Three homes closed in Bella Collina over the twelve months ending August 2, 2026. Three. In a community of roughly 357 houses behind one guarded gate on County Road 455, that is not a slow market. It is barely a market at all.
That thinness is exactly what a $2.3 million median price and a median 178 days on market are supposed to buy you: scarcity so tight that almost nothing trades, and what does trade sets the number for everyone else. It is the same logic that props up any gated enclave's premium. Fewer sellers, fewer comparables, more room for a buyer to pay for the idea of exclusivity rather than square footage alone.
Here is the complication a comparison-stage buyer needs to sit with before writing an offer. The company that controls that scarcity is the same company now filing paperwork to end it.
The developer is also the seller of the next 102 lots
In early September, GrowthSpotter reported that DCS Capital Investments LLC has filed construction plans for Montverde Estates, a 102-lot single-family community on 67.57 acres just north of Bella Collina along County Road 455. The manager of record is Stratphire Holdings Inc, a company run by Spencer Schar, president of The Club at Bella Collina and one of the community's original developers. His father, Dwight Schar, co-founded NVR Inc., one of the largest homebuilders in the country, and built the Siena resort on the community's private lake.
The filing went to the St. Johns River Water Management District, alongside plans for a new Montverde Connector Road that would extend the existing Ravenna Court cul-de-sac up to the new development's southwest corner. A majority of that land was part of the original 2012 deal, when DCS Investment Holdings bought the then-indebted Bella Collina property for $10 million. It sat unbuilt for more than a decade. It is only being activated now, with the resale market finally hot enough to justify it.
That timing matters. This is not outside speculation moving in on a closed community. It is the community's own founding family deciding the current price environment supports more supply, using land it already owned.
The hotel changes who gets past the gate
The bigger structural shift is not the houses. It is the hotel.
Bella Collina already has a form of lodging: Siena at Bella Collina, a condo-hotel on the private lake that functions more like an extended-stay residence than a public hotel, with units sold or leased and access tied to club membership. What is being built now is different in kind. In February 2026, the Lake County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved an $825,000 incentive grant for Hotel Siena Holdings LLC, another Schar-family entity, to build The Mansion at Bella Collina, a $66.9 million, 100-room boutique hotel on four acres along County Road 455 overlooking Lake Siena.
The room mix is specific: 70 standard guest rooms and 30 suites, split into 22 luxury suites, four executive suites, and four presidential suites. It will be managed by The Club at Bella Collina. It will not require membership. It will be open to the public.
That is a first for this address. For twenty years, the only way to eat dinner at the clubhouse, tee off on the Nick Faldo course, or walk the grounds has been to own here, rent from an owner, or be someone's guest. Once the hotel opens, a stranger can book a room online and walk the same grounds a $2 million homeowner walks every morning. The gate still keeps out traffic. It no longer keeps out visitors.
A gate controls who drives in. A public hotel inside that gate controls who gets to stay.
What the price math actually assumes
Run the numbers a comparison-stage buyer is likely working from, and the gaps in what any single source can tell you become the point.
| What's in place today | What's filed or approved | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| ~357 existing homes, built 2006–2024 | 102 new lots (Montverde Estates), 67.57 acres | Roughly a 29% increase in total homesites once built out |
| Members-only Siena condo-hotel | 100-room public hotel, The Mansion at Bella Collina | First public lodging and dining access inside the gates |
| One entry road system tied to Ravenna Court | New Montverde Connector Road | Direct vehicle link between old and new phases |
| Bella Collina sits in unincorporated Lake County | Montverde Estates sits inside the City of Montverde | Separate governments, separate filings, possibly separate fee schedules |
That last row is easy to miss and worth sitting with. Bella Collina proper is unincorporated Lake County land. Montverde Estates will sit inside the incorporated City of Montverde. The two projects filed separately with the water management district for exactly that reason. Nobody in the public record has yet clarified whether Montverde Estates will fall under the existing Bella Collina Community Development District, which was established on June 14, 2004 and covers roughly 1,805 acres, or whether it will need its own CDD, its own bond, its own assessment schedule. That distinction determines who eventually pays for the connector road and the new phase's infrastructure. It is a question worth asking directly before assuming today's carrying costs are the buildout's final word.
Published estimates put carrying costs in the range of $930 per quarter in HOA dues plus about $2,162 per year in CDD assessment, close to $6,000 annually in mandatory community fees before county property tax. Boards revisit dues every budget cycle, so confirm the current figure before you rely on it. At Lake County's fiscal year 2025-26 millage rate of 16.65 mills, a $2.3 million assessed home lands around $38,290 a year in property tax alone, about $37,620 with a full homestead exemption. None of that is unusual for a gated golf community at this price point. What is unusual is buying into that fee structure at the exact moment the underlying footprint is expanding by close to a third.
Why the headline numbers won't agree with each other
If a buyer pulls up two different portals' stats on Bella Collina, they will not match, and that mismatch is itself informative. One trailing-12-month analysis built from closed MLS records puts the median at $2.3 million on 3 closings. A separate three-month window ending June 2026 shows a $2.1 million median built from 33 closings that same month, up 87.4% year over year, with average days on market falling from 118 to 102.
Both can be technically accurate and still describe different things. Boundary definitions vary by provider. Some pull in Siena's condo sales, some don't. Some count the calendar month, some count trailing twelve. In a community this small, a handful of closings in either direction swings the median by hundreds of thousands of dollars. That volatility isn't a flaw in the data. It's the direct consequence of a market with three closings a year trying to produce a stable number. Anyone using a single stat from a single site to anchor an offer is leaning on a sample too small to hold the weight.
What this means if you're comparing Bella Collina to somewhere else
None of this makes Bella Collina a bad comparison against other Central Florida gated golf communities. A founding family reinvesting in its own project, backed by a county incentive grant and an active builder pipeline, is a signal of continued institutional confidence, not abandonment. What it changes is the question a buyer should be asking.
The question isn't just what the median price is today. It's how much of that price was scarcity, and how stable that scarcity is likely to be over the holding period you actually care about. A buyer planning to own for two or three years before an exit should treat the 102-lot expansion and the public hotel as real variables in that exit math, not footnotes. A buyer planning to hold for a decade or pass the home down may care less, since a mature build-out with more amenities and a working hotel could just as easily strengthen long-term value as dilute it.
Either way, it's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks the filings as they land, not just the listings.
A few questions worth asking before you write an offer
Will the new Montverde Estates homes share Bella Collina's HOA and gate access, or operate as a separate, adjacent community? The public filings show separate jurisdictions and separate water management submissions. That alone suggests the two may not automatically share governance. Ask the seller's team directly before assuming shared amenities.
Will guests staying at the new public hotel have access to the golf course, spa, or dining rooms residents use? The approved plans confirm the hotel will be managed by The Club at Bella Collina and open without membership, but the public record doesn't yet spell out which amenities hotel guests will share with homeowners. That's a live question to raise with the club, not an assumption to build an offer around.
Does the expansion change what I should expect to pay in HOA or CDD fees over time? Published estimates put dues around $930 a quarter in HOA fees and $2,162 a year in CDD assessment, though these figures shift with each budget cycle and should be confirmed before you rely on them. Whether a new phase gets folded into the existing CDD or creates its own bond structure will shape who eventually funds the new connector road. Ask for the CDD's current bond schedule before closing.
If you're weighing Bella Collina against another gated Central Florida community, the filings above are worth more than another walkthrough of the clubhouse. Andrea Alonso works these comparisons daily across Windermere, Winter Garden, and the wider Orlando luxury market, with the bilingual, concierge-level service international and investor buyers expect. Let's connect and start your Florida search.
