On February 17, 2026, Westchase's Community Development District held a packed workshop with two items on the agenda. One was a proposed sports field near the library that a neighborhood had already organized against with a 114-signature petition. The other was the Westchase Golf Club, and whether the CDD should try to buy it, again.
If you are shopping golf-adjacent listings in Harbor Links or The Estates right now, or you are selling one, that second item matters more than any HOA disclosure packet you will read this year. The premium buyers pay for a fairway view in Westchase has never come with a deed restriction guaranteeing the fairway stays a fairway. It comes with one man's decision about what to do with 200 acres in the middle of a 3,514-home community.
The course almost changed hands once already
The Westchase Golf Club opened in 1992, designed by architect Lloyd Clifton, and has been owned since 2005 by Nick Neubauer of the Sano Corporation. This is not the first time Westchase has tried to buy it. In January 2018, CDD supervisors signed a letter of intent and voted to pursue a $4 million offer for the course, giving themselves six months to decide, with Neubauer willing to spread payments over 13 years. The vote drew one of the best-attended CDD meetings in a decade, with more than 50 residents packing the session and not one speaking in opposition. The board hired golf consultant Greg Christovich to run due diligence. What he found was a course carrying about $1.3 million in deferred maintenance and an asking price that ran roughly $2 million over its actual valuation. The board passed.
That should have been the end of it. It wasn't. According to CDD supervisor Reggie Gillis, Neubauer reached back out to the board in early 2026, unprompted, expressing renewed interest in selling. The board re-engaged Christovich, and by the February 17, 2026 workshop he was laying out a different market than the one he'd assessed eight years earlier.
"There has been a feeding frenzy of private equity and institutional buyers scooping up golf courses, something the industry hasn't seen in 35 years," Christovich told the board, pointing to recent nearby sales in Cheval and Lakewood Ranch as pricing comps.
Supervisor Chris Barrett raised the part of that frenzy that should concern anyone who owns a home fronting the 18th fairway: if an institutional or development buyer acquires the course instead of the CDD, the front acreage is the most exposed to rezoning for higher-density housing, with the rest of the course potentially developed piecemeal depending on what the county allows. Supervisor Gillis pointed residents toward Pebble Creek and Plantation Palms, two Tampa Bay communities where a closed community golf course visibly changed what surrounding home values looked like.
As of the most recent public workshop notes, the board describes this as a fact-finding process, not a signed deal. Anyone weighing a golf-front purchase or listing right now should treat that distinction as load-bearing, and check the CDD's own meeting archive at westchasecdd.us before assuming the current arrangement is permanent in either direction.
Your HOA dues have never paid for a single blade of that grass
Here is the part that surprises even longtime residents. The Westchase Community Association, which runs the two swim and tennis centers and enforces the deed restrictions, states plainly on its own FAQ page that the golf club is separately owned, that there are no special provisions for Westchase residents at the club, and that WCA dues do not fund it in any way. The premium a golf-front lot commands has never been an entitlement. It has always been a bet on land use, placed by buyers who assumed the green space in front of their lanai would stay green space because it always had.
What your dues do fund is a three-layer structure that has nothing to do with whether your lot backs up to a fairway, a pond, or another house. For 2026, the WCA collects a $477 master community assessment. Separately, the Westchase CDD's FY2026 adopted budget sets a $615 per-unit general fund assessment, with village-specific subfunds layered on top that push the total non-ad valorem line on a Hillsborough County tax bill anywhere from roughly $441.80 to $1,478.85 depending on which village a parcel sits in. A West Park Village unit, for example, lands around $931.09 for the year. On top of both of those, many individual villages carry their own sub-association dues for gated entries or private landscaping that vary block by block.
| Fee layer | Who collects it | What it funds | 2026 figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| WCA master assessment | Westchase Community Association | Swim/tennis centers, covenant enforcement, common areas | $477 per year |
| CDD general fund | Westchase CDD, via county tax bill | Roads, ponds, conservation land, lighting | $615 per unit, plus village subfunds |
| CDD village subfund | Westchase CDD | Village-specific infrastructure and repairs | Roughly $441.80 to $1,478.85 per unit |
| Village sub-HOA | Individual village association | Gates, private landscaping, some maintenance | Varies by village |
None of those four line items touch the golf course. That fact alone should reframe how a buyer reads a golf-front listing. The premium is real, and homes in Harbor Links and The Estates commonly trend to $600,000 and above against a broader Westchase median that different portals have placed anywhere from the high $400,000s to the mid $500,000s depending on the month and the data source in 2026. But that spread between the golf-front tier and the community median is not buying access to anything. It is buying a view that a single private owner currently controls, and is actively deciding what to do with.
Residents already told the CDD what they'll pay for
The clearest evidence of how Westchase residents actually value this course showed up about a year ago, and not in the golf conversation itself. In September 2025, the CDD board unanimously killed an $18 million trail and boardwalk expansion project after hundreds of residents packed the Maureen B. Gauzza Library to oppose it. Much of the anger was procedural. Residents said the district's planning surveys in late 2023 and 2024 had focused on interest in purchasing the golf course, with nothing asked about a trail expansion, and several told the Tampa Beacon they supported buying the course but had never been polled on paving new wetland trails.
The financial contrast is the part worth sitting with. The trail project would have required an estimated $11 million bond, adding hundreds of dollars a year to resident assessments. The golf club purchase, by comparison, was estimated to add roughly $30 a year to fees. Residents rejected the expensive, unrequested project outright and kept the cheap, requested one alive through two more rounds of workshops. That is not ambiguous community sentiment. It is a fairly direct signal that Westchase residents see the golf course as core infrastructure worth protecting, even as the CDD itself cautions that it does not yet have full access to the course's books and is relying on conversations with the current ownership.
Supervisor Janie Stone, representing The Greens, raised the obvious counterpoint at the February workshop: recent sidewalk repairs came in well over budget, and a golf course carries far more ongoing maintenance risk than a sidewalk. Supervisor Greg Chesney's response captured where the board seems to be leaning anyway: "This is 200 acres in the middle of Westchase. It will benefit us all."
What this means if you're buying or selling near the course right now
If you're touring golf-adjacent homes in Harbor Links, The Estates, or The Bridges, ask your agent to check the current status of CDD golf course discussions before you write an offer, not after closing. The fact-finding stage means terms, price, and outcome are all still open. A resolved CDD purchase, a sale to another private buyer who keeps it operating as a course, and a sale to a buyer who does not are three very different futures for the view your premium is paying for.
If you're selling a golf-front home, this is a moment where transparency serves you better than silence. Buyers researching Westchase will find this story on their own within a few search queries. Being the agent or seller who already has the answer, rather than the one who gets asked about it during due diligence, tends to keep negotiations on schedule.
If you're comparing Westchase to other master-planned communities, remember that the golf premium here has always sat outside the HOA and CDD structure, unlike bundled-membership communities where course access and dues are the same line item. That has kept Westchase's recurring costs lower than some comparable Tampa Bay golf communities. It has also meant the course itself was never protected by the same governing documents that protect your pool access or your architectural review process.
FAQ
Does an HOA fee in Westchase include golf club access or membership? No. The Westchase Community Association's own governing documents confirm the golf club is separately owned and that WCA dues provide no special access or membership benefit to residents.
If the CDD buys the golf course, will my fees go up? Based on the estimate discussed at recent workshops, a completed purchase was projected to add roughly $30 a year to resident assessments, a small fraction of what a separate, rejected trail bond would have cost. That figure could change as the CDD gets full access to the course's financial records.
Is the golf course purchase a done deal? No. As of the most recent public workshop notes, the CDD described this as a preliminary fact-finding process. Anyone with a stake in a nearby purchase or sale should check the CDD's current meeting agendas directly for the latest status.
What happens to home values if the course is sold to someone else instead? CDD supervisors have pointed to Pebble Creek and Plantation Palms as examples of what can happen to surrounding property values when a community golf course closes. No outcome has been decided for Westchase, and any comparison should be treated as a risk factor to research, not a prediction.
Westchase rewards buyers and sellers who go a layer deeper than the listing sheet, and right now that layer includes a governance decision still being written in real time. If you want a clear read on what a specific golf-adjacent address actually carries in fees, and what the current CDD conversation means for your timeline, Siftar Group can walk you through it village by village. Schedule your complimentary listing consultation and let's look at the whole picture before you make a move.
