What if the sticker price on two identical $650,000 homes tells you almost nothing about what either one actually costs to close?
A buyer in Nocatee and a buyer closing on a resale a few miles away in an established St. Johns County neighborhood can sign for the exact same purchase price and walk away from the closing table with meaningfully different numbers on the settlement statement. The gap has nothing to do with the home itself. It comes from who is legally required to pay two line items that most buyers never think to ask about until the closing disclosure lands in their inbox: the owner's title insurance policy and the documentary stamp tax on the deed. In St. Johns County, those two costs quietly change hands depending on whether you're buying resale or new construction, and the shift can run close to $8,000 on a mid-range purchase.
The Custom Nobody Puts in the Listing
Florida is one of a handful of states where title insurance rates are set by the state, not by shopping around. The premium for an owner's policy follows a fixed formula regardless of which title company handles your closing: $5.75 per $1,000 for the first $100,000 of purchase price, then $5.00 per $1,000 on everything above that. Run the math on a $650,000 home and you get $575 on the first $100,000 plus $2,750 on the remaining $550,000, for a total of $3,325. That number does not move no matter who writes the policy.
What does move is who pays it. Florida law is silent on the question. It's governed entirely by local custom, and in Duval, Clay, St. Johns, and Nassau counties, that custom has long favored the seller paying for the owner's title policy in a resale transaction, typically in exchange for the right to pick the title company. Buyers in a resale deal in these counties generally don't see this cost at all. It's baked into what the seller nets at closing.
New construction runs on a different set of rules, because production builders don't use the standard Florida Realtors and Florida Bar contract that governs most resale deals. They write their own purchase agreements. Those agreements routinely designate the builder's preferred title company and assign the owner's title premium to the buyer instead of the seller. The same $3,325 that a resale buyer in St. Johns County would likely never see shows up as a line item on a new construction closing disclosure.
The Deed Doc Stamps Move Too
Title insurance isn't the only cost that flips. Florida charges a documentary stamp tax on every deed transfer, calculated at $0.70 per $100 of purchase price. On a $650,000 home, that's $4,550. In a standard Northeast Florida resale contract, this is customarily a seller cost, paid at closing out of sale proceeds. Builder contracts routinely shift it to the buyer as well.
Put the two together and the picture looks like this:
| Closing Cost Item | Typical Resale Custom (Duval, St. Johns, Clay, Nassau) | Typical Builder Contract (New Construction) |
|---|---|---|
| Owner's title insurance (on $650,000) | Seller pays, roughly $3,325 | Buyer pays, roughly $3,325 |
| Documentary stamp tax on deed (on $650,000) | Seller pays, roughly $4,550 | Buyer pays, roughly $4,550 |
| Net shift onto the buyer | $0 | Roughly $7,875 |
That $7,875 has nothing to do with lot premiums, design center upgrades, or the price of a better elevation package. It's a function of whose contract you sign. A buyer comparing a $650,000 new build against a $650,000 resale is not actually comparing two equal offers unless they price in this shift.
None of this makes new construction a bad deal. It makes the comparison incomplete if you stop at list price. The lender's title policy, for what it's worth, is always a buyer cost regardless of resale or new construction. That one doesn't change hands. It's the owner's policy and the doc stamps where the custom gets rewritten.
The CDD Is a Separate Bill, Not the Same One
It's easy to assume the extra cost of new construction in St. Johns County is entirely about Community Development District assessments, and CDDs do add real, recurring cost. A CDD is a special-purpose local government created under Florida Statutes Chapter 190 that issues bonds to build roads, drainage, and amenities up front, then repays those bonds through annual non-ad valorem assessments that show up on the county tax bill, separate from any HOA dues.
Nocatee runs through the Tolomato Community Development District, whose current assessment year covers October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026. If you want the exact remaining bond balance tied to a specific Nocatee address rather than a district-wide estimate, the district will issue a formal estoppel letter for a $250 fee, and that document is the only number you should trust for payoff purposes.
But the CDD assessment is a yearly bill, not a closing-day surprise. It shows up on the tax roll every year for as long as the bond is outstanding, and most buyers do see it disclosed before they sign. The title insurance and doc stamp shift is different. It's a one-time cost buried inside a builder's own contract language, and it's far less visible than a recurring tax line item because it never appears on a TRIM notice or a public assessment roll. You only see it once, on the closing disclosure, days before you're expected to wire funds.
"It's not necessarily a bad thing for the home buyer, as long as they recognize the total cost of the package."
That's the standard Doris Goldstein, a Jacksonville attorney who advises New Urbanist communities, has applied to CDD financing for years, and it applies just as well to the closing cost shift. Neither cost is inherently unfair. Both are simply invisible until someone tells you to look for them.
Which St. Johns Communities Carry Which Structure
The CDD landscape in St. Johns County isn't uniform, and knowing the general shape of a community's cost structure before you tour a model home saves time later.
- Nocatee and Beachwalk carry meaningful CDD bond debt tied to their extensive amenity packages, in addition to whatever the builder's contract does with title and doc stamp costs.
- SilverLeaf is one of the few large master-planned communities in St. Johns County built without a CDD at all, which removes one layer of the cost stack even if the title insurance shift still applies depending on which builder you're working with inside the community.
- TrailMark carries a CDD, consistent with most newer, amenity-heavy master plans in the county.
- Communities built by Lennar, D.R. Horton, and Dream Finders are all active across these St. Johns master plans, and each uses its own standard purchase agreement, so the title and doc stamp assignment can vary even within the same neighborhood depending on which builder holds the lot.
None of this is a reason to avoid new construction. It's a reason to ask specific questions before you're three weeks from closing.
Five Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign
- Does the purchase agreement name a preferred title company, and does it assign the owner's title policy to the buyer or the seller?
- Who is responsible for the documentary stamp tax on the deed under this specific contract?
- If the community carries a CDD, what is the current annual assessment for this exact lot, and is there an estoppel letter available to confirm the remaining bond balance?
- Does the builder's closing cost incentive offset the title and doc stamp shift, or does it apply to a separate cost like a rate buydown?
- How does the all-in closing number compare to a resale home at the same list price once title insurance, doc stamps, and CDD are accounted for side by side?
Asking these five questions before you write an offer turns a surprise on the closing disclosure into a number you already priced in.
FAQ
Can a buyer negotiate who pays the owner's title insurance in a new construction contract? It's negotiable in theory, since Florida law doesn't mandate either party pay it, but builders write their own contracts and are typically far less willing to move on this term than a private seller would be in a resale deal.
Does using the builder's preferred title company always cost more? The premium itself is fixed by state rate regulation and doesn't change based on which company issues the policy. What changes is who pays it, not how much the policy costs.
Is the CDD assessment negotiable at closing? The ongoing CDD assessment is set by the district's adopted budget and bond schedule, not by the purchase contract. What can sometimes be negotiated is whether the seller (in a resale of a home already inside a CDD) credits the buyer for a prorated share.
Every one of these numbers moves depending on the specific lot, the specific builder, and the specific district, which is exactly why a side-by-side comparison matters more than a list price. If you're weighing a new build against a resale anywhere in St. Johns County and want the real all-in number before you sign anything, The Real Jacksonville will walk through the contract with you and help you schedule a consultation before you're standing at a closing table wondering where the extra thousands came from.
