HOA vs CDD fees in Florida

The HOA runs your neighborhood. The CDD paid to build it. You typically pay both, monthly for the HOA and annually for the CDD through your property tax bill.

A Community Development District is a special-purpose local government that borrows money to build a community's infrastructure: roads, water and sewer lines, stormwater ponds, and often the amenity center. Homeowners repay that borrowing through an annual assessment collected on the county property tax bill.

The HOA is a private association that maintains and governs the neighborhood day to day, covering landscaping, amenity operations, gates, and rules enforcement. The CDD repays construction debt and funds the ongoing operation of that public infrastructure. You can pay both in the same community, and in most new Southwest Florida communities you do.

The bond portion does, typically after 20 to 30 years, once the infrastructure debt is repaid. The operations and maintenance portion continues indefinitely because someone still has to maintain the ponds and streets. Ask the builder which portion of your assessment is bond and which is O&M.

In many districts yes, you can pay off the remaining bond principal in a lump sum, which removes that portion from future tax bills. Whether it is worth it depends on how long you plan to own and whether buyers in that community price it in at resale.

Generally no for a primary residence. The CDD assessment appears on your property tax bill, but non-ad-valorem assessments are usually not deductible as property tax. Confirm with your accountant, since rental and investment use changes the answer.

Across the communities we track in Parrish, Lakewood Ranch, Wellen Park and Sarasota, HOA commonly runs from under a hundred dollars a month to several hundred for maintenance-free or golf-included villages, and CDD assessments commonly land between roughly one and three thousand dollars a year. Two homes at the same list price can differ by three or four hundred dollars a month once both are counted.

Ask for the current HOA amount and what it includes, whether there is both a village and a master association, the total annual CDD assessment, the split between bond and operations, the remaining bond term, and whether the amenity center is complete or funded. Get all of it in writing, then run it through the mortgage calculator on this site with the HOA, CDD and tax fields filled in, not just price and rate.