Name: Why Americans Keep Moving Into Gated Communities
Uploaded: 2025-07-31T00:18:47.000Z
Duration: 8 min 49 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Florida is kind of the land of gated communities.

People that are buying in Florida, they want the ease of living.

They want to live in paradise without all the maintenance.

Lindsey Tronalone is a realtor in Palm Beach County, Florida, a hub for luxury real estate.

The area also boasts dozens of gated communities.

Others have multi-million dollar mansions.

You're not going to pay $225,000 for a Gulf membership and not be using it.

Gated communities have been popular in the U.S. for decades, especially in warmer states like Florida, the Southwest or California.

They attract retirees, golfers and growing families and recently, young professionals too.

While gated communities are quite varied, they all offer privacy and a sense of exclusivity at a premium.

The whole point of creating HOAs and possibly gating is to create that location premium.

You're essentially creating this brand, this marketing that this is a desirable place to live and that we will maintain it that way.

But there are some drawbacks, like high homeowners association and membership fees, as well as restrictive policies.

You're paying premium for living in a homogenous environment.

So why are gated communities so popular in the U.S.?

CNBC toured three gated communities in Florida to learn more.

The practice of gating and walling cities is as old as city building itself.

Yet the modern-day gated communities started spreading in U.S. suburbs in the 60s as violent crimes rose.

Between 1975 and 1980, about 400,000 retirees moved to Florida seeking lower taxes and better weather.

Gated communities were developed to meet their needs.

As years passed, they continued to evolve.

After the Great Recession, being associated with exclusivity and luxury didn't really work well for their business model.

Gated communities have increasingly been focusing on marketing themselves as more middle class, average American communities.

We've got families that want to live in the gated communities because they're zoned for A-rated schools.

Data on the exact number of gated communities in the U.S. is limited, and the Census Bureau groups anything in a secured space together.

That includes trailer parks and public housing.

What we do know is that the number has been increasing for decades.

In other countries, especially the developing world with higher rates of violent crimes, safety is the main draw of a gated community.

I think it's a little bit less tied to an actual need for security and more to control access to the community, maybe to restrict access to amenities that are there for the residents.

This community, Bay Reach in Lake Park, Florida, has been around since the 80s.

There are currently six properties up for sale, including one of Lindsay's listings at $419,000 for a two-bedroom unit.

This is a two-bedroom, two-bath, just under 1,000 square feet.

It also comes with a 30-foot boat slip and a one-car garage.

Just over seven miles away is PGA National and its six golf courses.

There's also a hotel, spa, pool and dozens of other amenities.

Anything from a $200,000 condo to a $2 million estate.

And as of late June 2025, the community had 116 public listings.

What you're seeing behind me here is the main clubhouse pool.

You've also got at least three full-service restaurants here.

Frenchman's Reserve, around five miles northeast of PGA, is one of the most high-end gated communities in the area, open only to residents and their guests.

The average home here sells for about $3.9 million.

These are typically going to be either full-time residents or second homes for the person who's using them or third homes or fourth homes.

There are more specific luxury amenities, I would say, in my opinion, in Frenchman's Reserve.

So not just your pool, your tennis court, you know, your pickleball court.

They also have an on-site spa, a hair salon, a nail salon.

They've got a full 24-7 weight room with personal trainers.

Nationally, homes in gated communities are on average about 5 to 10 percent more expensive than homes in non-gated neighborhoods in the same area.

This number can be 15 to 20 percent on the highest ends.

But that's not considering the additional fees that come with living in these communities.

Every gated community has an HOA that collects monthly fees and facilitates upgrades.

Yet it can also dictate things like the color of the building, the of your house, or how many cars can be parked on the street.

People who would not be a good fit for a gated community are people that don't like to be told what to do with their property.

HOA fees for the three communities CNBC visited range according to upkeep and amenities.

Every HOA is different, but in the well-maintained popular ones, that's why people keep coming back.

That's why homes are selling off market quickly, because people want to live there because they know their investment is going to go the distance there.

This home at Frenchman's Reserve sold in 2020 for $1.4 million.

It is now in the market for about $3.6 million.

That's about a 5 percent higher appreciation rate than the national average.

That's why people are paying to live here is to have the golf and the spa and the kids club and the, you know, on-call concierge style service.

Aside from HOA fees, there are also membership fees, which can be tiered, like at PGA.

At Frenchman's Reserve, membership is mandatory and costs between $115,000 and $225,000.

And there are additional fees beyond that.

While not always the main reason why an American seeks out a gated community, security is a defining feature.

Some gates are manned, while others are not.

If you're going to pay an HOA, do you perceive that it's for something that's of value to you?

If the HOA is only for some gated entrance with a guard who checks people in and out and there's no other amenity, that might start to opt out some people for whom that's not really a value.

HOA rules around renting make it hard to turn most of these homes into investment properties.

After COVID, a lot of gated communities in Palm Beach County put strict limits in place.

If you're someone who wants to rent, maybe wants to do an Airbnb option, you cannot do that in a gated community, can't do it in an HOA.

One common critique is that gated communities can be isolating.

There's a lot of people that say, yeah, I don't I don't want to live in a country club community or behind a gate or behind a wall, or I want my kids to meet people from other backgrounds or I want to go to the community pool and not have my own so that they meet kids.

We're really seeing a priority set on gathering and making it an environment that invites people to come hang out and enjoy it.

Even the older communities are turning over and kind of revamping their social settings, which I think is really kind of driving where the market is turning.

A recent trend has been coupling gated communities with master plan communities.

It's a way for developers to try to capture more of the market.

That has led to more economic and social diversity.

The pandemic sparked corporate migration from the Northeast to South Florida.

And as a result, a lot of young professionals continue to locate there.

And some have been buying into gated communities.

They're not usually in their house for that long.

And they want to just have the security of not having to worry about the upkeep, the maintenance.

You know, they're here to work and then move somewhere else.

While security is a big draw for some, for others, it's the access to a community and to the amenities within the gate.

A lot of these communities are kind of turning towards this stay here.

Don't leave to go to dinner or drinks or gym or pool or, you know, we have it all right here.

Invite your friends, show them how great it is.

And let's make this a bubble that people want to be a part of.