Courtney Oaks at SilverLeaf. Know what matters before you buy.

The 60-Second Overview

Courtney Oaks is the gated estate enclave of SilverLeaf: 70- and 80-foot homesites, many backing conservation, preserve, or water, behind one of the only gates anywhere in the master plan that built its name on NO CDD and St. Johns County schools. Three Northeast Florida builders, all locals rather than nationals, have run the enclave: Riverside Homes (published from about $799,900), Ashley Homes (published from about $529,999), and Mastercraft Builder Group with semi-custom product, on plans roughly 2,500 to 3,993 square feet.

The positioning is a scarcity stack. SilverLeaf is overwhelmingly an open plan, so the gate alone separates Courtney Oaks from nearly every village around it. The lots are estate-scale in a plan where 50- and 60-foot homesites are the norm. And the tax bill carries no CDD line, in a county where almost every competing gated community collects one to three thousand dollars a year through the tax roll. Any one of those three is sellable; the combination is the case.

One more piece of timing that matters here: the new SilverLeaf K-8 opens for the 2026-27 school year on Courtney Vista Drive, essentially at this enclave's doorstep, in a district that is the state's benchmark. Walkable new schools inside master plans are a durable demand engine, and this one lands next to the gate.

SilverLeaf's pitch is the missing tax line. Courtney Oaks adds the one thing the plan almost never sells: a gate.

The Gate Premium Inside an Open Plan

Here is the structural logic most portals miss. In a master plan where every village is gated, the gate is table stakes and prices at zero. In a master plan where almost nothing is gated, the gate is scarce, and scarcity is what appraises. SilverLeaf is the second kind of plan: roughly 11,000 acres, a dozen-odd builders, thousands of homes, and only a small handful of gated entries anywhere in it, Courtney Oaks among them, with the 55+ Reverie village serving a different buyer entirely. We have watched the same dynamic play out in other Northeast Florida plans, where the lone gated enclave inside an open masterplan consistently commands and holds a premium over look-alike product two streets away.

What the gate buys here is privacy and filtration, not a staffed guardhouse, assume a controlled entry and confirm its operation on site, and what it costs is carried in the neighborhood's own HOA rather than a district. That is the right way to buy a gate: funded by the people behind it, visible in one annual line you can verify, instead of buried in a 30-year bond assessment. The honest caveat is that gate premiums only hold when the rest of the enclave keeps pace, which is why the estate lots and the local-builder finish level matter as much as the arm at the entrance.

The Fee Truth: Resolving the CDD Rumor

Let us resolve a data conflict in public, because it keeps reappearing. Some listing feeds, and at one point our own research queue, attach a "SilverLeaf CDD" to Courtney Oaks. That is wrong. SilverLeaf's developer, The Hutson Companies, financed the plan without a community development district, and "no CDD" is the plan's published identity, repeated across builder and brokerage materials including Riverside Homes' own community pages. We have verified the same resolution on the sibling SilverLeaf villages we cover: no CDD anywhere in the plan.

Why the rumor persists is instructive: portals auto-fill fee fields from county-wide templates, and in St. Johns County, where most new master plans do carry districts, the template assumes one. The fix is not argument, it is evidence: we pull the parcel's actual tax bill from the St. Johns County tax collector during diligence and show you every line on it. If a special assessment of any kind ever appears on a specific Courtney Oaks parcel, the bill will show it, and that document, not a slogan and not a portal field, is what you should rely on.

The stack that remains is short: no CDD, an HOA published around $1,700 per year that funds the gate and the enclave's commons (confirm the current amount, the master-plan layer, and exactly what it covers in writing), and standard St. Johns County millage. Against a gated CDD competitor at the same list price, that missing district line is worth real money every single year of ownership, and it compounds at resale because the next buyer inherits the same advantage.

The Homes: Three Local Builders, One Gate

Courtney Oaks made an unusual roster choice for a 2020s St. Johns enclave: no national production builders. Riverside Homes, Ashley Homes, and Mastercraft Builder Group are all Northeast Florida operations, and that shapes the product, more plan flexibility, semi-custom latitude with Mastercraft, home-and-homesite packages, and finish decisions made closer to the buyer than a national's regional option sheet allows. Published plans run roughly 2,500 to 3,993 square feet, generally 3-car-garage-class estate product, on the 70- and 80-foot lots.

The three builders also create the enclave's pricing texture: Ashley's published entry around $529,999 has been the most attainable door through the gate, Riverside's from about $799,900 carries the core estate tier, and the largest plans on the best preserve and water backings have run past $1.6M. All of those numbers date quickly, builder sheets move with releases and incentives, so treat them as the shape of the market, not the price of any home. With final homesites releasing and early resales arriving, every purchase here is a three-way comparison, builder release vs. builder release vs. resale, and the spread has to be measured on the day you shop.

Schools

Courtney Oaks sits in the St. Johns County district, the state's benchmark, and in the most active rezoning zone in the county. The current feed has run through the Wards Creek Elementary and Pacetti Bay Middle area with Tocoi Creek High minutes away, and the new SilverLeaf K-8 opens for the 2026-27 school year on Courtney Vista Drive, a roughly 1,500-student campus rising essentially at this enclave's doorstep, close enough that the street shares the enclave's name.

That proximity is a genuine asset with one operational catch: assignments are moving right now. The school an address feeds this year may not be the school it feeds next year as the K-8 opens and the district rebalances. Confirm the live assignment by address with the district, and treat the district's strength, rather than any single school's name, as the durable asset under the value.

More on Living at Courtney Oaks

The depth without the wall of text. Open what matters to you.

5 Mistakes Buyers Make at Courtney Oaks

A premium gated enclave with three builders inside a growth-zone master plan has its own traps. These five cost buyers the most, and every one is avoidable.

Which Lots & Positions Hold Value Best

Relative resale strength by lot width and backing, illustrative of how Courtney Oaks homesites trade. Plan size, builder, and option level move individual homes within each tier.

What to Check Before You Offer

Before you write an offer on any Courtney Oaks home, run this list. Missing any one of them is how buyers overpay or inherit a problem.

• The parcel's actual tax bill, proving the no-CDD line and surfacing any special assessment
• Current HOA amount and layers in writing: the enclave fee, any master obligation, and what funds the gate
• The live builder-vs-builder-vs-resale spread: current releases, incentives, and recent closings
• The lot, walked: width, backing, easements, and what the adjacent parcels are entitled to become
• The builder contract: deposit terms, escalation language, and semi-custom change-order rules
• Gate operation: how access actually works today and who maintains it
• Current school assignment and the SilverLeaf K-8 rezoning map
• The funded SilverLeaf build-out versus the rendering, retail and parkway timing

Courtney Oaks vs. Comparable Communities

The honest way to place Courtney Oaks is against the villages and gated alternatives a SilverLeaf-corridor buyer is realistically weighing. Each trades something different.

Courtney Oaks' case against this field is the scarcity stack: the gate, the estate lots, and local builders, on the plan's tax math. The case against it is price: most of SilverLeaf delivers the same schools, amenities, and missing CDD line for meaningfully less, just without the gate or the dirt.

The Honest Trade-offs

The Courtney Oaks Playbook

If we were buying here, this is the order of operations we would run, and the one we run for our clients.

• Prove the tax line. Pull the parcel's actual bill; the no-CDD advantage is the case, document it.
• Pick the lot first. Width and backing before plan and finishes; only the lot is permanent.
• Run all three builders. Riverside, Ashley, and Mastercraft on plans, inclusions, contracts, and incentives, plus any resale.
• Quantify the gate. Price the enclave against open SilverLeaf and against gated CDD competitors; it must win one decisively.
• Get the HOA in writing. Amount, layers, gate funding, and exactly what each fee covers.

Questions We'd Ask Before Buying Here Ourselves

The questions a local who knows Courtney Oaks asks are different from the ones a portal answers. On any specific home, we want to know:

• What does the parcel's tax bill actually show, no-CDD proven on paper, not assumed from a slogan?
• What is the live spread between this home and the nearest builder release, incentives included?
• What exactly do the HOA layers cover, gate, commons, master obligations, and at what current amounts?
• What is the lot entitled to face, what do the adjacent parcels and the next SilverLeaf phase become?
• What do the builder contract terms say about deposits, timelines, and change orders?
• What is the current school assignment, and where does this address land in the K-8 rezoning?

Courtney Oaks May Not Be Right For You If

We would rather tell you the truth than sell you the wrong community. Courtney Oaks may not be the right fit if any of these are deal-breakers, and that is a property question, not a personal one.