Fox Hill, Longmont: The Golf-Course Premium You Don't Own
In Fox Hill the premium buys a golf-course view, not the course. It's private, for-profit land that foreclosed once, the 'included' membership is a one-year social comp with golf billed separately, and 'Fox Hill' now blends new attached flats with the original course homes. Here's how to read it.
Fox Hill is an in-city golf-course neighborhood on the east side of Longmont, about two miles from downtown. The premium buys a view of the course, not the course: it's privately owned land that a club already lost to foreclosure once, so its future is an owner's call, not a resident's. Understand what the premium actually buys and Fox Hill can be a good move-up home, though most of its detached stock actually sells below the $800,000 move-up floor.
Most golf-course neighborhoods are sold as one clean idea: green space out your back door, a club to walk to, a view that reads as money. Fox Hill in Longmont has all of that. It also has a quieter fact that a listing photo will never show you, and it is the fact that decides whether the premium is worth paying. The golf course you are paying to look at is a private business someone else owns, and almost nothing about its future is promised to the homeowners who paid up to sit beside it.
That is not a knock on Fox Hill. It is a pleasant, low-density, in-city subdivision with a real draw. But be clear-eyed on price before the setting sells you: most of the detached homes here trade below the $800K to $1.5M move-up band, roughly in the $600,000s to high $700,000s, and only a thin slice of the largest, best-positioned frontage homes reaches into the low $800,000s and up. If you are shopping the middle or top of the move-up band, Fox Hill is a handful of specific homes, not a neighborhood full of them. The rest of this is a caution about what you are buying when you buy "on the golf course," because the honest answer is a view, an adjacency, and a set of costs, not a piece of protected land. This guide lays out what the premium buys, what the frontage actually costs, why "membership included" means less than it sounds, and why the word "Fox Hill" now covers two neighborhoods that share nothing but a sign.
What you're actually paying the Fox Hill premium for
A golf-course premium at Fox Hill buys three things: an open view, adjacency to the club, and a specific set of ongoing costs and risks. What it does not buy is the land. The course is private property you look at, not open space you own or that anyone has promised to keep open. So the smart way to weigh a Fox Hill frontage home is as a trade, not a trophy: price the view and the access against the easement liability, the narrower resale pool, and the fact that the amenity's future is an owner's decision.
Here is the whole decision in one place. The left column is why buyers reach for a frontage lot; the right is the fine print that rides along with it.
| What the fairway premium gets you | What you give up or take on for it |
|---|---|
| An open, green view and real distance to the next rooftop | A view on land you don't own and can't control |
| Adjacency to a walkable club with pool, tennis, and dining | Membership that is a separate, ongoing bill, not deeded to the house |
| A low-traffic, low-density, in-city setting close to downtown | Recorded easements: ball flight over the lot, golfers entering to retrieve balls |
| A distinctive address buyers seek out by name | A narrower resale pool that sells to golf-minded buyers |
| The feel of permanent green space behind you | An amenity whose dues, access, and existence are the owner's call, not yours |
A trade-sheet for a fairway lot, not a valuation. Easement and liability specifics live in the recorded plat and covenants, verify them there. Sources below.
The item that surprises people most is the last one, so it gets its own section next. The one that costs them money most often is the easement line, and it gets the section after that.
The course is private, for-profit land, and it has changed hands once already
The Fox Hill course is not a park and not protected open space. It is private, for-profit land, and a member-owned club here failed financially and was foreclosed on in 2011 before a private ownership group bought it. Since then it has been run as a business, later dropping "Country" from its name. That history is the point: the green space behind a Fox Hill home stays green because an owner chooses to keep operating a golf course there, not because any law or easement requires it. The premium is a bet on that choice continuing.
When a buyer pays extra to back a golf course, the unspoken assumption is that the course is a fixture, as permanent as a mountain or a city park. At Fox Hill, that assumption has already been tested. The club was built in 1972 alongside the subdivision, with golfers first teeing off the next year. Decades later, as a member-owned operation, it ran into financial trouble and fell into foreclosure at the end of 2010. A private ownership group bought the course and clubhouse in early 2011 and has run it privately ever since, investing in the facilities and, at some point, quietly retiring the word "Country" from the name.
Sit with what that means for a homeowner. The amenity you paid a premium for is a private enterprise with a balance sheet, and its fate rides on that balance sheet, not on your deed. A private owner can raise dues, change access rules, sell the operation, or, in the hardest scenario, decide the land is worth more as something other than a golf course. The fairways are not dedicated open space. No public park protection and no conservation easement appears on record for them. That is the sharp contrast with a place like Wonderland Lake in Boulder, where the green space behind the homes is charter-protected public open space that cannot simply be built out. At Fox Hill, the same feeling of permanence rests on an owner's business decision, which is a very different instrument, and on this course that instrument has already failed once.
This is not a prediction that the course will close. It has private owners who have put money into it, and a working golf course is usually worth more as a golf course than as a redevelopment fight. It is a caution about how to price the view. Pay for the home, the setting, and the lifestyle as they are today. Do not pay a premium as if the green space were guaranteed to your grandchildren, because nobody has guaranteed it. And before you write, verify the course parcel's current zoning and any recorded restriction with the City of Longmont, so you are pricing the real protection, which is whatever is actually on record, not the protection you assumed from the grass.
What golf-course frontage actually costs
Frontage at Fox Hill usually carries a price premium over an interior lot, and it usually carries recorded easements too: ball flight over your yard and a golfer's right to step onto the lot to retrieve a ball. Under Colorado's general assumption-of-risk approach, routine errant-ball damage tends to land on the homeowner, not the golfer or the club. Frontage also resells to a narrower slice of buyers. These are not deal-breakers. They are line items to read in the plat and price into the offer, not discover after closing.
The frontage lots are the ones people fall in love with, and they are the ones with the fine print. On most golf-course subdivisions, the plat and covenants grant the course a couple of easements over the frontage lots: an easement for golf balls to fly over and land on the property, and an easement for golfers to enter the lot to retrieve them. Those are recorded rights that run with the land, and you take title subject to them.
The liability follows from the same logic. Colorado courts generally treat living on a golf hole as an assumption of the risk that comes with it, which in practice means routine errant-ball damage, a cracked window, a dinged car, a chip in the stucco, often ends up being the homeowner's problem to fix or insure against, not the golfer's to pay and not the club's. Whether a specific golfer or the club can be held responsible in a specific case depends on the recorded documents and the facts, and it is a question for a real estate attorney, not a listing sheet. The practical takeaway is simpler: a frontage lot on an active hole comes with a low but real running cost that an interior lot does not, and rising insurance deductibles in Colorado can make small claims not worth filing.
Resale is the last piece. A golf-course-frontage home sells beautifully to a buyer who wants exactly that, and to a narrower pool than a comparable interior home. In a hot market the distinctiveness is an asset. In a slow one, a home priced on its frontage premium is waiting for the specific buyer who values it. That is a reason to buy the frontage at the right price, not to assume the premium is guaranteed back on the way out. And not all frontage is equal: a lot on the slice side of a par-4 landing zone gets pelted, while one behind a green or along a straight hole rarely does, so walk the specific lot on a busy weekend, see where you sit relative to the tee and the landing zone, and treat any protective netting already installed on a house as a tell that the lot takes hits. Read the plat before you write, because the easements are part of the house.
"Membership included" is a one-year social comp, and golf is a separate bill
Membership at The Fox Hill Club is not deeded to any Fox Hill home. Where "included membership" does appear, in Landmark's new Highlands at Fox Hill, it is a complimentary one-year social membership that converts to paid dues after year one. Social is not golf. Golf is a separate, higher membership tier the club prices on top. And because the club is privately owned rather than member-equity, the tiers, the dues, and the access rules are the owner's to set. Treat any membership as an ongoing cost you confirm in writing, not a feature of the house.
"Membership included" is one of the most misread phrases in a golf-community listing, so read it slowly. Membership at The Fox Hill Club is a contract with the club, not a right that comes with your deed. The one place an included membership shows up is Landmark's new Highlands homes, and there it is a complimentary one-year social membership: pool, tennis, social events, for the first year, after which it converts to paid dues. And because it is a builder incentive to the first buyer, a resale Highlands buyer may not receive it at all, so confirm it in the contract rather than assuming it conveys.
Two words in that sentence do the work. "Social," because social is not golf. The club runs golf memberships and social memberships as separate tiers, and if you bought here to play, the included social comp does not get you onto the course. Golf is its own, higher-priced membership billed on top. And "one-year," because the comp is an introductory year, not a permanent benefit. In year two you are paying full dues or you are not a member.
Underneath both is the ownership fact from the last section. The Fox Hill Club is a privately owned, for-profit club, not a member-equity club the residents collectively control. That is not unusual, and it is not sinister, but it means the menu, the prices, and the rules are the owner's to change. If club access is part of why you are paying a Fox Hill premium, get the current tier structure and dues from the club in writing before you write your offer, and price the golf tier, not just the social comp, into your real monthly number. This is the same trap a buyer hits at TPC Colorado in Berthoud, where the club is a financial entity entirely separate from the deed and the access carry appears on no statement your lender ever sees. Fox Hill's version is smaller, but the lesson is identical: the club is not the HOA, and membership is not the house.
Why "Fox Hill" now names two different products
"Fox Hill" used to mean one thing: the detached golf-course subdivision built from the 1970s on. It now also means Highlands at Fox Hill, a new Landmark development of attached flats and townhomes on the same land, with a separate HOA and a much lower entry price. The two share a name and nothing else that matters to a buyer, which is why a single "Fox Hill median" is meaningless. Blend a new attached flat with an established course home and the average lands on neither, and it hides the exact premium a course buyer is trying to understand.
For most of its life, "Fox Hill" meant the original detached subdivision: single-family homes, many of them 2,000-plus square feet, built from the mid-1970s through the mid-2000s in a low-density layout around the course. It is not one HOA, though. The detached homes span several filings, roughly 280 across Filing I and Filings II and III, governed by more than one homeowners association, at least one of them voluntary, so the rules and the dues that apply depend on which filing a specific home sits in. That is the established product here, and on price it sits mostly below the $800K to $1.5M band, with only its largest and best frontage homes reaching into the low $800,000s and above.
Then Landmark Homes built Highlands at Fox Hill on the same ground: a new development of attached flats and townhomes, with its own separate HOA covering exterior maintenance and utilities, and no metro district indicated on the builder's materials (worth confirming against the county tax bill before you rely on it). The flats start around $350,000; the townhomes run higher; and they are a genuinely different purchase from an established detached course home, in price, in product, in maintenance, and in who buys them.
Both are now "Fox Hill." That is why a blended neighborhood price is worse than no price at all: it hides the one distinction that decides your number.
One name, two products, no usable median
"Fox Hill" now names two unlike products, and that name collision is exactly why a single "Fox Hill median" would mislead you. It spans new attached Highlands flats that start around $350,000 and established detached course homes that ask into the $800,000s and up (asking prices, not sold, cited only to show the spread). A $350,000 flat and a low-$800,000s course home don't share a market to average, so a single "Fox Hill median" prices no listing you'd actually write on, while erasing the frontage premium a course buyer is specifically asking about. For a town-level backdrop, Longmont's single-family sold median runs in the low $600,000s; the current, dated figure lives in our monthly Longmont housing market report, re-verified every month. The number that actually matters, what a specific Fox Hill home is worth, comes from comparable sales of the same product type and lot position, not from a neighborhood average. Ask us to run it on the exact home.
How to read a Fox Hill home before you write an offer
Diligence on a Fox Hill home is different from a normal Longmont subdivision, because the amenity, the easements, and the product type carry the risk. Confirm what's actually behind the lot and its zoning, read the frontage easements in the plat, get the club's current dues and tiers in writing, pin down which product and HOA you're in, and price the specific home with real comps rather than a blended median. Jurisdiction is the easy part here: Fox Hill is inside the City of Longmont, so city water and sewer, not a well-and-septic question.
Verify what's behind the lot, and its zoning
Confirm the home actually fronts the course, then pull the course parcel's current zoning and any recorded restriction with the City of Longmont. You are checking whether the green space has any protection on record or is simply private land in current use as a course. Price the view for what is actually recorded, not for what the grass implies.
Read the frontage easements in the plat and covenants
On a frontage lot, get the recorded plat and CC&Rs and find the ball-flight and ball-retrieval easements, any cart-path or setback provisions, and any covenant restricting fence height or type to preserve course sightlines (a common surprise if you were planning to fence for a dog or kids). These run with the land and you take title subject to them. If liability for errant-ball damage matters to you, have a real estate attorney read the documents, because the answer lives in them.
Get the club's current dues and tiers in writing
If club access is part of the reason you're buying, contact The Fox Hill Club directly for the current membership tiers and dues, and confirm whether golf or only social is what any "included" year covers. Ask specifically about any initiation fee or bond and whether golf membership has a waitlist or cap, not just the monthly dues, because a five-figure initiation or a two-year golf wait changes the math. Price the golf tier, not the social comp, into your real monthly cost. The club sets these, and they change.
Pin down which product, which HOA, and which county
Confirm whether you're buying an established detached home in the original subdivision (and which of its filings and HOAs governs it) or an attached home in Highlands at Fox Hill. They have different HOAs, dues, and rules. Confirm any metro-district or PID line against the county assessor's tax bill rather than the builder's brochure, and check the county itself, since this pocket sits near the Boulder-Weld line. On the attached product, pull the HOA budget, reserve study, and special-assessment history and read the master insurance policy before you rely on the financing.
Settle jurisdiction, then price the specific home
Fox Hill is inside the City of Longmont, which settles the city-versus-county question our guide to moving to Longmont covers in full. Then skip the blended "Fox Hill median" and price the actual home against genuinely comparable sales of the same product type and lot position, using the Longmont market report for the town-level backdrop.
Run those five and the premium stops being a story and starts being a number you can defend. From there it comes down to fit, and Fox Hill is a clear yes for some buyers and a clear no for others.
Fox Hill tends to fit you if
- You want an open, green, low-density setting inside the city, and you value the view and the club atmosphere for their own sake, today.
- You'll actually use a club membership, and you've priced the golf tier, not just the first-year social comp, into your budget.
- You're comfortable reading a frontage lot's easements and pricing the premium as a trade rather than a guarantee.
It may give you pause if
- You're counting on the fairway staying a fairway, when nothing on record promises it: this is private, for-profit land a club already lost to foreclosure once.
- You want the golf but assumed "membership included" covered it, when the included year is social only.
- You want one number to plan around, and a "Fox Hill" address now spans a $350,000 flat and a $1M-plus course home, two markets under one name.
If a designed, walkable neighborhood is closer to what you're really after than a golf-course setting, Prospect New Town is Longmont's New Urbanist alternative, a different trade entirely, and Old Town Longmont is the walkable historic core if you'd rather buy character than a fairway. And if you're weighing golf communities specifically, Mariana Butte in Loveland is the municipal-course version of the same product-gradient question, priced on a very different amenity.
Frequently asked
Is the Fox Hill golf course protected open space, or could it be redeveloped?+
The Fox Hill course is private, for-profit land, not a public park or land under a conservation easement. No open-space protection appears on record for it, which means nothing about its status is guaranteed the way charter-protected open space is. A member-owned club here went through a bank foreclosure in 2011 and has been privately owned since, so the course's dues, its access, and its continued existence are an owner's business decision, not a residents' right. Before you pay a fairway premium, verify the parcel's current zoning and any recorded easement or covenant with the City of Longmont yourself.
Does buying a home in Fox Hill include a golf membership?+
No. Membership is not attached to any Fox Hill deed. The one place 'included membership' appears is Landmark's new Highlands at Fox Hill, where a new-build homeowner receives a complimentary one-year social membership to The Fox Hill Club (swimming, tennis, social events) that converts to paid dues after the first year. Social is not golf. Golf is a separate, higher-priced membership tier billed on top, and the club sets and changes those prices. Treat any membership as an ongoing cost you verify in writing, not a perk baked into the house.
Why won't you publish a median price for Fox Hill?+
Because 'Fox Hill' now names two very different products, and one median would describe neither. The established subdivision is detached single-family homes, many 2,000-plus square feet from the 1970s onward, most of which actually trade below the $800,000 move-up floor. The new Highlands at Fox Hill is attached flats and townhomes that start far lower. Blend a roughly $350,000 flat with a low-$800,000s course home (both asking, not sold) and you get a number that belongs to no listing on the market and erases the very premium a course buyer is asking about. We price the specific home against comparable sales instead.
Is Fox Hill in the City of Longmont or unincorporated county?+
Fox Hill sits inside the City of Longmont, roughly two miles east of downtown, so it takes city water, city sewer, and city services. That spares you the well-and-septic questions that come with the unincorporated pockets around Longmont, which our guide to moving to Longmont walks through. Boundaries still run by parcel, so confirm the specifics on the exact address you are considering.
What does golf-course frontage add, and what does it cost, at Fox Hill?+
Frontage buys the open view and the adjacency, and it usually carries a premium over an interior lot in the same subdivision. It also usually carries recorded easements in the plat or covenants: ball flight over your lot and a golfer's right to enter to retrieve a ball. Under Colorado's general assumption-of-risk approach, routine errant-ball damage often lands on the homeowner, not the golfer or the club. Frontage also sells to a narrower pool of buyers on resale. Who is actually liable in any specific case depends on the recorded documents and is a question for a real estate attorney, not a listing sheet. None of that is a reason to avoid a frontage home. It is a reason to read the plat, confirm it with counsel, and price the trade honestly.
What is the difference between Fox Hill and Highlands at Fox Hill?+
They share a name and a location and little else. Fox Hill is the original golf-course subdivision of detached single-family homes, spread across several filings (roughly 280 homes in all) and governed by more than one homeowners association, at least one of them voluntary, so confirm which filing and HOA govern the specific home. Highlands at Fox Hill is a newer Landmark Homes development of attached flats and townhomes on the same land, with its own separate HOA covering exterior maintenance and utilities, and no metro district indicated on the builder's materials (confirm that against the county tax bill). Different product, different HOA, different price, different buyer. Know which one a listing is in before you compare it to anything.
The bottom line
Fox Hill is a good in-city move-up neighborhood with a real amenity and a genuine draw. It is also a place where the premium is easy to misprice, because the thing you're paying extra for, the course, is private land you don't own, held by a for-profit club that has already been through a foreclosure, and the "included membership" is a one-year social comp with golf billed separately. Price the view, the club, and the setting for what they are today, read the frontage easements, confirm which of the two "Fox Hills" a listing is in, and buy the specific home on its own comps. Do that and the premium is a choice you made with your eyes open, not a story the grass told you.
Looking at a Fox Hill home?
Before you pay the fairway premium, we'll pull the course parcel's ownership and zoning status, read the frontage easements in the plat with you, and price the specific home against real comps for its product type and lot, not a blended neighborhood median.
Written by the True North Boulder team, a real-estate team at eXp Realty for move-up buyers across Boulder and the northern Front Range. Hire us and you'll sign a written buyer-agency agreement first, its fee and terms yours to set. On a golf-course street the first thing we do is pull what actually protects the amenity and read the frontage easements in the plat with you, so the premium is priced on the record, not on the grass. We make no promises about price; the figures get verified against current sources for the exact home.
Sources & data notes
- The Fox Hill Club: private golf and social club at 1400 E. Hwy 119, Longmont; 18-hole course built 1972, first play 1973 (Frank Hummel design). Golf memberships and social memberships are listed as separate tiers. The Fox Hill Club, membership.
- Ownership history: a member-owned club here fell into foreclosure (December 2010) and was acquired by a private ownership group in early 2011 (reported ~$3.9M), which has operated it privately since (a privately owned club, not member-equity) and later dropped "Country" from the name; reported membership has declined in recent years. Club + Resort Business. No conservation easement or public open-space protection was found on record for the course; verify current zoning and any recorded restriction with the City of Longmont.
- The original subdivision: the detached Fox Hill homes span several filings around the course, roughly 280 in all, governed by more than one homeowners association: Fox Hill Filing One (about 97 homes) and Fox Hill Filings II & III (185 dwellings, most 2,000-plus sq ft, built mid-1970s to ~2006, with a voluntary HOA established 1997); confirm which filing and HOA govern a specific home. The club is private and adjacent, separate from the HOAs. Fox Hill HOA Filings II & III · Fox Hill HOA Filing One.
- Highlands at Fox Hill (Landmark Homes): a newer development of attached flats and townhomes on the same land, with a separate HOA covering exterior maintenance and utilities (confirm the exact inclusions), and no metro district indicated on the builder's materials (confirm against the county tax bill); new-build homeowners receive a complimentary one-year social membership to The Fox Hill Club that converts to paid dues after year one (a first-owner builder incentive; a resale buyer may not receive it). Flats from around $350,000; townhomes roughly $535,000 and up (builder asking/base prices, not sold). Landmark Homes, Highlands at Fox Hill.
- Golf-course-frontage easements (ball flight over the lot and golfer entry to retrieve balls) are typically recorded in the plat/covenants and run with the land; Colorado generally applies an assumption-of-risk approach to living on a golf hole, so routine errant-ball damage often falls to the homeowner. These are general principles; the governing answer for any lot is in its recorded documents and is a question for a real estate attorney. Illustrative of the frontage trade, not legal advice.
- Town-level market backdrop: Longmont single-family sold median in the low $600,000s; townhome/condo is a separate, lower market. Figures are single-family, sold, city of Longmont, from the Colorado Association of REALTORS Local Market Update via LBAR, built on IRES data and published free each month. The current, dated figure and the deliberate refusal of a band-level breakout live in our monthly Longmont report. We do not publish a Fox Hill neighborhood median (two-product name collision) or any Fox Hill appreciation YoY (thin, mix-driven sub-market).
- Fox Hill is inside the City of Longmont (city water, sewer, services), roughly two miles east of downtown. Confirm the parcel specifics for any address.