On August 13, 2026, The Landings Association posted a short update to its own website. The initial vote on the proposed 2027-2029 Annual Dues assessment had not met the threshold to pass. For an island where nearly every home sits inside a homeowners association that reset its budget every three years by owner vote, that is not a footnote. It is a live, unresolved number that anyone buying on Skidaway Island right now is walking into mid-negotiation.
Most people shopping Skidaway Island arrive with a single figure in mind: the list price. As of August 2026, homes inside The Landings carried a median list price of $800,000, down 8% from July and 7% from a year earlier. Price per square foot sat at $298, also down for the month and the year. Those numbers are real. They are also the smallest part of what it actually costs to live there.
The Vote That Didn't Pass
The Landings Association functions like a property owners association, running security, the roads, the two marinas, and the shared infrastructure that keeps a 4,500-plus acre gated community running. Every owner is automatically a member, and the assessment that funds all of it isn't set by a board memo. It's set by a three-year vote of the ownership itself. The current cycle runs $2,518 per property owner annually, payable by March 1 each year.
The catch for a buyer: the Association does not publish its current dues proactively on its public-facing pages. You have to ask for the number in writing, and you should get it from the Association directly rather than relying on secondhand figures from a listing sheet. With the 2027-2029 cycle still unresolved as of this writing, anyone closing on a home this fall is buying into a budget question the ownership itself hasn't finished answering.
That's not a red flag. Three-year assessment cycles decided by owner vote is simply how the community governs its own upkeep, and it means increases get debated in the open rather than handed down. But it does mean the number on today's listing sheet is not guaranteed to be the number you pay in 2027.
The Club Bill Sits Next to the Deed, Not Inside It
The second layer buyers often miss entirely is The Landings Golf & Athletic Club, which is a separate private entity from the Association. Membership isn't a requirement of home ownership, but the community is built around six championship golf courses designed by Arnold Palmer, Tom Fazio, Arthur Hills, and Willard Byrd, along with ten dining venues, 31 tennis courts, and a 52,000-square-foot wellness center. For most buyers who move here for the lifestyle the marketing promises, club membership stops being optional in practice fairly quickly.
According to golf industry reporting from June 2026, the club's 2026 initiation fees run $80,000 for full golf, $40,000 for athletic membership, $50,000 and up for associate golf, and $35,000 for national golf. Those figures are initiation costs only. Annual dues and food-and-beverage minimums are additional and are not published publicly, which means the true annual carrying cost of full club life on Skidaway Island is a conversation you need to have with the club directly, not a line you'll find on a listing.
Here is what actually stacks on top of a home purchase, layer by layer:
| Cost layer | Who sets it | 2026 figure |
|---|---|---|
| Home price | Open market | Median list price of $800,000 inside The Landings (August 2026) |
| Association annual assessment | Owner vote, three-year cycle | $2,518 per year, current cycle |
| Club initiation (optional, but expected) | The Landings Golf & Athletic Club | $80,000 full golf / $40,000 athletic |
| Club annual dues and F&B minimum | The Landings Golf & Athletic Club | Additional, not publicly published |
Why the Island Doesn't Do What Tybee Does
Buyers weighing Skidaway Island against another Savannah-area coastal neighborhood often bring a spreadsheet that includes projected rental income. That math doesn't work here. In 2014, Landings owners voted a covenant restricting rentals to residential use only, prohibiting timeshare, fractional, or hotel-style arrangements and prohibiting renting less than the entire dwelling. There is no short-term rental workaround, no room-by-room hosting, no seasonal income offset to lean on if the carrying costs feel heavy in a given year.
That covenant is exactly why Skidaway Island reads so differently from a market like Tybee Island, where short-term rental income is part of many buyers' underlying calculation. On Skidaway, the home has to justify its cost on lifestyle and equity alone. If the vacation-rental math was part of your plan, it needs to leave the spreadsheet before you write an offer here.
One Road, One Bridge, One Expensive Reminder
Skidaway Island connects to the mainland by a single road across Skidaway Narrows. The old bascule drawbridge that once opened for boat traffic and backed up cars behind it has been replaced with a high fixed span, so nobody waits on a sailboat anymore. But the underlying geography hasn't changed. There is one way in and one way out, in a part of coastal Georgia where hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, with the heaviest activity from August through October. We are inside that window right now.
This isn't a hypothetical risk buried in an insurance disclosure. After Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Landings owners voted a Community Recovery Special Assessment, on top of the regular annual dues, to cover storm-related costs. It has happened once. Buyers should ask directly what wind and flood coverage costs on the specific address they're considering, and ask early, not after the contract is signed.
The Number That Actually Predicts How Fast You'll Close
If the median price is softening slightly, and it is, that's not the number that determines how a specific home performs. A market report covering February 2026 found 69 active listings on Skidaway Island averaging just over $1 million and sitting 114 days on market, while the ten homes that actually closed that month averaged $1,204,000, sold at 95.9% of list price, and moved in 76 days. Active listings were sitting roughly 38 days longer than the ones that closed.
The gap wasn't about location. It was about condition. Homes with updated kitchens, baths, flooring, and major systems moved faster and closer to list. Homes that still needed work sat, regardless of where they fell in the broader pricing average. Zillow's index for the wider island, updated through May 2026, showed an average home value of $903,266, essentially flat year over year. Read alongside the condition data, the flat average isn't telling you the market is calm. It's telling you the market has split into two speeds, and the listing price alone won't tell you which speed a given house is moving at.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to join The Landings Golf & Athletic Club if I buy a home on the island? No. Club membership is separate from home ownership and from Landings Association dues. In practice, most buyers who choose Skidaway Island for the golf, tennis, dining, and wellness amenities do join, because that's what the community is built around.
Can I rent out a home I buy on Skidaway Island? A 2014 covenant restricts rentals to residential use only. Timeshare, fractional, and hotel-style arrangements are prohibited, as is renting less than the full dwelling. There is no short-term rental income model available here the way there is in some other coastal Georgia markets.
Where do I get the actual current Association dues before I make an offer? Request the figure in writing directly from The Landings Association rather than relying on a listing sheet. With the 2027-2029 assessment cycle still unresolved as of this writing, get the most current information available before you finalize your numbers.
If you're comparing Skidaway Island against another Savannah-area neighborhood and trying to work out what the real annual cost of ownership looks like, not just the listing price, Oliver Group can walk through the full picture with you before you write an offer, not after. And if you already own here and want to know what today's numbers mean for your equity, request a Home Valuation and we'll build it around the same details that actually move a Skidaway Island sale.
