CDD fees and the county line: Clay, St. Johns, Putnam and Flagler
We work four counties, and the single biggest structural difference in what a house costs to own across them is not the tax rate. It is whether the community sits inside a Community Development District — and that is overwhelmingly a St. Johns County question.
Why this comes up on almost every St. Johns showing
A CDD is a unit of local government created under Chapter 190 to build the roads, ponds, utilities and amenities of a new community, then maintain them. It funds the construction with bonds and repays them through an assessment on your annual county tax bill — under non-ad valorem assessments, separate from your property tax and separate again from HOA dues.
The reason it concentrates in St. Johns is simple: that is where the large master-planned developments went. When a buyer moves a search from Clay or Putnam into northern St. Johns, the sticker price is not the only thing that changes. An assessment of two to four thousand dollars a year appears on the tax bill that was not in their previous math at all.
The St. Johns communities, with real numbers
Every figure comes from that district's own adopted assessment schedule — not from a listing site, a builder brochure or a community sales page, all three of which are frequently wrong on this. Ranges reflect lot size and bond series.
| County | Community | District | Annual | The thing to ask about |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Johns | Aberdeen | Aberdeen CDD | $407 – $1,230 | Lowest maintenance figure we found anywhere in the county. Debt is extra and is not published per lot. |
| St. Johns | Nocatee | Tolomato CDD | $599 – $2,499 | A lot of parcels now show no debt line at all — those bonds are retired. |
| St. Johns | Beacon Lake | Meadow View at Twin Creeks | $1,307 – $4,026 | Whole bond areas carry zero debt. The spread inside one community is over $2,700. |
| St. Johns | Durbin Crossing | Durbin Crossing CDD | $1,339 – $4,050 | Publishes debt and O&M separately, which most districts do not. |
| St. Johns | RiverTown | Rivers Edge CDD (of three) | $1,958 – $4,881 | Three districts serve one community. Ask which before anything else. |
| St. Johns | Shearwater | Trout Creek CDD | $2,322 – $2,965 | Narrowest range here — predictable, but it starts high. |
| St. Johns | SilverLeaf | none | $0 | No CDD. The outlier among the big St. Johns master plans. |
Sources: Tolomato, Trout Creek, Rivers Edge, Meadow View at Twin Creeks, Durbin Crossing and Aberdeen CDD adopted or approved assessment schedules, retrieved August 2026. Aberdeen is FY2027, Shearwater FY2025/26, the others FY2026. Beachwalk sits in the Twin Creeks North CDD, which had not posted a machine-readable schedule when this page was written — ask us and we will request it.
Clay, Putnam and Flagler
Districts exist outside St. Johns too, but they are far less common and the county pattern is different, so we are not going to publish a table of numbers we have not pulled from those districts directly. What we will say is the part that is reliably true: in Clay, Putnam and Flagler the default is no CDD, and where one exists it is usually attached to a specific newer subdivision rather than a whole corridor.
The practical effect on a search is this. A buyer comparing a St. Johns master-planned home against a Clay County home at the same price is usually comparing a house with a two-to-four-thousand-dollar annual assessment against one with none. That is not an argument for either county — St. Johns buyers are frequently getting exactly what they are paying for in schools and amenities. It is an argument for putting the number on the table early, so the comparison is honest.
If you are weighing a specific address in Clay, Putnam or Flagler, ask us. We will check whether a district covers the parcel and pull its schedule rather than guess from the county.
The two questions that decide the number
Which half am I paying? Every assessment splits into debt service, which repays the bonds and eventually ends, and operations and maintenance, which funds upkeep and does not. The debt portion is fixed until the bond matures and can be prepaid; the O&M portion is re-adopted by the board every year and moves. Aberdeen's went up 7% for FY2027. RiverTown's rose 10% in FY2026 while every debt figure held flat — that is the pattern in miniature.
Which bond series is this parcel under? This is the one that surprises people. A community is not assessed uniformly. In Beacon Lake, parcels in the Series 2019 and 2020 areas carry no debt assessment at all, while comparable homes elsewhere in the same community carry roughly $1,390 a year of it. In RiverTown an 80-foot lot pays $4,881 under one series and $4,210 under another. Nothing visible from the street tells you which you are standing in.
Give us the address, we will pull the parcel's actual assessment
Whether it is Fleming Island, St. Augustine, Palm Coast or Palatka, the answer for a specific house comes from the district's own roll — the series, the debt and O&M split, and whether the bond has already been paid off. We would rather hand you that before you write than explain it after closing.