A resale listing for a three-bedroom ranch on Cade Street in Heron Isles led with two selling points side by side: a brand new roof, and the fact that the CDD fee is paid off. To a buyer scrolling past on a Saturday, that second detail might read like filler. It isn't. It is the single most consequential line in the listing, and it explains why two homes at the same price in Yulee can carry two very different monthly bills.
Here is the pattern worth understanding before you write an offer on new construction anywhere between US-17 and Wildlight's Village Center: the list price tells you what the seller wants for the structure. It does not tell you what you will owe every year to the district that financed the roads, drainage, and amenities underneath it. That number is set on its own schedule, and it does not move in step with the sale price.
The Bond Behind the Sticker Price
A Community Development District, authorized under Florida's Chapter 190, lets a developer finance infrastructure such as roads, water and sewer lines, and amenity centers through tax-exempt bonds, then repay that debt through an annual assessment charged to every home in the district. Nassau County's own directory lists five active CDDs: Amelia National, Amelia Walk, Heron Isles, River Glen, and Three Rivers. Heron Isles is the one that sits inside Yulee proper.
The Amelia Walk CDD's own FAQ describes the mechanic plainly: the bond assessment is a fixed amount for the entire bond term. That single sentence is the whole story. Once a home's share of the bond is set, it does not fluctuate with the market. It runs on a clock, and the clock is set by when the bonds were issued, not by when you happen to buy.
Heron Isles shows what happens near the end of that clock. The community was built out between 2005 and 2021, meaning its original CDD bonds are far closer to maturity than anything breaking ground today. One MLS-listed home in the neighborhood showed an association fee of just $100 a year alongside a CDD fee of $595 a year, a combined obligation under $60 a month. Aggregated listing data for the community puts the average HOA closer to $15 a month. And on Cade Street, the CDD line was gone entirely, retired, which is exactly why the listing agent put it in bold.
Wildlight's Math Is a Different Shape Entirely
Wildlight does not sit inside a standard CDD. It sits inside the East Nassau Stewardship District, a special district the Florida Legislature created in 2017 to cover the 23,600-plus acre East Nassau Community Planning Area. Local reporting on the district's bond financing was direct about what that means for a homeowner's bill: residents of the district pay county taxes as well as Stewardship District fees. One does not replace the other.
Wildlight's most recently published fee sheets, dated 2024, break that stacking into specific line items. Every closed home carries a benefited assessment of $37.38 a month, or $448.56 a year, for garbage and recycling, plus an annual Food & Beverage Minimum of $720. Townhome owners carry an additional service area fee of $357 a month, or $4,284 a year, covering landscape maintenance and exterior repairs. On top of all of that, the Wildlight Community Foundation collects a transfer fee at resale equal to half a percent of the gross sale price, capped at $2,500. Ask your agent or the builder for the current fee sheet before closing, since these figures are published on a rolling basis and can be revised as amenities come online.
None of that includes county property tax. It also does not include the capital side of the ledger: the Stewardship District pursued bond validation covering an estimated $600 million in infrastructure across a 25-year buildout, according to 2024 reporting by the Fernandina Observer on the validation process. A Stewardship District is built for exactly this kind of decades-long, multi-phase development, which is why it layers more permanently than a single-neighborhood CDD tied to one subdivision.
Here is the comparison in one place:
| Community | District Type | Timeline | What's on the record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heron Isles | CDD | Built 2005-2021 | $595/year CDD + $100/year HOA on one MLS-listed home; a separate resale listed the CDD fee as paid off |
| Wildlight | East Nassau Stewardship District + HOA + Foundation | District created 2017 | $448.56/year garbage assessment, $720/year F&B minimum, up to $4,284/year townhome service fee, plus 0.5% resale transfer fee (capped $2,500) |
| Amelia Walk | CDD | Developer Greenpointe Communities; built out by AV Homes/Taylor Morrison, Riverside Homes, Lennar, Richmond American | CDD assessment confirmed fixed for the life of the bond term |
| Amelia National | CDD | Established 2004, 876 acres | Funds drainage, water management, wastewater, and offsite roadway improvements |
Why the Clock, Not the Price, Should Set Your Comparison
New construction in Yulee spans a wide range right now. Active new-build listings tracked across the community in mid-June 2026 started near $320,000 and ran up into the mid-$800,000s, spread across roughly nine builder communities. Wildlight's own trailing twelve-month median sale price, measured as of August 10, 2026, sat around $498,000, up about 16 percent from the prior twelve-month window. Two homes drawn from that range at a similar number can look interchangeable on a portal search. They are not interchangeable once you account for where each district sits on its repayment clock.
A newer phase inside an active CDD or the Stewardship District is still early in its bond term, meaning the fixed assessment portion has decades left to run. A home in an older, largely built-out CDD like Heron Isles may be paying a fraction of that, or nothing at all, because the underlying debt has already been retired. The list price does not encode any of this. The fee disclosure does.
What to Request Before You Write an Offer
- Ask for the CDD estoppel letter. This is the document that shows the outstanding bond balance and years remaining, and title companies request it directly from the district's management company before closing.
- Ask whether the assessment is on-roll, meaning it shows up on the Nassau County property tax bill, or off-roll, meaning it is billed separately. Wildlight's original 2018 launch disclosures noted assessments were expected to appear on the county tax bill, and it is worth confirming that is still how your specific phase is billed.
- Ask whether the fee you are quoted is the fixed bond portion or includes the variable operations and maintenance portion, since only the first is locked for the bond term.
- If you are looking at Wildlight specifically, ask whether the home sits inside the original Central Planning Area covered by the district's bond validation, since later phases such as the Garden District or Commerce Park may carry their own separate assessment schedules.
- If you are the seller, remember Wildlight's Foundation transfer fee applies at resale, a half percent of the sale price capped at $2,500, and it should be accounted for in your net proceeds math well before closing.
Nassau County's population has been growing an estimated 5 to 8 percent annually as of mid-2026, with much of that growth attributed to residents moving out of Duval County drawn by lower land costs and easier access to I-95. That means more people are comparing a Yulee new build against a Jacksonville resale for the first time, often without a clear sense of how differently these two markets structure recurring costs. A CDD or Stewardship District fee is not a red flag. It is a financing tool that let these communities get built with real roads and real drainage from day one. But it is a number that behaves nothing like a mortgage payment, and it deserves the same scrutiny before you sign as the interest rate does.
If you are cross-shopping new construction in Wildlight, a resale in Heron Isles, or anything in between, Martin Williams can pull the actual fee disclosures and estoppel details on current listings before you write an offer. Let's Connect.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Does a CDD fee ever go away completely? Yes. Once the bonds behind a district's capital improvements are fully repaid, the fixed assessment portion tied to that debt ends. A Heron Isles resale listing documented exactly that, marketing the CDD fee as paid off.
Is the Stewardship District fee at Wildlight the same as a CDD fee? Related but not identical. Both fund infrastructure through assessments, but a Stewardship District is a larger, longer-horizon structure created by the state legislature for a multi-decade buildout, layered alongside a homeowners association and, at Wildlight, a separate community foundation.
Can I find this information before I ever contact a builder or listing agent? Some of it. Each CDD publishes its own budget and contact information for public records requests, and Wildlight has published its own HOA and fee sheets directly. The most precise numbers for a specific address, including bond balance and years remaining, come from the estoppel letter your title company requests before closing.
