A buyer comparing two nearly identical homes in Connerton, same builder, same square footage, same finish package, will eventually pull up both tax bills and find a line that doesn't match. Not property taxes in the traditional sense. The non-ad valorem assessment, the one tied to the Community Development District. One home might carry a few hundred dollars less a year than the other. Neither buyer did anything wrong. The homes aren't even in different neighborhoods, technically. They're in different governments.

That's the part almost nobody explains before a buyer is under contract: "Connerton" is not one CDD. It's two.

Connerton Is Actually Two Districts Wearing One Name

Community Development Districts are created under Florida law as independent special-purpose governments, each with its own board, its own budget process, and its own bonds. Connerton has two of them: Connerton East CDD and Connerton West CDD. Both file public agendas, both hold their own meetings (Connerton East's board has met at the Hilton Garden Inn on Suncoast Parkway in Lutz), and both issue their own debt to pay for the roads, lakes, and amenity centers built within their respective boundaries.

That structure isn't a marketing detail. It's the reason two Connerton addresses that look interchangeable on a listing site can sit under completely different assessment schedules, because they were built under different bonds, approved by different boards, on different timelines. A home in a section financed by the West district's bond issue has no financial relationship to a home financed by the East district's issue, even if both mailing addresses say Connerton.

What That Split Looks Like in Real Numbers

The clearest evidence of this shows up inside a single Connerton subdivision. Connerton Manors, a Lennar-built section within the larger community, has a published CDD assessment range running from about $1,521.66 to $2,517.27 depending on the lot and section. That's not a difference between Connerton and some other community. That's the spread within one subdivision, driven by which section of Connerton Manors a given lot sits in and which bond series covers it.

Homeowners association dues layer on top of that, and Connerton compounds the comparison problem further: HOA dues are set at the village level, not the community level, so two homes under the same CDD can still carry different HOA bills depending on which of Connerton's named villages they're in.

Here's a simplified picture of how the fee structures actually differ across the three communities most often cross-shopped in this part of Land O' Lakes:

That bottom row is its own trap. Del Webb Bexley shares the Bexley name and sits inside the same broader footprint, but it bundles HOA and CDD into a single monthly number instead of listing them separately. A buyer who hears "Bexley CDD is about $2,570 a year" and assumes that figure applies to a Del Webb Bexley listing is comparing two different fee architectures, not two prices for the same thing.

The Bond Clock Nobody Prints on the Listing Sheet

CDD debt assessments exist because the district issued bonds to build the infrastructure before most residents ever moved in. Those bonds typically mature over 30 years, and developers often prepay a portion of the debt assessment at closing before handing lots over to homeowners. What that means in practice: a section of a community platted and bonded a decade ago can be meaningfully further along in paying down its debt than a section bonded five years ago under a separate issue, even if the homes look the same age from the street.

The districts themselves are direct about how this works. As one CDD explains it, the bonds are payable from non-ad valorem assessments levied against the specific lands that benefited from that construction, and residents can request a bond payoff quote directly from the district's management company at any time.

That's a real, actionable step, not a formality. Before writing an offer on a CDD home, a buyer can ask the seller's district (Connerton East, Connerton West, Bexley's district, or whichever applies) for the current assessment amount tied to that exact parcel, and can ask whether the bond has been refinanced or partially retired. The community's overall average, the one usually quoted in a listing description or a builder's marketing page, tells a buyer almost nothing about the specific lot in front of them.

What This Means If You're Actually Comparing Bexley, Connerton, and Del Webb Bexley

The price per square foot on two listings can look identical while the true monthly carrying cost differs by more than a hundred dollars, purely because of which district and which bond series a section falls under. That gap shows up nowhere in a median sale price, a days-on-market figure, or a builder's advertised "starting from" number. It only shows up on the actual tax bill, or in a written disclosure from the district itself.

For a buyer narrowing a search between these three communities, the useful question isn't "what's the CDD fee in Bexley" or "what's the CDD fee in Connerton." It's "what's the CDD fee for this specific section, under this specific bond, as of this year's adopted budget." Those numbers are public. The district's finance page will show whether an assessment is fixed for the bond term or subject to annual adjustment for operations and maintenance, and a written current amount from the district removes the guesswork an average can't.

A Few Questions Worth Settling Before You Tour

What exactly is a CDD? A Community Development District is a local special-purpose government created under Florida law to finance and maintain infrastructure, roads, lakes, and amenity centers, inside a defined master-planned community. It issues bonds to pay for that construction and collects assessments from property owners to repay them.

Is the CDD fee the same as the HOA fee? No, and in most of these communities they're billed separately. Bexley and Connerton both list CDD and HOA as distinct line items. Del Webb Bexley is the exception among these three, bundling both into a single monthly figure.

Does a CDD assessment ever go away? The debt portion is tied to the bond term, typically 30 years, and can be paid off early by request. The operations and maintenance portion, which funds ongoing upkeep, is adopted annually by the district's board and doesn't disappear even after the bond is retired.

How do I find the exact current figure for a home I'm considering? Request it in writing from the district's management company or from the seller as part of due diligence. The district's own Connerton West CDD finance page and equivalent pages for other districts publish this information directly, and it's worth reading before treating any community-wide average as the number that applies to your offer.

Comparing communities by median price alone flattens exactly the kind of detail that determines what a home actually costs to hold. If you're weighing Bexley against Connerton against Del Webb Bexley, or trying to figure out what a specific section's bond status actually means for your monthly number, The Richards Collective can pull the current district figures for the exact lot you're considering before you write an offer. Get exclusive homes delivered to you and we'll walk the numbers with you from the first showing.