Two homes sit two miles apart in Weston. Same price range, same school zone, same general age of construction. One carries a monthly association fee around $160. The other runs closer to $450. Most buyers walk into that comparison assuming the cheaper fee is the better deal and the pricier one is padding somebody's country club dues. Almost every time, that assumption is backwards, and figuring out why matters more than the number itself.
Weston is one of the few cities in Broward County where nearly every address sits inside a gated, privately governed community. The fee on the listing sheet is not optional, and it is not a rough estimate of luxury. It is a line item that reflects amenity scope, community age, and how the specific association funds its future repairs. None of those things move in a straight line with price, which is exactly why comparing two Weston fees side by side, or comparing a Weston fee to a no-HOA home in Davie or Plantation, requires more than subtraction.
What a Low Fee Is Actually Buying
Savanna is the largest gated development in Weston, with more than 2,800 homes built around a network of lakes on the city's northwest side. Recent listings and community guides put its monthly HOA fee in the range of $150 to $220, depending on section and home size. For that fee, residents get 24/7 guard-gated entry off Saddle Club Road, eight passive parks, 88 cul-de-sacs of maintained roadway, and a clubhouse complex with four pools, including a water slide, a nine-hole mini golf course, a roller hockey rink, and basketball and pickleball courts.
Compare that to what a family would pay outside an HOA to assemble the same package on their own: a private pool club membership, a gym membership, and some kind of paid security patrol easily run $150 to $300 a month before any of it includes a water slide or mini golf. Savanna's fee is low relative to other Weston communities not because it delivers less, but because a large membership base is splitting a large, well-used amenity footprint across nearly 3,000 households.
Savanna's own resale activity backs this up. Over the year through August 2026, the community logged 65 home sales at an average asking price of $950,028 and an average selling price of $902,194, a 95 percent list-to-sell ratio, working out to roughly $301 per square foot, with homes averaging 86 days on market. A low HOA fee here has not translated into a discounted or slow-moving housing stock. If anything, it is evidence that fee size and desirability are not the same axis.
Where a Higher Fee Comes From, and What It Doesn't Include
Move to a community like Weston Hills or Windmill Ranch Estates, and reported fees climb into the $400 to $600-plus range. Some of that is genuine cost. Golf course infrastructure, larger common areas, and country club-level grounds upkeep are expensive to maintain, and those costs get spread across a smaller membership base than a 2,800-home development like Savanna.
Here is the detail that trips buyers up: in some of these communities, the base HOA due covering standard maintenance and security sits closer to $200 to $300 a month, similar to what a mid-range Weston community charges, and golf or country club access is billed as a separate membership on top of it. A buyer scanning listing sheets for "HOA fee" can end up comparing a bundled, all-in number in one community to a partial, base-only number in another and drawing the wrong conclusion about which one actually costs more to live in day to day. The fix is simple but easy to skip: ask specifically whether golf, club, or additional recreational access is included in the quoted fee or billed separately, and get that answer in writing before you write an offer.
The Association Layer Most Listing Sheets Don't Show
A second wrinkle shows up in communities like The Falls, where Weston's development pattern often stacks a master association over individual village or enclave sub-associations. That means the fee printed on a listing can represent only one layer of what a homeowner actually pays. Two homes advertising similar-looking monthly dues might carry very different total obligations once a master due is added on top of the village-level fee.
Before comparing fees across communities, or even across two listings inside the same community, confirm whether the property sits under one association or two. This is a five-minute question to the listing agent or the association's management company, and it changes the real monthly math more than almost any other line item on the estimated closing costs sheet.
What Florida's Post-Surfside Law Actually Changed, and What It Didn't
Since the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse, Florida has rewritten how condominium associations fund reserves. Under Chapter 718 of Florida law, condo buildings three stories or taller must now complete a Structural Integrity Reserve Study and, as of 2026, fully fund the reserves that study identifies. House Bill 913 raised the dollar threshold that triggers this requirement and eliminated the old practice of owners voting to waive structural reserve funding. For a condo tower, in other words, the state now forces the math to get done and forces the association to actually save for it.
None of that applies to the master-planned, single-family HOA communities that make up most of Weston. Those associations operate under Chapter 718's sister statute, Chapter 720, which Florida law still allows homeowners to vote annually to waive or reduce reserve funding entirely. There is no requirement that a Weston single-family HOA commission a reserve study, and no requirement that it disclose a funding percentage the way a condo association now must. A fee that has stayed flat and modest for years could mean the community is simply well run and efficient. It could also mean the roof-equivalent expenses, road resurfacing, pool resurfacing, gate equipment, have been quietly deferred, with the bill arriving as a special assessment instead of a gradual increase in monthly dues.
The city of Weston's own residents page confirms the basic structure: most residences in the city sit within a private development governed by an HOA, and those associations, not the city, are responsible for maintaining the roads, landscaping, and infrastructure inside their gates. That is a lot of financial responsibility sitting with a governance structure that Florida law does not require to prove it is fully funded.
What This Means for the Total Monthly Number
Over the three months ending May 2026, Weston's median sale price sat around $750,000, down 2.7 percent from the same period a year earlier, even as the number of homes changing hands rose to 218 in May 2026 compared with 145 the year before. More inventory moved at a slightly softer price, not a shortage pushing values up. Homes are also sitting longer, averaging 73 days on market.
Layer carrying costs on top of that median price and the total monthly obligation for a Weston home, once property insurance, taxes, and a mid-range HOA fee are added, can run $1,200 to $1,900 a month beyond the mortgage payment itself. That is the number that actually determines whether Weston is more or less expensive than a comparable home in Davie, Plantation, or Southwest Ranches, where the purchase price might look $50,000 to $100,000 lower but the buyer is paying separately, and unpredictably, for a pool membership, a gym, and lawn maintenance that a Weston HOA fee already bundles in.
| Community | Reported monthly HOA range | What it typically covers |
|---|---|---|
| Savanna | $150 to $220 | Guard-gated entry, four pools including a water slide, mini golf, clubhouse, fitness center, sports courts |
| Isles at Weston | $350 to $400 | Common area maintenance, landscaping, security, clubhouse, pool, fitness center |
| Weston Hills / Windmill Ranch Estates | $400 to $600 or more | Golf course infrastructure and broader country club-style common areas, with club or golf membership sometimes billed separately |
These are reported ranges drawn from current community listings and guides rather than official association filings, and individual sections within each community can run higher or lower depending on home size and location.
Before You Write an Offer
- Ask whether the quoted HOA fee is a single association fee or the sum of a master association due plus a village or sub-association due.
- Ask whether golf, tennis, or country club access is included in the base fee or billed as a separate membership.
- Request the association's most recent reserve study, if one exists. Under Chapter 720, a single-family HOA is not required to have one, and the absence of a study is itself useful information.
- Request board meeting minutes from the past twelve months and look for mentions of deferred projects, planned assessments, or votes to waive reserve contributions.
- Run the full monthly number, mortgage, taxes, insurance, and HOA combined, against any non-HOA property you are comparing it to, rather than comparing purchase prices alone.
The fee on a Weston listing sheet is a real number, and it buys real things. What it does not do, on its own, is tell you whether the community behind it is financially prepared for what comes next. That question takes a phone call and a document request, not a spreadsheet.
If you are weighing a move into Weston against another Broward community, or trying to make sense of two fee numbers that do not seem to add up, Eric Davis Inc. can pull the reserve study, the meeting minutes, and the full carrying cost picture on a specific address before you commit to an offer.
