Two three-bedroom pool homes sit two doors apart in Reunion Resort. Same square footage, same builder, same year. One books solid through spring break and Fourth of July at rates that cover its mortgage twice over. The other sits half empty, even with a lower nightly rate and better reviews. The difference has nothing to do with décor or location. It comes down to a single line item that never shows up on the listing sheet: whether that specific property still carries Club membership.
If you're comparing Reunion to ChampionsGate, Storey Lake, or any other Central Florida resort community on price per square foot alone, you're missing the variable that actually determines what your money buys here.
Membership Lives With The House, Not The Buyer
Reunion Resort's Club membership costs $15,000 up front, plus Florida sales tax, whether you choose Gold or Platinum tier. Gold gets you the pools, the water park, and the fitness facilities. Platinum adds golf privileges across all three signature courses. That much is a straightforward menu choice.
The part that catches buyers off guard is what happens when a property loses its membership or never had one. Under current Club policy, a subsequent purchaser of a property without an existing membership cannot obtain one for that property. When an owner sells, the membership reverts to the Club and is only reissued to that home's new owner if the home already carried it. A home that lost its membership stays locked out, permanently, regardless of who buys it next or how much they're willing to pay.
That's not a footnote. It's the mechanism that splits Reunion's housing stock into two markets that look identical from the street. A membership-attached home can offer guests full access to the water park, the golf courses, and the resort-wide pool network. A non-membership home is boxed into whatever pools its own HOA covers and nothing else. For a family booking a week near Disney, water park access is often the deciding factor between two otherwise comparable listings. Owners who track their own portfolios report that homes with full Club access consistently outperform those without it in both occupancy and nightly rate.
So before you get attached to a listing photo, the first question isn't "how much is the HOA." It's "does this specific address still have membership, and has it always had it."
The HOA Number Depends Entirely On Which Reunion You're Buying
Reunion isn't managed by one HOA. It's a patchwork of associations, each covering a different product type, and the dues swing meaningfully depending on where the property sits.
| Property Type | Monthly HOA (as of March 2026) |
|---|---|
| The Villas (Cabana Court, Whisper Way, Sunset View, Sandy Ridge) | around $895 |
| Spectrum+ condos | $813, or $930 with elevator access |
| Spectrum+ townhomes | around $436 |
These are two of roughly a dozen distinct HOA brackets across the resort, so confirm the current assessment with the specific neighborhood's management company before you write an offer. A Master HOA, run by Artemis Lifestyles, covers resort-wide infrastructure like shared roadways, ponds, and stormwater systems. Individual neighborhood HOAs, including Greystone Management for The Villas, layer additional dues on top for exterior maintenance, internet and cable, and access to their own pool clusters.
The HOA number alone doesn't tell you what you're buying. A $895 monthly fee in The Villas buys walkability to the water park and Greystone-managed pools. A Spectrum+ townhome at $436 buys a different set of amenities entirely, plus a separate Spectrum Club dues line most buyers don't see until they're already under contract. Comparing two Reunion listings by HOA cost without checking what that HOA actually unlocks is like comparing two gym memberships without checking which one includes the pool.
The Second Tax Bill Almost Nobody Budgets For
Reunion carries two Community Development Districts, Reunion East and Reunion West, that show up on the Osceola County property tax bill as a non-ad valorem assessment separate from the home's regular property tax. These CDD assessments fund the roads, utilities, drainage, and landscaping built when the resort was developed. Each assessment has two pieces: a fixed debt service portion that pays down the original construction bonds, and an operations and maintenance portion that can move up or down annually.
This is why property tax bills at Reunion often run higher than a buyer expects compared to a similarly priced home outside a CDD-funded community. The infrastructure cost didn't disappear. It got shifted from the original lot price into an annual assessment that every subsequent owner keeps paying. Ask your title company or the county for the current CDD assessment on any specific parcel before closing, since it varies by district and lot size and isn't always broken out clearly on a listing sheet.
Who Actually Collects Your Rental Tax
Short-term rental owners at Reunion owe a combined 13.5% on every booking: 6% Florida state sales tax plus a 1.5% Osceola County discretionary surtax, on top of a separate 6% county Tourist Development Tax. That much is standard for the market. What trips people up is who's responsible for sending it in.
According to the Osceola County Tax Collector's own office, the county is not contracted with Airbnb, VRBO, or any other third-party booking platform for tax collection. The person receiving the rent is responsible for remitting the tax, regardless of where the payment exchange takes place. If you're assuming the platform handles your Tourist Development Tax the way it might in some other Florida counties, that assumption will cost you here. You need your own active TDT account with the county, and if you take any direct bookings outside a platform, you're collecting and filing all of it yourself.
Layer that on top of the state DBPR vacation rental license, required for any property rented more than three times a year for stays under six months, and the paperwork adds up fast. None of it is unusual for an experienced Central Florida STR investor. It's just easy to underprice if you're building your first pro forma off a portal median price and a rough guess at taxes.
What This Actually Changes About Your Comparison
Reunion sits inside Osceola County's short-term rental overlay, one of the more STR-friendly zoning setups in the region, and current guidance describes the resort as having no minimum stay and no rental restriction at the county level, unlike neighboring Celebration, which prohibits short-term rentals outright, or St. Cloud, which limits them to hotel and motel zones. That zoning flexibility is real and it's a genuine advantage over plenty of other Central Florida markets.
But zoning flexibility only sets the ceiling. The membership status of the specific parcel, the sub-community's HOA rate, the CDD assessment on that lot, and your own tax registration determine whether you actually hit that ceiling. Two buyers can purchase homes at the same price point in the same month and end up with entirely different investment outcomes because one did the underwriting on membership status and the other assumed the listing price told the whole story.
If you're shopping Reunion against ChampionsGate or Storey Lake, run the comparison on total carrying cost and confirmed amenity access, not on sticker price. That's the number that actually predicts your occupancy calendar.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Offer
Can I add Club membership later if the home I'm buying doesn't have it? Under current Club policy, no. Membership stays with a property only if it already has one, and a home that lost it or never had it can't be assigned a new one for that address, regardless of who buys it.
If Airbnb collects my Florida sales tax, does that cover my county Tourist Development Tax too? Not automatically. Osceola County's Tax Collector states directly that the county does not have a collection agreement with Airbnb, VRBO, or similar platforms, so you need your own registered TDT account and you're responsible for remitting it yourself for any bookings the platform doesn't cover.
Is the HOA fee the same across all of Reunion? No. Reunion has roughly a dozen distinct HOA brackets by property type and neighborhood. The Villas run about $895 a month, while Spectrum+ dues range from around $436 for a townhome to $930 for a condo with elevator access, as of March 2026. Confirm the current rate for the specific address with that neighborhood's management company.
Numbers like these change with HOA votes, county ordinance updates, and Club policy revisions, so treat every figure here as a starting point for your own verification, not a locked-in guarantee.
If you're weighing a Reunion purchase against other Central Florida resort communities, The Werner Group can walk through the membership status, HOA structure, and CDD assessment on a specific address before you write an offer. Get Your Free Home Valuation to see where your current property stands, or reach out directly to start comparing Reunion against the rest of the Orlando resort corridor.
