Windmill Harbour Real Estate, Hilton Head Island

Before You Buy in Windmill Harbour

Windmill Harbour real estate is a small market: 428 homes on 172 acres, plus the 258 slips in the harbour, which are bought and sold as property in their own right. The listings search above covers all of it, the same homes you would find browsing Zillow for Windmill Harbour, and the rest of this page covers what a listing leaves out: what kind of home sits where, what the association charges, the rental rule, and how showings work behind the gate.

Houses on the Harbour, Lagoons and Marsh

The houses are built in a Charleston style, many of them tall and brightly painted, on full-size home sites and smaller patio lots. Some sit right on the harbour, a few with a boat slip of their own, and others look over a lagoon, the marsh or the Intracoastal Waterway; the association says four homes in five have a view of water. Empty lots come up for sale too, for buyers who want to build, and every plan and exterior change, down to landscaping and taking out a tree, goes through the association’s architectural review board, which meets monthly.

Windmill Harbour Condos for Sale: Villas and Townhomes

The smaller homes are in a few regimes of their own inside the gate, each with its own association on top of the community’s: Westwind Villas and Spindle Lane are horizontal property regimes, which is South Carolina’s name for condominiums, and Leeward Passage has its own property owners association. The brightly coloured homes residents call Rainbow Row line Spindle Lane. Ask for the regime’s fees and rules along with the community’s when you look at one.

Boat Slips

Slips are sold like condominiums, with their own deed, through agents or by their owners, and they appear in the same listings search as the homes. You don’t need to own a house here to buy one. A slip owner pays the marina owners association as well as the property owners association, plus county tax; our Windmill Harbour Marina page has the 2026 figures, renting a slip out, and how the lock works.

Dues and the Transfer Fee

Every owner belongs to the Windmill Harbour Association, which runs the gate, security, roads and common grounds. Its yearly assessment is set by the kind of property: a house, townhome or condominium pays the full rate, an empty lot half and a boat slip a quarter ($820 a year in 2026). At closing, the buyer pays the association a transfer fee equal to one year’s assessment on what they are buying. The South Carolina Yacht Club is separate: its membership is optional and isn’t included in the association’s fees.

Buying in Windmill Harbour to Rent It Out

Don’t buy here for vacation-rental income. Windmill Harbour’s covenants, amended by the owners and recorded with Beaufort County in January 2019, bar renting or leasing a home for less than six consecutive months, and the association states the rule for every buyer. A home here can earn rent from a long-term tenant, not from weekly guests, so no rental manager can put it on the vacation market. If short-term rental income is the plan, look at communities that allow it, such as Palmetto Dunes, Sea Pines or Shipyard.

A boat slip is different: the marina rents slips month to month and to transient boaters, and a slip owner can hand theirs to the marina office to rent.

Outside the Town Limits

Windmill Harbour is in unincorporated Beaufort County, not the Town of Hilton Head Island. That means the Town’s resident beach parking pass isn’t available to owners here (the metered beach lots and free parking at Coligny are), owners vote in county, state and national elections but not the Town’s, and each household arranges its own rubbish collection, because the association doesn’t provide one.

Seeing Homes Behind the Gate

Agents get in with their realtor’s card, so the simplest way to see a home is with one. Open houses are allowed Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m., at most once a month for any one home, and the association bans signs and balloons, so you won’t find a house by driving around. After closing, your closing attorney hands over two temporary gate passes, and you pick up your owner’s decal at the gatehouse once the management company has told security about the sale.

Not Ready to Buy Yet?

Read the Windmill Harbour guide for the gate, the amenities and life in the community, and compare it with other communities in the Hilton Head neighborhoods guide or across the island in our Hilton Head real estate search.