A buyer runs the numbers on a Forest Highlands listing the way anyone would: purchase price, down payment, mortgage payment, done. Then the closing statement arrives and there is a line item north of six figures that never showed up on the listing sheet, never appeared in the mortgage pre-approval, and rarely gets mentioned until the buyer is already deep into escrow.
That line item is the New Owner Capital Contribution, and for 2026 it runs $115,750. It is not a typo, not an optional add-on, and not something a buyer's agent can negotiate away. Every home in Forest Highlands carries a mandatory, bundled club membership, and every new owner pays to activate it. The number matters less on its own than what it reveals: in this particular neighborhood, the fee attached to ownership has been rising at a pace that has quietly outrun almost everything else people watch when they think about market conditions here.
What actually lands on the closing statement
Forest Highlands Golf Club structures membership differently than most private communities near Scottsdale and Phoenix. There is no separate golf initiation, no standalone social tier, no menu of membership levels to shop between. Buying the house buys the membership, in full, automatically. According to the club's own community information page, a 2026 purchase brings three one-time charges:
| Fee | 2026 Amount |
|---|---|
| New Owner Capital Contribution | $115,750 |
| Membership transfer fee | $3,000 |
| Utility transfer fee (if a home exists on the lot) | $5,500 |
| Total one-time cost at closing | $124,250 |
That total sits on top of the purchase price, and it arrives before the first monthly statement ever gets mailed. Once ownership transfers, the ongoing bill is $1,525 a month, split into $1,280 for operations and membership and $245 into a capital reserve fund earmarked for future repair and replacement of clubhouse and course infrastructure.
For context on what that monthly number buys: two 18-hole courses, two clubhouses, two pools, a spa, tennis and pickleball courts, and a full calendar of family programming, all with no dining minimums, no service charge, and no tipping required. It is a genuinely all-in structure. The question a buyer actually needs answered is not whether the amenities justify the dues. It is why the entry fee has moved so fast.
A fee that has climbed faster than the club's own history predicts
Forest Highlands has published enough of its own numbers over the years to trace exactly how this fee has moved. In 2021, the capital contribution stood at $55,125. By 2023 it had nearly doubled to $100,000. By 2025 it reached $110,250. The 2026 figure of $115,750 puts the five-year increase at roughly 110 percent, an average pace of about 16 percent a year.
That increase was not an accident of the market catching up. It was a decision. In a board communication to members explaining the strategy behind raising the fee, the leadership was direct about the reasoning:
"Forest Highlands isn't the place to be because of our unusually low NOCC fee."
The board's own letter argued that a modest entry fee had been actively discouraging serious buyers from taking the community seriously, and that raising it would bring Forest Highlands in line with what it called "other high level clubs." The same letter noted that the fee had also been kept artificially low relative to the value of amenities the club had already built, including clubhouse renovations completed in 2015. In other words, the fee increases are not simply tracking inflation or home values. They are a club deliberately repricing itself upward.
Dues have moved even faster than the club's own average suggests
Forest Highlands' governing documents cap annual dues increases at 20 percent and note that, over the past 35 years, actual increases have averaged closer to 5 percent a year, a figure the club cites as evidence of financial discipline. The recent numbers do not match that pattern. Monthly dues stood at $1,045 in 2022. By 2026 they had reached $1,525, a jump of nearly 46 percent in four years. Compounding the club's own stated long-run average of 5 percent a year over that same four-year stretch would have produced dues closer to $1,270, not $1,525.
That gap is worth sitting with. It does not mean the club has broken any rule. Every increase has stayed inside the 20 percent annual ceiling. It means the past four years have been an outlier stretch relative to the club's own 35-year track record, and a buyer relying on that longer-term average to estimate what dues will look like five years from now would be working from the wrong baseline.
How that compares to the other Flagstaff golf clubs nearby
Forest Highlands is not the only private golf community in the Flagstaff area, and the contrast with its neighbors sharpens the picture. Flagstaff Ranch currently charges a one-time, non-refundable capital contribution of $44,000, with monthly dues of $750 that include access to both courses and clubhouses, minus cart fees. Pine Canyon takes a different approach entirely: its base HOA starts around $225 a month, and golf membership is optional, sold separately with a choice between a higher refundable initiation fee and a lower non-refundable one, so a buyer who does not want golf can opt out of that cost altogether.
Forest Highlands offers no such option. Every buyer pays the full capital contribution regardless of whether they play golf, use the tennis courts, or ever set foot in either clubhouse. That bundling is part of what keeps the club financially strong, with no long-term debt and a member equity position the club describes as one of the healthiest among private clubs in the region. It is also why Forest Highlands now sits meaningfully above its closest local comparables on entry cost, a gap that has widened as the fee has climbed roughly 16 percent a year while nearby clubs have not moved at the same rate.
Why the median price is the least reliable number in this neighborhood
Buyers researching Forest Highlands home prices will run into a wide spread depending on where they look. One portal's July 2026 figures put the median sale price at $2,525,000 with an average sale price of $2,709,052 across a range running from $1,595,000 to $5,500,000. A separate home value estimate for the same neighborhood puts the typical value closer to $1,381,782, down slightly over the past year. Those two numbers are not measuring the same thing. One reflects actual closed sales in a given month. The other is a modeled estimate across every home in the area, whether it is currently for sale or not.
The bigger issue is volume. Forest Highlands sees a limited number of closings in any given year, and when a market that small only trades a few dozen homes annually, the median and average prices can swing hard from one quarter to the next depending on which specific estates happen to sell. A single $5 million closing or a single $1.6 million closing can move the reported median more than it would in a market with hundreds of transactions.
The capital contribution fee does not have that problem. It is set by the club, published, and applied uniformly to every buyer regardless of which house they close on. For anyone trying to actually budget a Forest Highlands purchase, that fixed number is a far more stable planning figure than a median price that can shift meaningfully based on a handful of sales.
What this means when structuring an offer
The practical takeaway is straightforward. Anyone shaping an offer on a Forest Highlands property should build the full $124,250 in one-time club costs into the closing budget from the start, on top of standard closing costs and the down payment, rather than treating it as a surprise line item to absorb later. The monthly $1,525 should be underwritten the same way a mortgage payment is, since it is a fixed monthly obligation regardless of how much the home appreciates. And because the fee has moved well ahead of its own historical average over the past four years, buyers planning to hold the property for the long term should assume future increases are more likely to track the recent pace than the club's cited 35-year average.
A few questions worth asking before you write an offer
Does the capital contribution fee ever come back to you? Not automatically. The one exception in the club's own materials involves a Special Membership, a standalone option priced separately from a property purchase, where the full amount paid can be credited toward the New Owner Capital Contribution if the buyer purchases a Forest Highlands property within two years of activating the special membership.
Who controls how much dues can rise each year? The Board of Directors approves annual dues increases as part of the yearly budget process, and no membership vote is required for a standard increase, as long as it stays within the 20 percent annual cap set by the governing documents. Capital improvement assessments are treated differently and require a two-thirds vote of the membership to pass.
How long is the golf season? The two courses run from the first weekend of May through the last weekend of October. Dining, the spa, tennis, and winter recreation programming continue through the colder months, so the monthly dues cover a fuller calendar than the golf season alone suggests.
Buying into a neighborhood like Forest Highlands is as much about understanding the mechanics behind the price as it is about the home itself. If you are weighing a purchase here, or trying to figure out what a comparable move in Scottsdale or the Valley might actually cost once every fee is on the table, Valley Luxury Group can walk through the real numbers with you before you write an offer, not after you have already signed one.
