At most golf communities in the Catalina Foothills, joining the club is a choice. You look at the initiation fee, weigh the monthly dues against how often you'll actually play, and decide. At Sabino Springs, that choice was made for the entire neighborhood in 2021, and it wasn't made by a developer or a country club board. It was made by a vote of the homeowners themselves, and it changed what every one of the community's 515 homes pays for, whether the owner has ever picked up a club or not.
This matters if you're comparing Sabino Springs against other Foothills golf neighborhoods on price alone. The dues numbers you'll see on a listing sheet aren't describing the same thing everywhere. In some communities, the HOA handles gates and landscaping, and golf is a separate business you can decline to join. In Sabino Springs, the golf course is now part of the HOA's own balance sheet.
How a Failing Golf Course Became a Mandatory Line Item
Arizona National Golf Club, an 18-hole course designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., has always sat inside the Sabino Springs gates. For years it was owned separately, and that separation nearly killed it. Back in 2012, the course's then-owner fell behind on assessments and water bills, and Tucson Water actually cut off service for a period. Ownership bounced from hand to hand through the following years, and by 2017 the owner, Romspen Arizona National LLC, wanted out with no further investment.
Homeowners faced a real prospect familiar to anyone who has watched a golf course go under in the Southwest: a shuttered course inside your own gates, dead grass where fairways used to be, and a measurable hit to every home's marketability. Rather than let that happen, the HOA stepped in. In 2018, it signed a five-year lease to keep the course operating, at a cost of $100 a month per household on top of existing dues. Then in 2021, the HOA went further and bought the course outright from Romspen for $1.5 million, following a homeowner vote.
That purchase is the pivot point. Once the HOA owned the asset, the cost of keeping Arizona National alive stopped being optional. It became embedded in mandatory dues for every home in the community, including homes in sub-associations like Sabino Estates, whose 44 custom homesites pay the same master assessment as the rest of the neighborhood and receive the same golf and dining discounts in return.
What This Looks Like Next to a Typical Club Model
Compare that to how golf works at a community like Ventana Canyon Country Club, a few miles away in the same Foothills market. There, the golf and racquet club is a separate, member-owned organization. The community association handles the gate and the roads. If you want to play the club's two Tom Fazio courses, you apply for membership and pay initiation and dues set entirely by the club, independent of your HOA bill. The club's own published 2025 fee schedule shows a junior golf initiation starting at $5,000 for members under 45, rising to $10,000 for the 45-to-50 age bracket, with monthly dues in the $400s plus a separate capital refurbishment charge. Full family and couple golf memberships run higher still. None of that shows up in the HOA assessment. If you never apply, you never pay it.
Here's the side-by-side that matters for a buyer:
| Sabino Springs | Typical member-owned club (Ventana Canyon example) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the golf course | The master HOA | An independent, member-owned club |
| Is golf membership required to buy in | No, the course operates as a public daily-fee facility | No, membership is a separate application |
| Is paying for the course required to buy in | Yes, built into mandatory HOA assessments | No, only members pay initiation and club dues |
| Entry point to play | 10% resident discount on greens fees and dining, no initiation | Initiation fees starting near $5,000 and climbing by age and category |
| Who absorbs a bad year for the course | Every homeowner, through the master assessment | Club members only |
Neither structure is better in the abstract. But they price differently, and they carry different risk. In a member-owned model, a bad year at the club is the club's problem to solve through member dues. In Sabino Springs, a bad year at the course is the HOA's problem, and the HOA's only lever is the same assessment that also pays for the gate guard and the community center pool.
What the Dues Have Actually Bought Since 2021
The early numbers suggest the arrangement has worked better than the HOA's own finance committee expected. John Green, who served on the Sabino Springs HOA Finance Committee, described the starting point bluntly: the course launched on $100 a month coming in from more than 515 families, with no real cushion. By the first nine months of 2021, the course was running almost $350,000 ahead of its own projections, enough to start funding amenity improvements homeowners had been asking for.
That performance doesn't mean the risk disappeared. The HOA's own board minutes from a 2022 homeowner Q&A show the board fielding pointed questions about how much of the golf assessment was baked into revenue projections and acknowledging that losses were still projected in some future years even as the course outperformed its budget. The board's response leaned on the reality that most golf course restaurants, including The Grill at Arizona National, don't run profitably on their own and exist to support the course rather than to make money in their own right. The board also pointed to the course's daily-fee, gated-access structure as a real constraint. Golfers from outside the neighborhood are often willing to pass through a gate to play, but a gate is a genuine barrier to attracting the casual public traffic that keeps a course's food and beverage numbers healthy.
The course is managed day to day by Indigo Golf Partners, the Troon division that runs more than 160 courses and clubs nationally, and the HOA's board continues to receive quarterly golf financials and an annual audit, most recently presented by the accounting firm Beasley Mitchell & Co. at a fall board meeting. That's a meaningfully different oversight structure than a typical residential HOA, which is usually just tracking landscaping contracts and a reserve fund for the clubhouse roof.
The Question Every Offer Should Ask
If you're writing an offer in Sabino Springs, the golf course ownership structure changes what documents actually matter. Beyond the standard CC&Rs and bylaws, ask for the HOA's most recent audited financial statement, the golf course's quarterly financial report, and the current reserve study. Because the course is now a working business the HOA operates rather than merely funds, its capital needs (irrigation systems, greens renovation, clubhouse equipment) compete for the same reserve dollars as the community's gates and pool equipment.
Arizona law already requires sellers in planned communities to provide a resale disclosure packet before closing, covering assessment amounts, pending litigation, and financial statements. That requirement exists for every HOA in the state. What's different here is that the packet for a Sabino Springs home effectively includes a small golf business's books, not just a landscaping budget. If your target home sits in Sabino Estates or another sub-association, you'll likely need a second disclosure packet from that sub-association as well, since it operates with its own board and its own gate and road budget layered on top of the master dues.
Why the Structure Held
The most telling detail from the HOA's own record isn't financial. It's who voted yes. Joanne Kos, who chaired the community's ad hoc committee during the purchase decision, made the case in terms of what a closed course does to a neighborhood: declining home values, declining marketability, declining satisfaction, regardless of whether any individual homeowner ever played a round. One homeowner, Dennis Bishop, put the calculus in plainer terms afterward, noting that many residents are retirees and snowbirds who bought Sabino Springs to look out at green fairways and mountains, not to chase a handicap.
That's the actual mechanism behind the low sticker price on Sabino Springs dues relative to a member-owned club down the road. The community didn't buy a golf course because everyone wanted to golf. It bought insurance against the alternative, a dead course inside the gates dragging down 515 driveways at once. Spreading that cost across every home, golfer or not, was cheaper for everyone than letting the market solve it the way it solves most struggling daily-fee courses in the desert: by closing.
A Few Common Questions
Do all Sabino Springs neighborhoods pay into the golf course the same way? Yes. Homeowners in sub-associations like Sabino Estates pay the same dues and assessments as the rest of Sabino Springs and receive the same golf, dining, and Community Center privileges in return.
Is golf mandatory if I buy here? No. Arizona National operates as a public, daily-fee course. Residents receive a 10 percent discount on greens fees and dining and can buy discounted resident pass tiers, but no one is required to play or to pay a separate initiation fee.
What if I have no interest in golf at all? You'll still pay toward the course through your regular HOA assessment, the same way every homeowner does. The tradeoff, based on how the community voted in 2021, is that the alternative (a closed, unmaintained course inside the gates) was judged worse for every home's value than the shared cost of keeping it open.
Comparing a few Foothills golf communities side by side, on paper and in person, is the only way to know which cost structure actually fits how you plan to live. If you'd like a closer look at how Sabino Springs dues, reserves, and disclosure documents compare to other gated communities on your list, Kate Herk and the Judy Smedes & Kate Herk Real Estate Group are glad to walk through it with you. Request a complimentary neighborhood valuation and personalized consultation to start the comparison.
