Search for the monthly HOA cost in Cimarron Hills and you will land on four different numbers within the first page of results. One listing site says $160 to $300 a month. Another puts the figure at $425. A new-construction tracker lists the same community at $425 with a note that it "ensures a well-maintained neighborhood." None of these are wrong exactly. They are describing different pieces of the same puzzle, because the number attached to "HOA fee" in Cimarron Hills is doing something no HOA fee does anywhere else in Georgetown.
It is paying your country club dues.
That distinction matters if you are cross-shopping Cimarron Hills against another Georgetown master-planned community and lining up the HOA columns side by side. A standard HOA fee buys mowed medians, a maintained entrance sign, and a reserve fund for the pool pump. In Cimarron Hills, the same line item also buys you a membership card to a private, guard-gated golf and country club built around a Jack Nicklaus Signature course, whether you ever swing a club or not.
What the HOA Fee Actually Buys You
Cimarron Hills was built in 2003 as a roughly 1,000-acre community wrapped around a private country club rather than a public amenity center, and the club has stayed the organizing structure ever since. Every property owner in Cimarron Hills is required to hold a Resident Social Membership to the club, and that membership is bundled into the HOA assessment rather than sold separately. New owners are typically required to submit their membership paperwork within 30 days of closing, a step that has nothing to do with the title company and everything to do with the club's own governing documents.
Social Membership gets you the parts of the club that do not require a tee time: the clubhouse dining rooms, the resort-style pool, the fitness center, tennis and pickleball courts, and the club's calendar of wine dinners, book club meetings, and the July 4th fireworks show. Golf and Sport memberships sit above that as optional upgrades, each with its own initiation fee and dues structure.
That baseline is why comparison shoppers get tripped up. A buyer who treats the HOA line as pure landscaping cost is underpricing what they are actually agreeing to pay for, and a buyer who assumes the club is opt-in is going to be surprised at the closing table.
The Membership Ladder Has Three Rungs, Not One
Current club materials break Resident membership into three tiers, and the gap between them is the real story:
| Membership Tier | What It Includes | Initiation Fee (Current Club Materials) |
|---|---|---|
| Resident Social | Dining, pool, fitness, tennis, pickleball, social calendar | Included in HOA assessment |
| Resident Sport | Everything in Social, plus limited golf access | Separate initiation fee, lower than full Golf |
| Resident Golf | Unlimited golf on the Jack Nicklaus Signature course, plus full club privileges | $15,000 for buyers under 40 (Junior Executive), $20,000 at full Resident rate |
Those figures come from the club's current published membership materials, not from a third-party guess. That distinction is worth making because you will also find at least one independent club-ranking site estimating a full golf initiation fee somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000, a figure the site itself labels an estimate based on comparable Austin-area clubs rather than anything Cimarron Hills has published. If you are budgeting for a golf membership as part of a purchase, the number to ask the club for directly is the current published Resident Golf rate, not the range floating around on aggregator sites.
Golf and Social members outside the neighborhood also get reciprocal access to roughly 440 clubs worldwide through the Troon Privé network, since Cimarron Hills is managed by Troon. That reciprocity is a real perk if you travel, but it is not the reason most buyers in Cimarron Hills end up paying into the club. Most of them are paying because the Social tier is not something the HOA lets you skip.
The Fee Nobody Prices Into the Offer
Buyers moving through a standard resale closing budget for the obvious line items: title insurance, prorated taxes, the HOA transfer document. In Cimarron Hills there is one more line that catches people off guard, a $1,000 transfer fee tied specifically to the Social Membership changing hands from seller to buyer. It is not negotiable and it is not optional, and it shows up separately from the usual HOA resale certificate fee that every Texas HOA charges.
None of this is disclosed as a trap. It is written into the community's recorded governing documents, which is exactly why a buyer's agent who has actually read those documents, rather than skimmed a listing sheet, is the difference between a smooth closing and a surprised one.
Why the Same Line Item Means Something Different Two Miles Away
Here is the part that actually changes how you should shop. If you are comparing Cimarron Hills to another Georgetown master-planned community on a spreadsheet, and both rows say "HOA: $X/month," you are not comparing the same product.
A typical Georgetown HOA fee funds shared infrastructure: trail maintenance, common-area landscaping, a community pool that belongs to every resident equally, and a reserve account for the roof on the amenity center. It is a cost of ownership tied to shared physical assets.
In Cimarron Hills, part of that same-looking number is a membership fee to a private business, the country club, that happens to be baked into the mandatory assessment rather than billed as a separate club invoice. The club itself sets its own dues schedule, its own event calendar, and its own service standards, the same way any private club would, and those choices flow through to every homeowner's monthly bill regardless of whether they set foot in the clubhouse.
That is not a knock on the community. Plenty of buyers want exactly this: a private, guard-gated setting where the clubhouse, the fitness center, and the golf course are run to country club standards rather than HOA-committee standards, and where that standard is guaranteed rather than optional. It is a real trade, and for the right buyer it is worth paying for. The point is that "worth paying for" only makes sense once you know what you are actually pricing, and a bare HOA number on a listing sheet does not tell you that.
The Cost Structure Is About to Meet a New Set of Buyers
This structure is not static. Cimarron Hills has released new custom-home phases called The Reserve and The Range, a mix of half-acre to roughly 1.9-acre homesites developed by Forterra Developers, with golf course and greenbelt frontage in The Reserve and quieter, more open Hill Country lots to the north in The Range. Buyers building on those lots in 2026 will be stepping into the exact same membership framework, which means the Social Membership requirement, the tiered upgrade path to Sport or Golf, and the resale transfer fee are all coming along with the land, not just the resale housing stock.
For anyone planning a custom build in Cimarron Hills rather than buying resale, that is worth factoring into the total cost of the project alongside the usual construction line items, since the club fee structure attaches to the lot regardless of when the house on it gets finished.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Write an Offer
Is the Social Membership really mandatory, or can I decline it? Current club materials describe Resident Social Membership as required of every property owner and folded into the HOA assessment. It is not sold as an à la carte option.
Does upgrading to a Golf Membership replace the Social Membership fee, or add to it? It adds to it. The Social Membership cost stays part of your HOA assessment, and Golf or Sport membership comes with its own separate initiation fee and dues on top.
Will the HOA fee ever drop below what the club charges? Not structurally, since the club's dues and event budget are the mechanism setting the assessment, not the other way around. Fees are subject to change, and the specific dollar figure should always be confirmed directly with the HOA and the club before you're under contract, not estimated from a listing site.
If you are weighing a home in Cimarron Hills against a build-on-your-lot option elsewhere in Georgetown, or trying to figure out what a specific HOA line actually buys before you write an offer, that is exactly the kind of read-the-fine-print work Bryan Thomas Properties does for every client. Work With Bryan before you sign, not after.
