SilverLeaf, Shearwater & RiverTown: 2026 New Construction Guide

If you have spent a few weekends driving County Road 210 with a coffee going cold in the cup holder, you already know the three names that come up in every conversation about new construction homes in St. Johns County: SilverLeaf, Shearwater and RiverTown. They are the big ones, they are all growing, and from the road they can start to blur together.

They are genuinely different places, though — different builders, different price bands, different feel once you live there. Here is the friendly version of what I tell people in the car, including the parts about CDD fees and builder incentives that nobody brings up until you are already in the sales office.

SilverLeaf — St. Augustine, and it is enormous

SilverLeaf is the giant. It sits off CR 2209 near World Golf Village, and it is less one neighborhood than a collection of them, each with its own builder and its own personality. That is the thing to understand before you visit: touring SilverLeaf is really touring six or eight separate sales centers.

Newbrook is Toll Brothers, and it plays at the higher end. Silver Falls is Lennar, generally the more attainable side with their everything-included approach. Courtney Oaks brings in Riverside Homes, Ashley Homes and MasterCraft Builder Group, which is where you find some of the more custom-feeling floor plans. Evergreen Island is David Weekley. Cherry Elm is Taylor Morrison doing townhomes, which is usually the lowest entry price in the whole community. And Reverie is the 55+ active adult side, gated and quieter, with its own amenities.

Because each of these is a separate builder, the incentive you get in one can be wildly different from the one next door on the same street. That alone is worth a Saturday.

And the single biggest thing people do not realize about SilverLeaf: there are no CDD fees. Most large new construction communities in St. Johns County carry a community development district assessment on the tax bill every year — SilverLeaf does not. More on what that saves you below.

Shearwater — amenities first, and the schools question

Shearwater, also St. Augustine, is the one people fall for on the amenity tour. The Kayak Club, the lap pool, the slide tower, the trails. If you have kids or you actually use a gym, it lands differently than a spreadsheet does.

Meritage Homes builds the Parkside townhomes here, which are how a lot of first-time buyers get into the community. Ryan Homes is here too on the single-family side. Schools are the number one question I get about Shearwater — St. Johns County as a district is the reason a huge share of my relocation clients pick this county at all, and Shearwater sits inside that.

RiverTown — the St. Johns River is the whole point

RiverTown is in St. Johns off Longleaf Pine Parkway, and Mattamy Homes is the master developer. Forest and Meadows are the villages you will hear named most often. The differentiator is right in the name: this community actually touches the St. Johns River, with a riverhouse, a kayak launch and a boardwalk along the water.

If sunsets over the river matter more to you than being five minutes from a Publix, RiverTown is usually the one that wins.

How much do new construction homes cost in St. Johns County?

The honest answer is that it moves month to month, and anyone quoting you a fixed number in a blog post is quoting you a number that was already stale when they typed it. What is stable is the shape of the market: townhomes are the entry point, standard single-family sits in the middle, and preserve or water lots with the larger plans run well above that.

The bigger surprise for most buyers is not the base price — it is the gap between the base price and the out-the-door price. Lot premium, structural options, design center selections, landscaping packages. It is very normal for that gap to be large. Message me and I will send you today's real numbers for whichever community you are looking at, straight from the current price sheets.

Does SilverLeaf have CDD fees? No — and that is a big deal

Here is the headline most buyers miss: SilverLeaf does not have CDD fees. No community development district assessment on your tax bill, ever. In St. Johns County, where almost every large new construction community carries one, that is genuinely unusual and it can be worth a meaningful amount every single year you own the home.

For context, a CDD — community development district — is how Florida usually funds the roads, drainage, water lines and amenities that made a neighborhood possible. Instead of the builder pricing all of that into the house, a district issues bonds and every homeowner pays them back through an assessment on the annual property tax bill, on top of HOA dues, for a long stretch of years. It is not a scam and it is not hidden — it just tends to come up at the very end, after you already love a floor plan.

Shearwater and RiverTown are inside districts, so plan on a CDD line there. SilverLeaf is not, so when you compare monthly payments between the three, you are not comparing apples to apples until you add each community's CDD into the math.

The practical move: ask for the exact annual CDD amount for the specific lot you are considering, not the community average, and put it in your monthly budget before you sign anything. And when a lot has no CDD at all, count that savings — it is real money.

Builder incentives in 2026 — which ones are actually real

Builders almost never cut the base price, because the recorded sale price becomes the comp for every house behind yours. What they do instead is stack incentives, and the value of those varies enormously.

A mortgage rate buydown through the builder's preferred lender is usually the biggest real number on the table. In plain terms, the builder pays money up front to the lender so your interest rate is lower — sometimes for the first year or two, sometimes for the life of the loan. Over thirty years that can be worth far more than any discount they would have given you on price. The catch is you generally have to use their lender to get it, so get one outside quote anyway and compare the total cost, not just the rate.

Closing cost credits are straightforward money, but only up to what your closing costs actually are — anything above that tends to evaporate. Design center dollars sound generous until you see design center pricing. Appliance and blinds packages are real but small; do not let them decide anything.

And the thing nobody advertises: incentives are deepest on finished inventory homes the builder needs to close this quarter, and at the tail end of a phase. Timing beats negotiating.

Do you need a Realtor for new construction?

You do not need one. You will probably wish you had one. The friendly person at the sales center is lovely and they work for the builder — their job is to protect the builder's interests in a contract written by the builder's attorney.

Here is the part that matters: the builder pays the agent commission out of their marketing budget, so having me does not raise your price. But almost every builder requires that your agent register with them on your very first visit, before you sign the visitor sheet. Walk in alone on Saturday and come back with me on Sunday, and it is usually too late.

SilverLeaf vs Shearwater vs RiverTown — the short version

SilverLeaf gives you the widest range of builders and price points in one place, which means the most leverage and the most comparison shopping. Shearwater gives you the strongest amenity package and the tightest community feel. RiverTown gives you the river, and nothing else on this list can copy that.

There is no winner. There is the one that fits how you actually spend a Saturday. I have walked all three, I know which builders are running long on timelines right now, and I am happy to tell you the unflattering parts too.

If you are starting from scratch, these two walk through the rest:

• The new construction process, step by step
• The buyer's guide

And if you want current pricing, current incentives and which lots are actually still available in any of the three, send me a note and tell me which one you are eyeing.