Two homes closed in Windmark Beach the same week this July, both built by D.R. Horton, both on the original side of the neighborhood. One sold in 61 days at $621,000, a price and pace that beat the community's average. The other, a few streets over on Backwater Road, sat for 240 days before closing in cash at $518,581, 96 percent of its $539,900 list. Same builder. Same neighborhood. Same week. Wildly different outcomes.
If you have been staring at the median price on a portal search and trying to figure out what Windmark Beach actually costs, this is the gap that matters more than the median. The community-wide average of 109 days on market, the number most reports lead with, is not describing one market. It is blending two.
The 109-Day Average Is Hiding A Split Market
Over the 12 months ending in January 2026, Windmark Beach recorded roughly 90 closed home sales, a pace of 7 to 8 per month that made it one of the more active residential pockets on the Forgotten Coast. The average time those homes spent on the market before selling worked out to 109 days. On its own, that number reads as a mildly patient market. Buyers take a few months to decide, sellers price reasonably, deals get done.
But an average only tells you the midpoint of a distribution, not its shape. Pull the actual closings from the first week of July 2026 and the shape becomes obvious: homes are either moving in about two months or dragging past seven. There is very little in between.
| Home | Phase / Type | Days on Market | Sale vs. Original List |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horton resale, Original side, near Village Center | Original side | 61 days | Sold at $621,000, $422/sqft, faster than the community average |
| Horton resale, Backwater Rd, 2022 build | Original side | 240 days | Sold at $518,581 cash, 96% of its $539,900 list |
| Custom build, gated Phase 1, 2021 build | Phase 1 | Over 7 months | Sold at $1,250,000 cash, 83% of original $1,499,999 |
Two of these homes cleared in about two months near full value. One took the better part of a year and closed with a meaningful discount even after a cash offer. Blend results like these together across a full year and you land close to that 109-day figure, but none of these particular sellers actually experienced 109 days. Each one lived at an extreme.
This is not a one-week fluke either. Back in January 2026, one of the first Horton homes built in the neighborhood needed 168 days and four separate price reductions to close at 87 percent of its original $679,900 list. That same month, a different Horton resale, sold fully furnished on a private lot close to the Town Center, closed in just 44 days at 97 percent of its $590,000 list. Different month, same pattern: location and condition inside the neighborhood separate the quick sales from the slow ones far more than the calendar does.
Why The Builder Is Also The Competition
Here is the part that does not show up in a portal listing. D.R. Horton bought 64 lots in Windmark Beach back in 2018 and has been building steadily since, and the company is currently working through the Creekside section with new homes starting in the mid-$300s. That means at any given moment, a resale seller with a five-year-old Horton floor plan is not just competing against other resales. They are competing against a brand-new version of their own house, built by the same company, often with a builder incentive attached.
That dynamic cuts both ways. Even Horton's own current inventory does not sail through at full price. One of the newest models to close this July, a Lily from the builder's New Emerald series, went full list at $589,900, but only after a $60,000 price reduction along the way. It was the highest Horton sale of the week, and it still needed a cut to get there. The point is not that new construction always wins. The point is that the builder is constantly resetting where the price ceiling actually sits, and every resale in the neighborhood is priced against that moving target whether the seller realizes it or not.
That is why the fast sales above shared something in common beyond luck. The July sale sat close to the Village Center, and the January sale was fully furnished on a private lot near the Town Center. Each gave a buyer a reason to skip the builder's newer, farther-out inventory rather than compare it head to head. The slower sales were comparable homes without that edge, and they had to erode price until the math worked against whatever Horton was currently offering down the street.
Phase 1 Runs On A Different Clock
The gated Phase 1 section predates the Horton era. Lot sales there opened back in 2007, before the builder purchase, and the homes are individually built rather than mass-produced. That segment does not compete against fresh builder inventory the way the original side does, but it pays for that independence with a much smaller buyer pool. A $1.5 million custom home only has so many qualified shoppers at any given time, which is a large part of why the sale above took more than seven months.
The closing price still tells a useful story. Eighty-three percent of an original $1,499,999 list, paid in cash, is not a distressed outcome. It is what a thin but serious buyer pool looks like when it finally shows up. Slow does not automatically mean weak in this part of the community. It means patient.
What This Means If You Are Comparing Homes
A Windmark Beach listing does not tell you which version of this market you are looking at unless you ask a few direct questions first.
- Which phase is the home in, and was it built by an individual lot owner or by the production builder
- Is D.R. Horton currently marketing a comparable floor plan within the same section, and at what base price
- Is the home furnished or rental-ready, since that condition alone was part of what separated the fastest sales from the slowest ones
- What incentives is the builder currently offering, because that is the real ceiling a resale is priced against, not last year's closed sales
- What is the actual HOA obligation in writing, since figures circulating for Windmark run from roughly $490 to $600 per quarter depending on the source and product type, and a buyer should confirm the current number rather than assume a flat figure
Windmark Beach was approved as a phased, master-planned community under the City of Port St. Joe's development order, and that phased structure is exactly why one part of the neighborhood can behave nothing like another. A buyer treating the whole community as a single market is working from an incomplete map.
What This Means If You Are Selling
If your home is an original-side Horton product, your competition is not just the resale down the block. It is whatever Horton is currently building and financing a few streets over. The sellers who moved quickly this summer won by giving buyers a reason to skip that comparison entirely, whether through furnishings, location inside the neighborhood, or aggressive early pricing. The sellers who took the long road eventually got there, but only after enough price cuts to match wherever the builder had reset the market.
If your home is a Phase 1 custom build, the calculus is different. Expect a longer runway simply because the buyer pool is smaller by design, and do not read a slow start as a pricing mistake the way you might on the original side.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Write An Offer
Does buying directly from the builder mean there is no room to negotiate? Not based on what closed this summer. Even a newly released model needed a $60,000 reduction before it found a buyer. Builder pricing moves, it just moves on the builder's schedule rather than a private seller's.
Is a home that has sat for months automatically overpriced? In the original side of the community, often yes, especially if a comparable new build is sitting nearby. In Phase 1, not necessarily. A smaller buyer pool changes the timeline without changing the value.
Why do HOA figures for Windmark Beach seem inconsistent across sources? Dues appear to vary by phase and product type, with figures ranging from roughly $490 to $600 per quarter depending on where you look. Ask for the current assessment schedule in writing rather than relying on a number from a listing sheet or a third-party site.
None of this is legal or financial advice, and every figure here should be verified against current listing data and HOA documentation before you make a decision. Markets shift by the week in a community this active.
If you are trying to figure out which side of Windmark Beach's split market a specific address falls on, or what a comparable Horton model is currently listing for down the street, that is the kind of question Eli Duarte and the team answer daily for buyers working the Forgotten Coast from out of town. Request a free home valuation or local market guide and get a straight read on where a property actually sits before you write an offer.
