause and the dues

Go to the Charlotte County Clerk’s instrument number search and enter 3031949 for the Declaration or 3380172 for the First Amendment that moved the roof. The images are served without a login. The roof clause is Article XI section 6 at page 3 of the five-page amendment; the mowing clause is Article XI section 2 at page 39 of the Declaration; the pets clause is Article IX section 4 at page 27. For the dues, enter 3618595 and read the quarterly figure on the face of the lien.

The flood position on a specific lot

The Property Appraiser’s record card carries a flood block for each parcel. For the authoritative map, the FEMA Map Service Center serves panel 12015C0500G and the Letter of Map Revision that governs it. Remember the distinction this page draws: the card and the map describe the lot, and the question a lender asks is about the building.

The district assessment and what it pays for

The district publishes its own adopted budget and assessment schedule. Find the line reading The Preserve and you will see the unit count, the operations component and the debt component separately. The same document contains the line items the operations assessment funds.

What the builder is charging today

This is the one that changes weekly and it is the one that matters most to a seller. D.R. Horton publishes its Palmetto Landing pricing and its successor Carrington floor plan on its own site. Check it before you list and check it again before you accept an offer, because the incentive package moves even when the base price does not.

How Does The Preserve Compare to the Rest of Babcock Ranch?

Every figure in this table is the same measure derived the same way on the same day, from qualified arm’s-length improved deeds recorded with Charlotte County in the twelve months to 31 August 2026, from the deed file dated 10 September 2026 and the parcel roll dated 10 September 2026. That consistency is the point: these are not numbers gathered from different sources at different times.

The Preserve is the cheapest entry point in Babcock Ranch on a median basis, and that is a product fact before it is a value judgement. It is the only neighborhood in the table that is entirely attached product at a single small size. Comparing $284,500 for a 1,516 square foot attached villa against $520,000 for a 2,245 square foot detached house at Waterview Landing tells you about square footage and attachment, not about which is the better buy.

The comparison that actually matters, and it is not in that table

The relevant comparison for a Preserve buyer or seller is not another Babcock Ranch neighborhood. It is D.R. Horton’s own current price sheet at Palmetto Landing, three road miles away, where the successor to this exact plan starts at $274,999 with 40 more square feet and a third bedroom. Palmetto Landing shows a $294,500 trailing-twelve median in the table above because that median includes its larger detached product; the twin villa line within it starts below The Preserve’s median. That is the number a seller here is competing with and it is the number we price against.

Against Sabal Glen, the other value end of town

Sabal Glen at Midtown is the only other Babcock Ranch neighborhood trading below the Charlotte County benchmark, and the two are unlike in almost every other respect. Sabal Glen is detached Lennar product, mid-delivery, with 201 of 220 homesites still to come and 227 of 230 parcels inside the Special Flood Hazard Area in Zone AE. The Preserve is finished, attached, and entirely in Zone X. A buyer choosing between them is choosing between flood exposure with new construction and a finished neighborhood with a resale market under builder pressure.

Buyer Edition: Questions About The Preserve, Answered From the Record

These are the questions people actually ask about this neighborhood, taken from public forums, search demand and our own calls, and answered from the recorded documents and the county record rather than from opinion. Where the honest answer is that nobody can source it, we say so and give you the number to call. Jesse McGreevy’s direct line is (239) 898-6072.

What exactly am I buying at The Preserve?

A fee-simple attached twin villa on its own lot: one of 154 identical D.R. Horton Carrington plans, 1,503 square feet under air, two bedrooms plus a den, two baths, a two-car garage and one shared wall. You own the land and the building. It is not a condominium, and homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes cap both apply.

Is a twin villa a condominium?

No. The county codes these land use 0102, fee-simple cluster, and the association is a Chapter 720 homeowners association rather than a Chapter 718 condominium association. That distinction decides your insurance, your reserve rights and whether milestone inspection rules apply. None of the condominium structural-reserve regime applies here.

What insurance do I need, and can I use an HO-6?

You need a full HO-3 on the entire structure including the roof, with the association named as an additional insured. An HO-6 walls-in policy is the wrong product here because there is no master structure policy over the building. This is the single most expensive mistake available to a buyer of this product and it is set out in the insurance section above.

Who pays for the roof?

The association replaces it at the end of its useful life and paints the exterior. You maintain it, repair it and insure it, and if a storm, hail or any other insured event takes it, it is your claim and your roof. Whether the association is funding a reserve for its replacement obligation is not public: ask RealManage on (866) 364-1281.

Is lawn care included?

Not as a right. The Declaration says the association may, in its sole discretion cut the grass on each lot, and mandatory maintenance covers the common areas only. Ask RealManage what is in the current budget before you assume it.

What are the HOA dues and what do they include?

$937.80 a quarter, $3,751.20 a year to the sub-association, taken from a claim of lien recorded 28 February 2026, plus the master association assessment and the $1,797.70 district assessment on your tax bill. What the $937.80 includes is not published and we will not guess it.

What is the real all-in annual cost?

About $10,140 without homestead and $9,538 with it at the $284,500 median, covering ad valorem tax, the district assessment, solid waste and sub-association dues, before insurance and utilities. Roughly a third of the tax notice is non-ad-valorem and does not fall when values fall.

Do I need flood insurance?

Every one of the 164 parcels is dominantly in Zone X, outside the Special Flood Hazard Area, so there is generally no federal mandatory purchase requirement. But 49 residential lots carry an AE sliver at the rear line, and the requirement attaches to the building rather than the lot. On a rear lot on Sparrow Drive, Blue Heron Lane or Hawk Court, confirm the building footprint with Charlotte County Floodplain Management on (941) 743-1201 before you budget.

Can I rent it out?

Yes, with a two-month minimum, a maximum of four leases in a calendar year, the lease filed before execution, a $150 review fee and a $500 fine for not filing. Short-term and transient listing is prohibited outright by the Charter.

How many pets can I have?

Three in total, dogs or cats, with no weight or breed limit but with mandatory pet liability insurance naming the association. The town’s own rule is more generous and the neighborhood’s stricter rule governs.

Can I keep a golf cart?

Yes, but it cannot sit in the driveway overnight; it must be inside an enclosed garage. With one two-car garage, a household with two cars and a cart has a genuine storage problem.

Will my child get into the Babcock Neighborhood School?

A Preserve address is in the top geographic tier, satisfying both the district-boundary prong and the four-mile prong of the school’s own policy, behind only sibling, staff and active-duty military preferences. It is still a lottery. If you do not get a place, the assigned Charlotte County schools are 31 to 34 miles and about 45 minutes away.

Does the D.R. Horton window problem affect my villa?

On the available evidence, no. That coverage names Palmetto Landing residents only, the remediation window opens in February 2025, and The Preserve closed out in May 2024. But impact glazing was an option on this plan, so confirm your specific address with Charlotte County Building Construction Services on (941) 743-1201.

Does the builder warranty transfer to me?

D.R. Horton’s ten-year limited warranty transfers automatically to a subsequent owner during the ten-year term, with no application and no fee. A 2023 home has roughly seven years left on the structural tier. Foreclosure voids it, and the usual moisture, mould and owner-negligence exclusions apply.

Is The Preserve a good buy?

For a buyer, the resale record that has hurt sellers is the thing working in your favour, and the pressure behind it has a published end date. For an investor wanting flexibility, the four-lease cap and the transient listing ban are real constraints. For somebody who needs three bedrooms, the successor plan three miles away has one and this does not. We are not going to give you a one-word answer to a question that depends entirely on which of those you are.

★★★★★ “Marc’s knowledge of the Southwest Florida real estate market is unmatched. He took the time to understand exactly what I was looking for in a home and quickly identified properties that checked all my boxes.” Christopher Dietz, verified Google review

What We Could Not Source, and Exactly Who to Call

This program publishes gaps rather than filling them with plausible guesses, because a confident wrong answer is worse than an honest hole. Here is every question this build could not close, with the authority that can. If you are working with us on a purchase here, we make these calls for you.

Publishing a gap with a phone number beside it is a deliberate choice and it is the standard we hold ourselves to on every page. Being Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 does not mean we know everything about a street; it means we tell you which parts we measured and which parts we did not.

Seller Edition: Every Question an Owner Asks Before Listing in The Preserve

If you own here and are thinking about selling, the record on this page is uncomfortable reading and we would rather you had it than not. Every answer below comes from the recorded deeds, the recorded covenants or the builder’s own published pricing, and where the honest answer is that it depends on your specific parcel we say so rather than averaging you into a number that is not yours. Call Jesse McGreevy direct on (239) 898-6072 and we will run your account.

Will I lose money if I sell now?

Twenty-one of the twenty-two owners who have sold here did, at a median outcome of minus $57,750 on a median hold of 26.6 months. Whether you will depends entirely on what you paid, and the original purchases in this neighborhood ran from $311,000 to $385,000. We tracked every one of those 22 outcomes from the recorded deeds before writing this.

How do I find out what I actually paid, and what my neighbours paid?

Every purchase price in this neighborhood is public. The Charlotte County Property Appraiser’s record card for your account carries the full sales history, and so does every one of your neighbours’. We pull all of them before we price a listing here.

Why is it so hard to sell here?

Because D.R. Horton is selling a newer, larger, three-bedroom version of your exact house three road miles away from $274,999, with financing incentives you cannot match, and because all 153 of your neighbours own the identical house, so price is the only lever anyone has.

Should I wait?

It is a real question here rather than a rhetorical one, because the pressure is finite. Palmetto Landing has roughly 200 homes left and its expected sellout is late 2027 or early 2028. We will not predict prices, but we will cost out the carry so you can compare waiting against selling with real numbers on both sides.

What does waiting actually cost me a year?

At the trailing-twelve median, roughly $10,140 without homestead in tax, district assessment, solid waste and dues, plus insurance, utilities and any mortgage interest. That is the number to weigh against whatever you think the market does in the interval.

How should I price?

Against the builder’s live sheet and the last four closings, not against the twelve-month median. The median here is $284,500 and the four most recent closings run $260,000 to $292,500. Pricing to a twelve-month median in a market that has drifted through the year is the most expensive mistake made on this street.

What have the most recent villas actually closed for?

The four most recent recorded closings are $272,500 on 9 June 2026, $280,000 on 16 July, $292,500 on 31 July, $260,000 on 19 August and $280,000 on 28 August. That is the comparable set an appraiser will use, not the October 2025 closings near $315,000.

What does selling cost me beyond commission?

The master association’s Community Enhancement Fee of up to 0.25 percent of gross sale price is charged to the seller, about $711.25 at the median, plus estoppel certificates from both associations and the usual documentary stamps and title charges.

How long does an estoppel take and who orders it?

Two are needed here, one from the Preserve association through RealManage on (866) 364-1281 and one from the master association. Order both early; a two-association closing is slower than a one-association closing and this is a two-association neighborhood.

What does my buyer pay at closing that affects my price?

A $750 capital contribution to the Preserve association, 50 percent of the annual master Base Assessment as working capital to the master association, and a Board-set administrative transfer fee. None of it comes to you, and all of it reduces what your buyer has available.

Who is realistically going to buy my villa?

Somebody who does not need a third bedroom, who wants Babcock Ranch at the lowest entry point available, and who has compared you against Palmetto Landing and decided the trees, the street or the specific lot are worth the difference. That is a real buyer and there are fourteen of them a year.

Does the two-bedroom count hurt me?

Yes, measurably, because a great many buyers filter on three bedrooms and never see a two-bedroom listing. The successor plan at Palmetto Landing converts the den to a third bedroom with a walk-in closet, which is the builder conceding the same point.

Should I convert the den to a bedroom before listing?

Adding a closet is an exterior-neutral change in most cases, but any alteration touching the exterior needs board approval and silence is a refusal under the amended 45-day rule. Ask before you build, and ask us whether the cost returns on this street before you spend it.

Does staging or upgrading move the number here?

Less than it would elsewhere, because your competition is a brand new house with a builder’s finish package and a warranty. Condition keeps you in the running; it rarely wins a premium against new construction at a lower price.

How long will it take?

Fourteen closings in twelve months across 154 homes is a thin market by any standard, and that alone tells you a listing here is not a two-week proposition unless it is priced to be. We represented sellers in markets like this one before Babcock Ranch existed and the answer is always the same: the price sets the timeline.

Should I rent it out instead of selling?

You can, at a two-month minimum and a maximum of four leases a calendar year, with the lease filed before execution, a $150 review fee and your own common area privileges suspended while it is let. Short-term listing is barred outright by the Charter, so the platform strategy most owners have in mind is not available.

What happens to my homestead if I sell and buy again?

Florida portability lets you carry accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to a new Florida homestead within the statutory window. The Charlotte County Property Appraiser’s exemptions office handles it on (941) 743-1593 and it is worth calculating before you decide, because it can be worth more than a price concession.

Can I pay off the district debt to make my villa more attractive?

Possibly. The debt component is $1,148.82 a year and prepayment rules and the payoff balance are set by the district. Wrathell, Hunt and Associates on 877-276-0889 will tell you the balance on your lot. A prepaid lot and a non-prepaid lot are genuinely different products at the same list price.

Do I have to disclose the roof and insurance position?

Florida requires disclosure of known material defects. The maintenance split is not a defect, it is in the recorded documents, and it is exactly the thing a buyer misunderstands. Our view is that putting it in front of a buyer early prevents a renegotiation later.

Do I have to disclose the flood sliver on a rear lot?

Flood zone is a matter of public record rather than a hidden defect, but a buyer on Sparrow Drive or Blue Heron Lane will find it during due diligence. Better that they find it in your listing package with the county’s own answer attached.

Will the dues increase hurt my sale?

Buyers notice a trajectory more than a level. Yours went from $782.66 to $937.80 a quarter in about two years. Have the current budget and, if it exists, the reserve study ready, because the question will be asked.

What if a buyer asks whether the roof is reserved for?

Get the answer from RealManage on (866) 364-1281 before you list rather than during an inspection period. The association’s annual financial report states the reserve position in conspicuous type, and a buyer’s attorney will find it.

Is a special assessment likely?

Not something we will speculate about. What we will say is that 154 roofs installed inside a two-year window will need replacing inside a similar window, and that the funding position is a question with a documented answer you can obtain today.

Does my builder warranty help me sell?

Yes, and it is worth putting in the listing. D.R. Horton’s ten-year limited warranty transfers automatically to your buyer, with no application and no fee. A 2023 villa still carries roughly seven years of the structural tier.

Are buyers here paying cash or financing?

Both, and the mix matters to you because a financed buyer is exposed to the builder’s rate incentive down the road and a cash buyer is not. A cash buyer is often your better offer even at a slightly lower number.

Will it appraise?

On a street of 154 identical houses an appraiser has the cleanest comparable set in Charlotte County and very little room to stretch. That cuts both ways: it is difficult to appraise above the recent closings and difficult for a buyer to argue below them.

What should I ask an agent before I list here?

Three things: what D.R. Horton is asking at Palmetto Landing this week, what the last four Preserve closings were, and what my own recorded purchase price was. An agent who cannot answer all three from memory has not done the work this street requires.

What will you do differently?

Price against the builder rather than the median, put the covenant and insurance position in the buyer’s hands on day one so it cannot become a renegotiation, and tell you honestly if the answer is to wait. Our team has closed transactions across Babcock Ranch through this exact market and we will not list a villa at a number we do not believe.

Is there a better time of year to list in The Preserve?

Season matters in Southwest Florida and the closings above bunch in the October to March window and again in June. But seasonality is a second-order effect here next to the builder’s price sheet, which does not have a season. Do not wait for January if the builder is running an incentive in November.

Ready to sell, or want the number before you decide?

We will pull your parcel, your recorded purchase price, the last four closings and the builder’s current sheet, and give you a range and a timeline rather than a flattering number. Start with a home valuation for your Preserve villa, or call Jesse McGreevy direct at (239) 898-6072. If you would rather talk it through first, contact us here.

★★★★★ “We have purchased many properties over the years and Jesse is without a doubt the most knowledgeable, personable and efficient real estate broker we have ever worked with!” Jennifer Schnabel Wood, verified Google review

About McGreevy and Comisar, and How to Reach Us

McGreevy and Comisar are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, a Southwest Florida real estate team brokered by Domain Realty with more than $900 million in Sales. We work the recorded record rather than the listing sheet, which is why this page quotes instrument numbers and page references you can pull yourself. We have represented buyers and sellers across Babcock Ranch through the whole of its build-out, and we tracked every one of the 176 qualified closings in The Preserve’s history to write this page.

Marc Comisar is licensed as a Florida real estate broker, FREC license # BK3060671, and Jesse McGreevy as a Florida real estate sales associate, FREC license # SL3101296, both with Domain Realty Group. Licenses can be verified with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

Your Local Real Estate Experts for The Preserve at Babcock Ranch

We built this page the way we work a transaction: by reading the recorded documents rather than the marketing, counting the deeds one at a time rather than quoting a portal, and telling you plainly which questions we could not answer. McGreevy and Comisar are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, brokered by Domain Realty, with more than $900 million in Sales across Southwest Florida. On this street specifically, the work that matters is knowing what D.R. Horton is charging at Palmetto Landing this week, what the First Amendment did to the roof clause, and what every one of your neighbours actually paid. Call Jesse McGreevy direct at (239) 898-6072.

Thinking of buying in The Preserve

We will pull the seller’s recorded purchase price, check the flood position on that specific lot rather than the neighborhood, confirm the opening protection with the county on that address, and price your offer against the builder’s live sheet rather than against the last closing. Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 is a track record, not a pitch, and on a street of identical houses it mostly means knowing which of the identical houses is the one to buy.

Thinking of selling in The Preserve

We will tell you honestly what the record says about selling here, cost out waiting against selling now, and price against the four most recent closings and the builder’s sheet rather than against a twelve-month median that is already behind the market. Reach Jesse McGreevy on (239) 898-6072.

Sources

Every number on this page traces to one of the following. County figures are from the Charlotte County recorded deed file dated 10 September 2026 and the parcel roll dated 10 September 2026, restricted to tax district 206 and to qualified arm’s-length improved deeds on residential land uses. Recorded instruments are cited by instrument number so you can pull the image yourself without an account.

Charlotte County records

• Charlotte County Property Appraiser, parcel cards, land use codes, improvement schedules and sales history

• Charlotte County Property Appraiser real property search

• Charlotte County Property Appraiser data downloads, the parcel roll and recorded deed files used throughout

• Charlotte County Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller, official records search

• Charlotte County Clerk, recording department

• Charlotte County Clerk directory

• Charlotte County Tax Collector, property tax

• Charlotte County government

• Charlotte County Building Construction Services

• Charlotte County Public Schools

Recorded instruments read for this page

• Instrument 3031949, Official Records Book 4890 Page 480, recorded 8 December 2021, 135 pages, the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions for The Preserve, indexed as RESTRICTIONS

• Instrument 3380172, recorded 13 March 2024, 5 pages, First Amendment to the Declaration, indexed as DECLARATION OF CONDOMINIUM although no condominium exists

• Instrument 3015900, Official Records 4867/103, recorded 29 October 2021, the Charter Supplement, indexed under a tract designation rather than the neighborhood name, fixing 154 units, Delegate District 21 and Service Area 10

• Instrument 3400441, recorded 1 May 2024, claim of lien stating quarterly assessments of $782.66 and $874.06

• Instrument 3618595, recorded 28 February 2026, claim of lien stating a quarterly assessment of $937.80

• Instrument 3397637, recorded 25 April 2024, quitclaim deed conveying common area tracts to the association

• Instrument 3348888 and instrument 3475099, recorded 11 December 2024, amendments to the Charter setting the working capital contribution

• The Babcock Ranch Charter, Official Records 4966/1197 and following, sections 1.2, 1.3, 6.3, 6.4, 7.1, 12.5, 12.10 and 12.12

The special district and its budget

• Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District

• Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District governing documents

• District master assessment fee schedule, the source of the $1,797.70 per-unit figure and the Twin Villa line item

• District adopted budget

• District closing information for buyers and sellers

• Wrathell, Hunt and Associates, district manager

The builder and the product

• Babcock Ranch, D.R. Horton builder page

• Babcock Ranch neighborhoods

• Babcock Ranch builders

• D.R. Horton at Babcock Ranch

• D.R. Horton, Palmetto Landing at Babcock Ranch, the competing price sheet

• D.R. Horton plan 1564, the successor Carrington with a third bedroom

• D.R. Horton warranty, including automatic transfer to a subsequent owner

• D.R. Horton documents and guides

• Archived D.R. Horton Preserve page, December 2022, base price $329,990

• Archived D.R. Horton Preserve page, March 2023, base price $350,990

• Archived D.R. Horton Preserve page, May 2024, closeout at $334,990 with zero homes available

• Archived D.R. Horton plan 1503, the Carrington

• Florida Division of Corporations entity search, Preserve at Babcock Ranch Homeowners’ Association, Inc., N21000011696

• Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations

• Babcock Ranch Telegraph, builder spotlight

• Babcock Ranch Telegraph, Palmetto Landing sales underway

Flood, mapping and storm

• FEMA Map Service Center, FIRM panel 12015C0500G effective 15 December 2022

• FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer, the polygons intersected against all 164 parcels

• FEMA Letter of Map Revision search, case 24-04-2314P effective 4 November 2025

• Florida Department of Revenue statewide parcel cadastral, the parcel geometry used for the flood intersection

• National Hurricane Center tropical cyclone report on Hurricane Ian

• National Hurricane Center tropical cyclone reports

• American Society of Civil Engineers, Civil Engineering source, the Babcock Ranch site engineering account

• Charlotte County Emergency Management

• Open Source Routing Machine project, the engine used for every distance on this page

Insurance, statutes and consumer authorities

• Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, CHOICES homeowners rate comparison, the source of the Charlotte County premium range

• Florida Office of Insurance Regulation

• Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Consumer Services

• Citizens Property Insurance Corporation

• Florida Statutes section 720.303, homeowners association powers, budgets and reserves

• Florida Statutes section 720.307, transition of association control

• Florida Statutes Chapter 720, homeowners associations

• Florida Statutes Chapter 718, condominiums, which does not apply here

• Florida Statutes section 201.02, documentary stamp tax on deeds

• Florida Building Commission and the Florida Building Code

Utilities, schools, amenities and the town

• Florida Power and Light

• FPL Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center

• TECO Peoples Gas

• Quantum Fiber

• RealManage, association manager

• RealManage Florida

• Babcock Ranch, the master developer’s site

• Babcock Ranch amenities

• Babcock Neighborhood School

• Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Babcock Ranch Preserve, the state conservation land that shares the name

• Lee Health, operator of the nearest emergency room

• AdventHealth Port Charlotte

• HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital, the nearest Charlotte County emergency room

• South Florida Water Management District

• West Coast Inland Navigation District

• WINK News on the D.R. Horton opening protection remediation at Palmetto Landing

• WINK News, the earlier report on the same matter

• The Babcock Ranch community subreddit, where residents answer questions about living here

• McGreevy and Comisar on Google, the verified review profile the quotes on this page come from

Downloadable Documents

These are the primary documents behind this page. Every recorded instrument below is served free and without an account by the Charlotte County Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller at recording.charlotteclerk.com; search by the instrument number given. If you want a specific page pulled and read for you before you write an offer, call Jesse McGreevy on (239) 898-6072 and we will do it.

• Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions for The Preserve at Babcock Ranch, instrument 3031949, recorded 8 December 2021, 135 pages. Search the Clerk by instrument number

• First Amendment to the Declaration, instrument 3380172, recorded 13 March 2024, 5 pages. This is the document that decides the roof and it is indexed under the wrong type. Search the Clerk by instrument number

• Charter Supplement, instrument 3015900, Official Records 4867/103, recorded 29 October 2021. Search the Clerk by instrument number

• Claims of lien stating the quarterly assessment, instruments 3400441 and 3618595. Search the Clerk by instrument number

• Articles of Incorporation, Preserve at Babcock Ranch Homeowners’ Association, Inc., document N21000011696, filed 4 October 2021. Florida Division of Corporations

• Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District adopted budget and assessment schedule. District assessment fee schedule and adopted budget

• District governing documents. Babcock Ranch Community Independent Special District

• FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map panel 12015C0500G, effective 15 December 2022, and Letter of Map Revision 24-04-2314P, effective 4 November 2025. FEMA Map Service Center

• National Hurricane Center tropical cyclone report on Hurricane Ian. Download the report

• D.R. Horton limited warranty book, including the automatic transfer provision. D.R. Horton warranty

• Florida Office of Insurance Regulation homeowners rate comparison for Charlotte County. FLOIR CHOICES

• Charlotte County certified millage by tax district. Charlotte County Property Appraiser

McGreevy and Comisar are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008. If you are buying or selling in The Preserve at Babcock Ranch and you want the recorded documents read rather than summarised, call Jesse McGreevy direct at (239) 898-6072.

Market data from Southwest Florida MLS, pulled September 2026, together with the Charlotte County recorded deed file and parcel roll both dated 10 September 2026 and the recorded instruments cited above. Figures are as of the source file dates named on this page and later recordings will move them. Nothing here is legal, tax or insurance advice. Brokered by Domain Realty.