The Ritz-Carlton Residences at Hammock Dunes. Know what matters before you buy.

The 60-Second Overview

The Ritz-Carlton Residences at Hammock Dunes is a planned pair of 12-story oceanfront condominium towers, 64 units each for 128 total, on roughly 6.8 acres immediately south of the Tuscany tower along Avenue de la Mer, inside the gated Hammock Dunes community. The land is the final large residential parcel of the Hammock Dunes master plan, the long-entitled WCI-era last condo phase that the Flagler County Commission initially approved back in 2006 and that has sat through a full market cycle waiting for this moment.

The developer is BH Group, joined by Unicorp National Developments as co-developer in July 2025, with the Ritz-Carlton residential brand attached, the first branded-residence product in Flagler County history. Reported pricing runs from about $3 million for tower residences of roughly 2,300 to 3,300 square feet up past $10 million for penthouses, and a pre-sale reported at $20 million in June 2025 set the county's all-time residential record before a shovel touched the ground.

Everything you have seen about this project is a rendering. The entitlement is real, the brand is real, the record pre-sale is real, and the building does not exist yet. Those four facts coexist, and a smart buyer holds all of them at once.

One geographic footnote that matters legally: despite the Palm Coast mailing address, this is unincorporated Flagler County, the Hammock, not the city. County rules, county approvals, county taxes. And the timeline as publicly stated, 2026 groundbreaking, completion around 2028, is a developer projection, not a contractual promise. We treat it that way and so should you.

The Approval Trail: What Is Actually Approved

Here is the verified entitlement story. The Hammock Dunes master plan, the DRI that built Hammock Dunes itself, has carried this final condo parcel since the WCI era. The Flagler County Commission initially approved tower development here in 2006, before the financial crisis froze coastal condo construction for a decade. The current 128-unit, two-tower configuration on ~6.8 acres is the form that entitlement has taken under BH Group, and per the most recent local reporting the project was still completing its final plat, the recording that turns an approved plan into legal, sellable tower units.

What remains before vertical construction: the final plat recording, building permits from Flagler County, and the condominium documents filing with the state, the prospectus, declaration, and budget that Florida law requires before binding contracts. The developer has been pre-selling under reservation-style arrangements, which is normal, but understand the legal difference: a reservation is typically refundable and non-binding; a purchase contract after the condo documents are delivered is the real commitment, with a statutory rescission window. Know which one you are signing.

The Honest Timeline, and What Could Move It

The publicly stated plan is groundbreaking in 2026 with completion around 2028. A 12-story coastal concrete tower realistically runs 24 to 30 months of vertical construction after site work, so a 2028 finish requires the 2026 start to actually happen. Things that could move it: the final plat and permit sequence, coastal construction permitting (this is seaward work near the dune line, with state DEP involvement), pre-sale thresholds that construction lenders typically require before funding, insurance and construction-cost volatility on the Florida coast, and simple developer discretion, this parcel has already waited nearly two decades once.

None of that is a prediction of trouble; the brand license and the record pre-sale argue this one is real. But pre-construction buyers should price the scenario where 2028 becomes 2029, because in coastal Florida high-rise construction, it often does. Your deposit terms, escrow protections, and outside-completion-date rights in the purchase contract are what protect you, and they are negotiable mostly at the start, not the end.

What the Ritz-Carlton Flag Actually Buys

Branded residences are a license arrangement: the developer pays Marriott for the Ritz-Carlton residential brand, and owners pay for it forever through service fees that fund brand-standard staffing, concierge services, and management. The upside is real, branded oceanfront product commands documented resale premiums and pulls a national-international buyer pool that Flagler County has never had access to. The cost is also real and permanent: expect the association budget, once published, to run meaningfully above the neighboring unbranded towers like Tuscany, Cambria, and Savona.

The Hammock Dunes Club, the private oceanfront club with Rees Jones and Tom Fazio courses, is a separate institution from this project. Residence ownership and club membership are distinct purchases; confirm the current membership classes, initiation, and dues with the club directly rather than assuming the tower comes with golf. Inside Hammock Dunes, it usually does not, automatically.

The Fee Stack Nobody Can Quote Yet

Three recurring layers will exist here, and not one has a published, final number: the condominium association fee (building operations, reserves, coastal insurance, which is the wild card in every Florida oceanfront budget right now), the Ritz-Carlton service charges embedded in or alongside that budget, and the Hammock Dunes master association layer that every property inside the gates carries. Florida's post-Surfside structural-reserve laws also mean new coastal towers must budget reserves honestly from day one, which is good for the building and real on the monthly statement.

The condominium documents, when delivered, must include an estimated operating budget. Read it skeptically: first-year developer budgets in new condos are routinely optimistic, and the insurance line in any 2026-2028 oceanfront budget deserves a stress test. We do that line-by-line with clients before the rescission window closes.

Schools, Briefly

This is a luxury tower inside a gated golf community; school assignment will rarely drive the purchase. For the buyers it matters to, the Hammock corridor currently feeds the Old Kings Elementary, Indian Trails Middle, and Matanzas High lineup, but Flagler County is growing fast enough that zones move. Verify the current assignment with Flagler Schools before you contract, and check live GreatSchools ratings rather than any snapshot, including ours.

What Living Here Will Actually Be Like

Project forward from what Hammock Dunes already is: a quiet, gated, low-density oceanfront community where the loudest thing most days is the surf. Add hotel-grade residential services and you have the proposition. Subtract from it the reality that the immediate neighbors, especially Tuscany, will live next to a construction site for two-plus years, and that you, as an early resident of Tower 1, may live next to Tower 2's construction. Ask how phasing is sequenced.

5 Pre-Construction Mistakes We See Constantly

Branded pre-construction is where sophisticated buyers make unsophisticated mistakes, because the brand lowers everyone's guard. These are the five we guard against on every deal like this.

Stacks, Floors, and Views

Relative desirability based on how the existing Hammock Dunes towers have resold over two decades, not on this building's unpublished price sheet.

The Pre-Deposit Checklist

• Final plat status. Confirm whether the plat has recorded; entitlement is not the same as recordable units.
• Instrument type. Reservation or purchase contract? Refundable until when, exactly, and into whose escrow?
• Condo documents. Declaration, budget, management agreement, rental restrictions, read in full inside the rescission window.
• Fee stack model. Association + brand services + master association + taxes + insurance, at stressed numbers.
• Outside dates. What happens contractually if completion slips past 2028 or 2029.
• Construction phasing. Which tower first, and what Tower 1 owners live next to while Tower 2 builds.
• Club reality. Hammock Dunes Club membership terms confirmed in writing with the club, separately.
• Exit math. Assignment rights before closing, and the resale restriction language, branded buildings vary widely.

How It Compares to the Built Towers

The fairest comparisons are the oceanfront towers already standing inside the same gates, real buildings with real budgets and twenty years of resale history.

The honest verdict: if you need certainty, the built towers win on every measurable axis today. If you want the brand, the new-code construction, and the last new oceanfront product this master plan will ever deliver, that is exactly what this project is selling, at a premium that is the price of being first.

The Trade-offs, Plainly

The Momentum Playbook

How we run a pre-construction purchase here, in order:

• Track the filings. Plat, permits, and condo-document registration, so you act on facts, not launch events.
• Reserve refundably. Position on the early list while every dollar is still recoverable.
• Read the documents inside the window. Budget, declaration, management agreement, rescission rights used deliberately.
• Negotiate the contract edges. Deposits, outside dates, assignment rights, more is negotiable early than anyone admits.
• Benchmark against built. Every release priced against Tuscany, Le Jardin, and Cambria resales the same week.

Questions We Ask Before You Sign

The questions that get real answers out of a pre-construction sales gallery:

• Has the final plat recorded, and if not, what is the projected recording date?
• What pre-sale threshold does the construction lender require, and where do sales stand against it?
• What is the estimated first-year operating budget per unit, including the brand service component?
• What substitution rights does the developer reserve on finishes and amenities?
• What are the contract outside dates and buyer remedies if completion slips?
• What are the rental and assignment restrictions, exactly as written?

Who This Is Not For

Pre-construction branded oceanfront is a specific instrument. It is wrong for plenty of good buyers, and saying so up front saves everyone time.