The National Golf and Country Club at Ave Maria

The National G&CC at Ave Maria is a Lennar (the Builder) bundled golf development. Lennar has been building bundle golf communities in southwest Florida since the 1980s.

With bundled golf, club membership is included with the home, there is no club initiation fee. At the National, club membership is "bundled" with the home, and can never be unbundled. When an owner sells their home, the club membership goes to the new owner.

In a bundled golf community, there are typically 800 memberships (homes) for an 18 hole golf course. The National plans on building 1,285 homes, with 800 homes having golf and the other homes have the country club membership only (no golf). 

With 800 memberships, which often has two members for each membership, tee times in the busy winter months are allocated. The system will give priority to those members that haven't played as much as others. If an owner expects to play 4 to 5 times a week in these busy months, they will be disappointed. 

Bundled golf communities have great fee savings for their members. Instead of sharing golf course operating costs with 300 members, as the case in most private golf clubs, the same cost is being shared by 800 members instead. 

The National is designed to appeal to second home owners. That is why 70% of the homes are condos vs. single family. The National condo buildings are called Terraces, Verandas and Coach Homes. As discussed above, some buildings will include golf club memberships, while other building include the club membership, but not golf.

The builder Lennar has been building these same condo buildings in the Southwest Florida area for over 25 years. Overtime they have been enhanced and slightly modified, but the base product has remained very similar over the years.

For example, the Terrace building Birkdale floor plan used to be called the Brookside. The Brookside floor plan was first introduced at Naples Heritage and gradually evolved over many years. When the kitchen was redesigned and reposition in a different area of the great room, the Brookside was renamed the Birkdale.

This redesigned was a major upgrade as it more than doubled the amount of kitchen cabinet and storage space. Back in 2003 the great room was carpeted, not tile, the countertops were Formica, carports were made of steel and the appliances were not stainless steel. A big difference from what comes standard at the National today.

The Veranda and Terrace building designs were those of US Homes, a builder Lennar acquired in the early 2000s. The Coach Homes had been an original Lennar designed building.

All homeowners at The National Golf and Country Club at Ave Maria are members of that organization, and all pay the same fee. The National G&CC is a Homeowners Association (HOA), that all owners are part of. In addition to belonging to the HOA, eight hundred homes are also members of the National Golf Club, with a separate golf club fee. The National Golf Club is a recreation association. No different than the tens of thousands of golf clubs in the US. 

The single-family homes do not have a separate homeowners association. Instead, the Master HOA also acts as the single-family home HOA. It takes care of the single family homes' landscaping, for a separate fee, and enforces the rules and regulation related to the single-family home neighborhoods. 

There are many different condo associations at the National, such as Veranda I, Veranda II, etc. Each of these associations have separate governing Boards and separate budgets, which determines the condo fee they pay each year.

All owners are also members of the Ave Maria Town Assoc., and all pay the same fee. The fee is mostly for the Town's parks, fitness center and scheduled activities. In 2023 the quarterly collected fee was $209 per home.

Lastly there is a Community Development District (CDD) that funded the building of infrastructure for the Town and the National G&CC. It is called the Ave Maria Stewardship Community District, and assesses each home a fee on the home's property tax bill. The fee will vary by type and size of the home.

For example, a Coach Home I owner who is also a member of the golf club, will pay the Coach Home I condo fee, the National G&CC HOA fee, the Golf Club Fee, the Ave Maria Town fee, and a CDD fee levied on the annual property tax bill.