St. Augustine & St. Johns County, FL

Two Homes in the Same Community Can Carry a $1,534 Tax Gap

Parkland Preserve's Community Development District assessment isn't one number — it ranges from $2,390 to $3,924 a year depending on which phase and lot you buy, a $1,534 spread inside a single, 367-home D.R. Horton community. That's not a builder-to-builder comparison question. It's a phase-to-phase question the builder's own marketing doesn't spell out.

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$2,390/yr
$3,924/yr

Parkland Preserve's CDD range — same community, different phase and lot

CDDs fund the roads, drainage, and amenities for a specific phase of construction, and different phases often carry different bond amounts depending on when they were built and what infrastructure they financed. A buyer who tours a model home in one phase and assumes the CDD figure quoted there applies to a resale listing or a different phase entirely can be off by well over a thousand dollars a year — and neither number is wrong, they're just describing different parts of the same community.

Why "ask the builder" isn't always enough

The builder's sales team typically quotes the CDD for the phase currently selling — not necessarily the phase your specific lot sits in, and not the figure that applies to a resale home in an earlier phase. Request the CDD assessment for the exact parcel number you're considering, in writing, from the St. Johns County property appraiser's site directly — not a verbal range from a sales office that may be describing a different section of the same development.

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CommunityCDD/yrHOA/moCombined annual
Parkland Preserve$2,390-$3,924 (varies by phase/lot)$77$3,314-$4,848
Reverie at Silverleaf$0 — no CDD$198-$218$2,376-$2,616
WaterSong at RiverTownPresent, verify amount~$5 (CDD carries cost)Verify with county

Reverie at Silverleaf is the outlier worth noting for the opposite reason — it's the only major new-construction 55+ community in this market with no CDD at all, which simplifies its cost picture considerably, though it also sits inside the larger Silverleaf master-plan, meaning your immediate 55+ gates open onto a multi-generational neighborhood, not a Parkland Preserve or WaterSong style of fully enclosed community.

A separate, well-known Florida trap worth a brief reminderSt. Johns County's 2025 millage rate is 13.47 mills — on a $425,000 home, that's roughly $5,051 in year-one property tax after the standard homestead exemption, not whatever number the seller's current tax bill shows. Florida's Save Our Homes cap protects existing owners from rising assessments, and it resets to full market value the moment a home changes hands. Budget the year-one number, not the listing's advertised tax line.

The honest way to shop this market: for any CDD community, get the specific per-parcel assessment for your exact lot in writing before comparing its cost against another phase, another community, or the builder's advertised range.

See the Full CDD Breakdown by Community & Phase
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