A buyer touring a home in Forest Highlands this summer will see a listing that reads like any other Flagstaff luxury property: acreage, square footage, a view corridor toward the San Francisco Peaks, all lined up in familiar columns. Then comes the disclosure packet. Buried a few pages in sits a number that never appeared in the photos or the listing description: a New Owner Capital Contribution of $115,750, due at closing, non-refundable, and required of every buyer regardless of whether they play golf.
That fee is not an upgrade path or an optional add-on. At Forest Highlands, Regular Membership is attached to the property itself, so buying the house means the membership and its obligations transfer to you automatically. Understanding how that fee schedule actually works, and how differently two other Flagstaff golf communities handle the same question, is the difference between comparing list prices and comparing what a home truly costs to own.
The Schedule as It Stands Today
As of Forest Highlands Golf Club's current 2026 fee schedule, a new owner taking on a Regular Membership home pays:
- A New Owner Capital Contribution of $115,750, due once at closing and non-refundable
- A Membership transfer fee of $3,000
- A Utility transfer fee of $5,500, if the property includes an existing home
- Monthly dues of $1,525 total, split into $1,280 for club and HOA operations and $245 into a capital reserve fund earmarked for repair and replacement of infrastructure
None of that appears in a home's list price. It shows up on the closing statement, and then again every month after, according to the club's own published community details.
What the Same Line Items Cost Two Years Ago
Fee schedules are not static, and Forest Highlands publishes enough history to show the direction clearly. Lining up the 2023 schedule against the 2025 schedule and the current 2026 numbers tells a more precise story than any single year on its own.
| Fee | 2023 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Owner Capital Contribution | $100,000 | $110,250 | $115,750 |
| Membership transfer fee | $2,000 | $2,500 | $3,000 |
| Utility transfer fee | $4,000 | $5,000 | $5,500 |
| Monthly dues | $1,250 | $1,500 | $1,525 |
The capital contribution moved from $110,250 to $115,750 in a single year, an increase of almost exactly 5 percent. Monthly dues barely moved by comparison, up less than 2 percent over the same year, though they had already jumped nearly 20 percent between 2023 and 2025. The two fees that only apply when a property changes hands, the transfer fee and the utility fee, climbed 20 percent and 10 percent respectively in that same one-year window, both outpacing the dues that sitting members already pay month to month.
The pattern worth noting for a buyer is not any single percentage. It is that the cost of joining tends to move faster than the cost of staying. A buyer pricing out a Forest Highlands purchase in 2026 is not just paying today's number. They are stepping onto a schedule that has climbed every published year on record, weighted more heavily toward the moment of purchase than toward ongoing membership.
Why the Fee Is Bundled at All
The mechanism behind that bundling traces back to how the club is owned. Forest Highlands Golf Club transitioned from developer control to full member ownership in 1997, and the association has operated that way since. Every member pays the identical Capital Contribution fee and identical monthly dues, with no separate tier for non-golfers and no discount for owners who use the amenities less.
As of January 2023, the club reported no short-term or long-term debt, over $10.3 million in capital reserves, and more than $56 million in total member equity, according to figures published on the club's own community page.
That uniformity is the point. A member-owned club with no debt and a growing reserve fund is financing its own future out of dues collected identically from every owner, rather than through a mix of membership tiers, outside financing, or a developer subsidy. Bundling the fee to every deed is what makes that funding model possible. It also means a buyer cannot opt out, negotiate a lower tier, or buy in without the membership attached.
A Different Model a Few Miles Away
Not every Flagstaff golf community works this way, and the contrast is instructive for anyone comparing neighborhoods rather than just homes.
Pine Canyon takes the opposite approach. A buyer there can own a home paying only the mandatory HOA dues, which run at roughly $275 a month, without ever joining the golf club. Golf membership at Pine Canyon exists as a separate, optional purchase with its own published initiation tiers and its own monthly dues, layered on top of the HOA rather than folded into it. The HOA covers gate security, road upkeep, and trail maintenance regardless of club status, so a non-golfing owner is never subsidizing course operations they don't use.
Flagstaff Ranch sits in between, with lower monthly fees than Forest Highlands but a smaller amenity set and a different community feel. Continental Country Club, which is public-facing rather than a private gated community, runs closer to $820 a year, the least expensive entry point among Flagstaff's golf-adjacent options, though it is a genuinely different product than a gated club community.
Three communities, three financial structures. The number on a listing sheet tells you almost nothing about which one you're actually buying into until you read the fee schedule behind it.
What This Means When You're Comparing Two Listings
For a buyer stacking a Forest Highlands home against a similarly priced option elsewhere in Flagstaff, a few questions cut through the noise faster than the list price alone:
- Is the club membership attached to the deed, or is it a separate opt-in purchase?
- What is the one-time contribution at closing, and is any part of it refundable?
- What do published dues look like over the past three years, not just the current figure?
- Which fees move only at resale, and which ones recur monthly regardless of ownership length?
- What does the amenity set actually include, since a $1,525 monthly figure at Forest Highlands covers two golf courses, two clubhouses, and a spa, while a lower figure elsewhere may cover far less?
None of these questions show up on a portal search filter. They show up in the disclosure documents, which is exactly where they belong for a purchase this size.
FAQ
Is Forest Highlands membership optional for any homeowner? No. Regular Membership is attached to the property itself, so any buyer of an existing Forest Highlands home inherits the membership and its obligations at closing, according to the club's own published community information.
Does the capital contribution transfer with the property when it's sold again? No. The fee is named a New Owner Capital Contribution for a reason. Each new owner pays their own contribution at the schedule in effect at the time of their purchase. It is not held in reserve for the seller and does not pass forward at a discount.
How does this compare to buying in Pine Canyon instead? The structures are built differently. Pine Canyon separates HOA dues from golf club membership entirely, letting an owner pay only the HOA baseline of roughly $275 a month with no club obligation at all. Forest Highlands bundles both into a single mandatory fee tied to the deed, which is the core difference a comparison shopper needs to understand before assuming the two communities are financially interchangeable.
Reading a Flagstaff golf community's fee schedule takes the same kind of attention as reading the comps themselves, and it can change which neighborhood actually fits a budget once the full carrying cost is on the table. If you're weighing Forest Highlands against Pine Canyon, Flagstaff Ranch, or a resale outside any club structure entirely, Blake Cundick can walk through the numbers with you line by line before you write an offer.
