If you're cross-shopping active adult communities across the Triangle, you've probably built a spreadsheet by now. HOA fee in one column, price range in another, amenity list running down the side. It's a reasonable way to compare Del Webb at Traditions in Wake Forest against Carolina Preserve in Cary or Regency at Holly Springs. It also misses the thing that actually determines whether you get a home you want this year or next.
Here's the number that should reframe the whole exercise: in July 2026, Del Webb at Traditions had exactly two homes for sale. The month before, there was one. A year earlier, there were three. When a neighborhood works that thin, the spreadsheet stops being the obstacle. Timing is.
The Math Behind Two Listings
Closed-sale data pulled from MLS records shows Del Webb at Traditions posted a median sale price of $738,500 in July 2026, up 7.2 percent from the same month a year earlier. Price per square foot came in at $317.22, up from roughly $293 the year before. Those numbers sound like a hot, appreciating market, because they are. But they also come from a pool of two or three closed transactions in any given month. A separate tracking source pegs recent resale activity in the community closer to a $580,000 median. Both figures can be accurate at the same time. With that few homes trading hands, one larger floor plan closing in a given month can pull the reported median up by six figures, and one smaller starter-plan sale can pull it right back down.
This is worth sitting with if you're comparing communities on price alone. A median built from two sales isn't a market signal in the way a median built from two hundred sales is. It's closer to a coin flip that happened to land in your favor, or didn't. The practical takeaway isn't that Del Webb at Traditions is unaffordable or that its pricing is unstable. It's that the "compare five communities, then decide" approach that works fine for browsing new construction inventory in Cary or Clayton runs into a wall here, because there usually isn't a fifth listing to compare. There's the one that's live right now, and whatever comes next, whenever that is.
What Four HOA Fees Actually Include
Once you get past the top-line price, the HOA fee is where most comparison shopping actually happens, and it's also where it goes wrong. A monthly fee by itself tells you almost nothing until you know what it's paying for.
| Community | Location | Price Range | HOA Fee | What's Bundled In |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Del Webb at Traditions | Wake Forest | roughly $519,000-$650,000 | $233/month | 18,000-sq-ft amenity center, walkable downtown access |
| Carolina Preserve | Cary | $300,000-$875,000 | $287/month | 35,000-sq-ft clubhouse, 120+ clubs, shared access to neighboring Amberly clubhouse |
| Carolina Overlook | Clayton | $350,000-$860,000 | $233/month | Indoor and outdoor pools, Gold Award recognition |
| Regency at Holly Springs | Holly Springs | $650,000-$1,200,000 | $425/month | 12 Oaks club membership included |
Look at the two communities charging an identical $233 a month. Carolina Overlook delivers indoor and outdoor pools and a builder award for the money. Del Webb at Traditions delivers an 18,000-square-foot amenity center and a location residents can walk out of without starting a car. Same fee, genuinely different products.
Now look at the fee that appears highest on paper. Regency at Holly Springs charges $425 a month, nearly double Del Webb's rate, and on its own that number looks like the priciest HOA on the list. But that fee includes a membership to 12 Oaks, a private club that would cost real money to join independently almost anywhere else in the Triangle. Once you back that out, the "expensive" fee starts to look like a bundled discount rather than a premium.
Carolina Preserve tells a similar story from a different angle. Its $287 fee looks steep next to Del Webb's $233, until you learn that residents get access to two full clubhouses, their own 35,000-square-foot facility plus the neighboring Amberly clubhouse, for that one payment. If you priced out lawn care, irrigation, and termite treatment separately, you'd likely land close to that fee before you'd added a single amenity.
None of this means one community is objectively better priced than another. It means the fee column on your spreadsheet is measuring the wrong thing unless you also fill in what each fee actually buys.
The Line Item No Chart Captures
Here's what none of these comparisons show in a column: what you can walk to.
Del Webb at Traditions sits inside the larger Traditions master-planned community, about five minutes from the shops and restaurants of downtown Wake Forest, and within walking distance of the Wake Forest Reservoir, where residents hike, kayak, and fish without loading anything into a car. Flaherty Park sits next door with tennis and pickleball courts, a dog park, a fitness court, and its own community center, all accessible on foot from inside the neighborhood.
Compare that to what the other four communities are selling. Carolina Preserve and Carolina Overlook are built around their own clubhouses as the destination. Regency at Holly Springs bundles a golf and social club membership into the HOA fee. Each of those is a real amenity with real value. But in every case, the amenity is the thing you drive to inside the gates. Del Webb at Traditions is the only one on this list where daily errands and social life extend past the clubhouse into an actual downtown, on foot.
For a buyer who's downsizing specifically to simplify daily life, that distinction matters more than square footage of clubhouse space. A resort-style amenity center is a wonderful thing to have. A downtown you can walk to for a rebalance haircut, dinner, and a beer without getting back in the car is a different kind of value, and it's the one that's hardest to price into a monthly fee comparison because it isn't a line item at all.
There's a fifth option worth mentioning here too. Regency at White Oak Creek in Apex takes the opposite lifestyle bet, trading downtown walkability for proximity to Jordan Lake and the American Tobacco Trail, with 209 ranch-style resale homes built around lawn-care-included, low-maintenance living. If your version of "walkable" means a trailhead rather than a coffee shop, that's the community built for you. The point isn't that one geography wins. It's that the fee comparison alone would never tell you which one fits your actual week.
Before you compare two HOA fees, ask what each one is buying. The number only means something once you know what's bundled inside it.
What This Means If You're Comparing Communities Right Now
If you're actively narrowing down between Wake Forest, Cary, Clayton, and Holly Springs, a few practical adjustments follow from all of this.
Ask each community what the fee actually covers before you rank them by dollar amount. A $425 fee that includes a country club membership and a $233 fee that includes lawn care and a clubhouse are not on the same scale, even though the spreadsheet makes them look adjacent.
Weigh what you can reach on foot as its own category, separate from square footage of amenities. If daily walkability to a downtown matters to how you picture your week, that's a filter the price-per-square-foot numbers will never surface for you.
Treat "I'll wait and compare more listings" as a real cost, not a neutral default, in a community where inventory sits in the low single digits most months. Waiting to see three more Del Webb at Traditions listings before deciding might mean waiting most of a year.
If you're actively narrowing your search among these communities, or you want a second read on what a specific HOA fee bundles in, that's exactly the kind of resale and 55+ community question worth working through with someone who tracks this market closely.
Quick Answers
Can someone under 55 live in these communities? Federal housing law, through the Housing for Older Persons Act, allows age-restricted communities to require that at least 80 percent of occupied homes have one resident age 55 or older. That leaves room for some households under that age, and it doesn't restrict visiting family, including grandchildren. Confirm the exact covenant with the HOA before writing an offer, since individual communities can set their own thresholds within that framework.
How fast does a resale disclosure packet usually arrive once I'm under contract? North Carolina law, under Chapter 47F of the General Statutes, requires HOAs to deliver the resale certificate within 10 business days of a request. Build that into your closing timeline, especially in a community where the HOA office may be managing a smaller volume of transactions.
Does a lower HOA fee always mean less maintenance is covered? Not necessarily. As the comparison above shows, two communities can charge the same fee and cover very different scopes of service. Ask for an itemized list of what the fee funds rather than assuming the dollar amount tells the whole story.
If you're weighing Del Webb at Traditions against other Triangle 55+ communities, or you want help reading a specific HOA's disclosure packet before you make an offer, Karen Tehrani offers a personalized Triangle community consultation built around exactly these questions.
