Latitude Margaritaville HOA Fees, Hilton Head

Every home’s fee pays for the entry gates and the staffed gatehouse; the upkeep of the lawns, trees, irrigation, roads, trails, lakes, lighting and signs in the common areas; the nature preserve; the associations’ insurance and reserves; and the master association. It also pays for the mowing and landscaping of your own lot, which many communities leave to the owner. And it is what gets you into the Latitude Margaritaville amenities: the Fins Up! Fitness Center, the Paradise Pool and tiki huts, the town square bandshell, the Last Mango Theater, the Workin’ N’ Playin’ Center, the Hangar workshop, the tennis, pickleball and bocce courts, Fins Field, the pet spa and the Lake Latitude Club.

The difference between the three figures is reserves. A villa’s fee adds savings for repainting the outside and replacing the roof, and a cottage’s adds exterior paint, driveways and roofs, work a house owner pays for directly. There is no community development district, or CDD, fee on top, the separate bond assessment some new communities charge; Minto advertises that.

Two amounts are collected when you buy. The working capital contribution is one-sixth of the year’s base assessment, and $100 goes to the Latitude at Hilton Head Foundation, the community’s foundation; on a new home, Minto matches that $100.

Latitude Margaritaville Hilton Head is inside the city of Hardeeville, in Jasper County, so its homes pay Jasper County’s levies, including its schools, and the City of Hardeeville’s. The bill is worked out in three steps. First, the county sets the home’s market value. Second, it multiplies that by an assessment ratio: 4% if the home is your legal residence, 6% if it is a second home or a rental. Third, it multiplies the assessed value by the millage, the rates each taxing body sets every year, where one mill is a tenth of a cent on each dollar of assessed value.

The ratio is the big lever. On a home you live in, each $100,000 of value is $4,000 of assessed value, so every mill costs $4 a year; on a second home it is $6,000, or $6 a mill. The City of Hardeeville’s own levy for 2026-27 is 74.6 mills, which on a $400,000 home comes to about $1,194 a year as your legal residence and $1,790 as a second home, before the county’s levies are added. The county publishes its current rates on the Jasper County Auditor’s tax levy page, and the auditor’s office will estimate a bill for a particular home.

Two exemptions matter more here than in most places, because this is a 55-and-over community. Property Tax Relief takes school operating millage off a legal residence, calculated on the first $100,000 of its value, and it comes automatically with the 4% ratio. The Homestead Exemption takes the first $50,000 of a legal residence’s value off the bill for owners who are 65 or older, or disabled or blind, and have been South Carolina residents for a year; you apply for it in person at the county auditor’s office. Neither applies to a second home.