Pull up two current listing pages for homes in Alaqua Lakes and you'll find two different answers to the same question. One quotes the community's HOA fee at $1,020 to $1,050. Another, describing the same guard-gated Longwood neighborhood, puts the range at $1,020 to $4,160. That's not a rounding difference. At the high end, it's a gap of more than $3,000 a month between two numbers both labeled "HOA fee" for the same 515-home community off Markham Woods Road.
Buyers comparing Alaqua Lakes against other Longwood or Lake Mary communities usually take the lower number, plug it into a monthly budget, and move on. That's a mistake, and the reason why has less to do with sloppy data entry than with the actual business history of the golf course sitting inside the gates.
Two Clubs, One Name, and the Mix-Up That Costs Buyers Time
Longwood has two golf clubs with "Alaqua" in the name, and they are not the same thing. Alaqua Country Club, at 2091 Alaqua Dr, is a separate, invitation-only club designed by Gary Player, with its own membership structure and no connection to the Alaqua Lakes homeowners association. The club that actually serves the Alaqua Lakes neighborhood is the Legacy Club at Alaqua Lakes, a Tom Fazio-designed course a short drive away on Alaqua Lakes Boulevard.
This sounds like trivia until you're the buyer trying to figure out what your HOA fee actually includes. If you call the wrong Alaqua club, or read a review meant for the other one, you'll walk away with a completely wrong picture of dues, access, and whether membership is even relevant to the home you're considering. The Legacy Club is the one tied to your address. Everything below is about that club.
The Merger the Listing Won't Mention
Here's the part that explains the wide fee range. For years, the Legacy Club competed directly with Heathrow Country Club, another private club just a couple of miles away, for the same limited pool of golfers in a fairly small stretch of Seminole County. Both clubs fought hard for membership and both started to struggle under the weight of that competition. Concert Golf Partners, a club turnaround operator with more than 30 properties across 16 states, eventually bought both. Today, a membership at one grants access to the other, along with the rest of the Concert Golf network.
That consolidation matters to your monthly budget because it changed how club costs get bundled into what real estate listings label as an "HOA fee." Some listings for Alaqua Lakes homes fold a mandatory club assessment into that number. Others quote only the base community due and leave club membership as a separate line the buyer has to ask about. Neither approach is wrong, but they produce very different headline figures for what looks like the same community, which is exactly the gap you're seeing between $1,050 and $4,160.
What the Base HOA Fee Actually Covers
Strip out club dues entirely and here's what the community's core HOA fee is documented to pay for:
| Included in base HOA fee |
|---|
| Grounds maintenance for common areas |
| Community road upkeep |
| Community pool |
| 24-hour guard gate and security |
| Real estate taxes on common areas |
| Property insurance |
| Trash removal |
| Pest control |
| Cable TV |
| Recreation facilities |
None of that is golf. The 18-hole course, the clubhouse dining room, and the tennis and pickleball courts sit under the Legacy Club's own membership structure, which is priced and billed separately from the HOA. Whether that club cost is mandatory for your specific lot, optional, or already baked into a higher quoted HOA figure is a question only the seller's disclosure documents and the club's membership office can answer for a given address. It is not something you can infer from the listing price alone.
What the Slower Pace Tells You
The fee question isn't the only place where the numbers on Alaqua Lakes have shifted. Two recent snapshots of sales activity in the community show a market that's cooling, modestly but measurably.
| Metric | Year ending Dec. 2025 | Year ending June 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Homes sold | 42 | 33 |
| Average days on market | 71 | 82 |
| Price per square foot | $244 | $246 |
| Average asking price | $1,707,995 | $1,589,482 |
| Average selling price | $1,610,667 | $1,510,061 |
Fewer homes changed hands, and the ones that did took eleven days longer to sell on average. Price per square foot barely moved, which tells you this isn't a story about the community losing value. It's a story about pace. Homes are sitting a bit longer before finding a buyer, and average asking and selling prices both came down year over year even as the per-square-foot number held steady, which suggests the mix of homes selling shifted somewhat rather than the market broadly repricing.
For a buyer, a slower pace is leverage. Eighty-two days is enough time to request the club membership documents, get a firm answer on whether dues are mandatory for your specific lot, and factor the real number into your offer before you're competing against multiple bids on a tight clock.
What to Ask Before You Write an Offer
Given the fee discrepancy and the club history behind it, a buyer looking seriously at Alaqua Lakes should get specific answers to a short list of questions before making an offer, not after:
- Is club membership at the Legacy Club mandatory for this specific address, or optional?
- If mandatory, what is the current monthly or annual club due, separate from the HOA fee?
- Does the quoted HOA fee on this listing include any portion of club dues, or is it base community costs only?
- Has this property's HOA fee changed with any recent special assessment, and are there any planned?
- What does the estoppel letter from the HOA say about outstanding fees or assessments tied to this specific lot?
The seller's HOA estoppel certificate, which Florida law requires for a home sale, will spell out exactly what's owed and what's included for that specific address. It's worth requesting early rather than assuming the advertised range applies to the home you're actually buying.
A Few Questions Buyers Usually Ask
Is Alaqua Country Club the same as the Alaqua Lakes community club? No. Alaqua Country Club is a separate, invitation-only club on Alaqua Drive with no formal connection to the Alaqua Lakes HOA. The Legacy Club at Alaqua Lakes is the course and clubhouse actually tied to the neighborhood.
Why do different listings quote such different HOA numbers for the same community? Because some quotes include a portion of club dues and others reflect base community costs only. The range you see reflects that inconsistency, not a data error.
Does a longer average days-on-market mean prices are falling? Not necessarily. Price per square foot in Alaqua Lakes held roughly steady between the two most recent yearly snapshots even as days on market lengthened, which points to a slower sales pace rather than a broad decline in value.
If you're weighing Alaqua Lakes against another guard-gated Longwood or Lake Mary community and want the actual club-fee picture for a specific address before you make an offer, Florida's Elite Team can pull the estoppel details and membership terms so you know the real monthly number, not just the range on the listing. Find Your Florida Dream Home.
