A Summerlin resale package arrives with a master association fee and often a separate sub-association fee before a buyer even reaches the property tax bill. A comparable listing four or five miles north in Centennial Hills often arrives with one line, or none at all. Buyers cross-shopping the two markets tend to read that difference as noise around the real number, the sale price. It isn't. It's a second, recurring number that changes what the sale price actually bought.
Most explanations for why Summerlin costs more per square foot than Centennial Hills stop at prestige: better polish, more trails, a bigger name. That's true as far as it goes, but it skips the mechanism doing a lot of the work underneath it. Summerlin's premium is partly a subscription. Centennial Hills' discount is partly the absence of one.
The Fee Stack Hiding Behind the Median Price
Summerlin runs on three master associations, one each for Summerlin North, Summerlin South, and Summerlin West, plus a communitywide Summerlin Council that funds parks, pools, and recreational programming. Every Summerlin homeowner pays into whichever master association covers their section, and the Council's share is already folded into that number rather than billed separately.
Those master fees rose effective January 1, 2026, according to reporting from the Las Vegas Review-Journal: $74 a month in Summerlin North, $76 in Summerlin South, and $69 in Summerlin West, with the Council's portion increasing to $37 of that total. The community's own newsletter attributed the increase to a mix of costs, including "additional park and open space maintenance, growing insurance, added personnel and labor and utility costs."
That master fee is the floor, not the ceiling. Most Summerlin villages layer a separate sub-association fee on top, typically $40 to $100 a month in standard neighborhoods and $100 to $300 or more in gated enclaves. Some of the higher-end villages push well past that. And in villages built more recently, a Special Improvement District or Local Improvement District bond can show up as a separate line on the Clark County tax bill rather than the HOA statement, covering infrastructure that was financed rather than paid for upfront.
Nevada's disclosure law, codified in NRS 116, requires that all of this be itemized in the resale package a buyer receives before closing. The information is available. It just tends to arrive late enough in the process that buyers have already emotionally committed to the house.
What Centennial Hills Skips
Centennial Hills is not HOA-free as a rule, but it is structurally simpler in a lot of its tracts. New-construction communities like Skye Canyon and Providence operate under a single project HOA rather than a three-tier master-plus-village-plus-bond stack. Some builders active in the area's larger-lot product, the half-acre RV-friendly parcels that show up on the northwest edge of the valley, sell homes with no HOA membership at all.
That single layer, where it exists, tends to run modest. A recent cost-of-living breakdown for the neighborhood put typical Centennial Hills HOA dues at $75 to $200 a month for a median-priced home, a range that starts near the base Summerlin master fee before any village layer gets added.
The Square-Foot Math, Same Source, Different Months
Redfin's neighborhood data as of July 2026 puts Summerlin's median sale price at $642,000 over the trailing three months, at $323 a square foot, with homes selling in about 64 days. Centennial Hills, over the three months ending June 2026, posted a median sale price of $495,000 at $248 a square foot, selling in about 52 days with 1,063 homes closed that June, up from 1,042 the year before.
Run those two numbers against each other and the per-square-foot spread lands near $75. Other mid-2026 tallies show a wider gap, since the figure shifts with the closed-sales window and the slice of listings counted. The exact spread moves depending on which homes closed that month. The direction doesn't: Summerlin has cost more per square foot than Centennial Hills in every recent measurement, and a meaningful share of that premium is the fee stack sitting on top of the mortgage.
The Builder Incentives Widening the Gap This Year
Centennial Hills' new-construction corridor is active enough in 2026 that the gap on paper understates the gap in practice. Builders including Lennar, KB Home, Toll Brothers, Pulte, Woodside, and Richmond American are building across Skye Canyon, Providence, and the expanding Tule Springs frontier, with entry pricing starting in the $400,000s for homes with mountain views.
With mortgage rates elevated through 2026, these builders have been competing on incentives rather than sticker price. Rate buy-downs, either temporary or permanent, are showing up as the highest-impact offer at current rates. Closing-cost credits in the $10,000 to $40,000 range are common, usually routed through a builder's preferred lender. Design-center allowances of $15,000 to $50,000 toward upgrades show up most often on quick move-in inventory that builders want off the books.
None of that changes the recorded sale price a comp search will show. It changes what a buyer actually walks away paying, which is the number that matters when comparing effective cost across the two markets rather than list price alone.
Running Total Carrying Cost, Not Just List Price
| Centennial Hills | Summerlin | |
|---|---|---|
| Median sale price (3 mo., as of July 2026 / June 2026) | $495,000 | $642,000 |
| Price per square foot | $248 | $323 |
| Typical days on market | 52 | 64 |
| HOA structure | Often single-layer or none | Master (Council included) + village, sometimes + SID |
| Typical monthly HOA range | $75–$200 | $110–$370+ before any SID |
| 2026 builder incentives | Rate buy-downs, $10K–$40K closing credits, $15K–$50K design allowances | Not typically offered on resale inventory |
A buyer comparing a $500,000 home in each market isn't just comparing square footage. They're comparing a $75 to $200 monthly obligation against one that can run $110 to $370 or more before factoring in a possible SID bond, and against a builder incentive package on one side that isn't available on the other. Over a five or seven year hold, that gap compounds into real money that never shows up in the closing disclosure's headline number.
Which Buyer Fits Which Side of the Beltway
A buyer stretching every dollar toward square footage, and comfortable managing a simpler HOA structure or none, tends to find more house for the money north in Centennial Hills, particularly while builder incentives are active in Skye Canyon and Providence. A buyer who wants the recurring fee to buy something specific, an extensive trail network, community programming, an established village identity, is paying for that directly through the layered Summerlin structure, and the 2026 fee increase reflects the community funding more of that maintenance and reserve work rather than less.
Neither structure is a mistake. They're different products built for different priorities, and the honest version of "which one is right" starts with reading the resale package line by line rather than comparing two sale prices and assuming the rest is the same.
A Few Questions Before You Compare the Two
Does every Centennial Hills home skip HOA fees? No. Newer master-planned sections like Skye Canyon and Providence carry a single project HOA. The no-HOA inventory tends to be older, larger-lot parcels rather than new construction.
Is Summerlin's 2026 fee increase a one-time adjustment? The community's own newsletter framed it as tied to rising insurance, labor, and utility costs alongside specific capital projects, which suggests future increases are plausible rather than a single correction. Buyers should ask for the current reserve study rather than assume the new number is fixed.
Do builder incentives change what shows up in comparable sales data? Not directly. Incentives reduce a buyer's effective cost without changing the recorded sale price, which is part of why a straight price-per-square-foot comparison between new construction and resale can understate the real gap.
If you're weighing a specific address in either market and want the actual monthly math run against your budget rather than a general range, Stacy Peppley can pull the current resale package or builder incentive sheet and walk through it with you line by line.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
