Grand Haven vs. Hammock Dunes: which is right for you?

Where each one sits

Grand Haven is on the mainland side of the Intracoastal Waterway, just north of Palm Coast Parkway, on land surrounded by oak hammock and county preserve. Many homes back to the golf course, lakes or the marsh, and a smaller group sits right on the Intracoastal. The City of Palm Coast's 20-acre Waterfront Park, with a fishing pier and the Intracoastal trail, is next door.

Hammock Dunes is on the barrier island across the Hammock Dunes Bridge. It runs from the ocean to the Intracoastal, with 2.5 miles of beach, oceanfront estates, golf and lake homes, villas and seven oceanfront condominium buildings. It sits in unincorporated Flagler County, so county rules apply rather than the City of Palm Coast's.

How the amenities and fees work

This is the difference most buyers miss. In Grand Haven, the community development district (CDD) owns and pays for both amenity centers and the gate guards. Village Center has a pool, fitness center, tennis, pickleball, bocce, croquet and a café, and Creekside adds a resort pool, sports courts, fields and a fishing pier. Every owner pays the CDD assessment on the property tax bill, $3,249.96 a year per lot for 2026-27, plus a master association fee and any village association dues. Golf is the only optional extra.

In Hammock Dunes, the pool, oceanfront fitness center, tennis, pickleball and croquet belong to the Hammock Dunes Club. You join the club to use them. The club's 2026 brochure lists annual dues of $12,284 for Social, $15,943 for Sports and $19,538 for Full membership, plus tax, and an initiation fee that isn't published. Equity memberships can pass to heirs or tenants. Owners' association dues are separate and vary by home, and the association also pays Flagler County $570,000 a year to maintain its dunes.

Golf

Grand Haven Golf Club is a Jack Nicklaus Signature course from 1998, par 72 and about 7,069 yards, with three holes on the Intracoastal. The club is private, open to residents and non-residents, and membership is optional.

Hammock Dunes has 36 holes: the Links Course by Tom Fazio, which opened in 1989 along the ocean, and the Creek Course by Rees Jones, which opened in 2003 on a 690-acre preserve on the mainland side. Both are Audubon-certified. If golf is the main reason you're moving, Hammock Dunes gives you two very different courses inside one club.

Privacy and gates

Both communities are gated. Hammock Dunes has five gated entrances, three with staffed gatehouses, a main gate staffed 24 hours a day, a roving patrol and plate-reading cameras, and it doesn't allow open houses. Grand Haven's CDD pays for guards at certain gates, with card readers and visitor kiosks at others. Either way, I arrange every showing ahead of time.

Prices and what you get for them

The table above shows today's numbers from the MLS. Hammock Dunes' median sale price runs roughly double Grand Haven's, because so much of it is oceanfront or ocean-view. In Grand Haven the same budget usually buys a larger, newer-feeling home on the golf course or water, with the amenities already included. On the island, you're paying for the beach at your door and the club.