Two homes list at the same price in the same city. One sits off Bonaventure Boulevard on the west side of Weston. The other sits in Weston Hills Country Club, a mile and a half east. Same price, same square footage, same school zone. The non-ad valorem line on their tax bills tells two different stories, and the story depends on which special taxing district drew the boundary line through your street.
Most buyers comparing Weston listings stop at the list price and the HOA fee. That's the visible layer. Underneath it sits a second, quieter layer: the city's two development districts, which fund infrastructure and debt service through assessments that show up separately from your property tax, and which are currently moving in opposite directions.
Two districts, two different legal creatures
Weston runs on two special districts, and they are not the same kind of entity, even though both show up as line items on the same tax bill.
The Indian Trace Development District is a true Community Development District, created under Chapter 190 of the Florida Statutes. It handles water and sewer utility services, right-of-way management, stormwater management, capital projects, and debt service across most of the city.
The Bonaventure Development District is a different animal. Per the city's own finance FAQ, it was legally created under Florida Statute Chapter 189 as a dependent special district, not a CDD. Both districts are governed by the same body, the Weston City Commission acting as the district board, but they carry separate budgets, separate bonds, and separate assessment histories.
The city's own ordinance describing Indian Trace's legal boundary actually uses Bonaventure as a landmark, tracing the district line to "the intersection with the West line of BONAVENTURE." The two districts are drawn edge to edge. Bonaventure is the older, pre-incorporation section of the city, built out before Weston became a municipality in 1996. Indian Trace covers most of the newer sectors that followed, including the areas known today as Weston Hills, Windmill Ranch, Savanna, and new-construction communities like Botaniko Weston.
One bond is gone. The other just got bigger.
Here is where the story stops being a matter of legal trivia and starts affecting what a buyer actually pays.
In January 2002, Bonaventure issued $12,790,000 in bonds to fund the Bonaventure Master Plan improvements and the district's purchase of the Keep Bonaventure Beautiful Corporation, the group that had maintained the area's public properties. The bonds were structured with a stepped interest rate from 1.75 percent at issuance to 5.125 percent at maturity, with a scheduled final payment of November 1, 2022.
They didn't make it that far. Prepayments from property owners who chose to pay their assessment in full at a discount, combined with the district's bond reserve account, retired the debt early, as of May 1, 2021, saving roughly $1.7 million in scheduled interest. That came on top of an earlier restructuring, when the city upgraded the original uninsured bonds to an insured, AAA rating and shortened the term from 30 years to 20, a move that saved Bonaventure residents more than $7 million over the life of the bonds. Former City Commissioner Toby Feuer, who lives in Bonaventure, celebrated the news at the time, saying he'd:
"always said I wanted to live long enough to see that bond paid off."
That debt service line on a Bonaventure property's tax bill is gone. What remains is the district's ongoing operations and maintenance assessment, the cost of keeping up the landscaping, drainage, and rights-of-way the bond originally paid to build.
Indian Trace is not standing still while this happens. The city's Fiscal Year 2026 budget, covering the fiscal year that started October 1, 2025 and runs through September 30, 2026, puts total expenditures across the city, Indian Trace, and Bonaventure at $256,117,400, a 30.74 percent increase over the FY2025 adopted budget of $195,901,700. Strip out two one-time capital projects and the increase drops to 1.98 percent. Those two projects are Vista Park Phase II, which includes an indoor recreation complex, and the Regional Park Maintenance Yard Relocation and New Courts. Together they total approximately $56.3 million, and the city says they will not be funded with ad valorem taxes. Instead, they'll be paid for through a new municipal bond serviced by revenue other than property taxes.
So in the same year that Bonaventure's original debt disappeared from the ledger, Indian Trace is opening a new one. That's not a coincidence buyers should ignore. It's the mechanism that decides what your actual carrying cost looks like five years from now, long after the list price has faded from memory.
What this actually costs, community by community
The city's non-ad valorem assessments, whether tied to Bonaventure, Indian Trace, solid waste collection, or fire protection, are collected annually through the property tax bill and show up separately from the ad valorem (value-based) portion. They don't move with your home's assessed value. They move with the district's own budget and bond schedule.
Layer that structural difference onto what buyers are actually seeing in Weston's price bands right now. As of early 2026, single-family homes in The Meadows or Heron Lakes were starting in the mid-$400,000s, while Weston Hills Country Club properties were running $900,000 to well over $1.5 million, and new luxury construction at Botaniko Weston was pushing past $2 million. Weston Hills specifically posted a median sale price near $1.3 million in March 2026, up 18.2 percent year over year, with homes selling in an average of 86 days compared to 130 days the year before.
None of those figures include the district assessment sitting underneath them. A buyer comparing a $1.3 million Weston Hills listing (Indian Trace territory, funding a fresh $56.3 million capital program) against a similarly priced Bonaventure listing (debt-free since 2021, carrying only an operations assessment) is not comparing two versions of the same cost structure. The price tags might match. The five-year trajectory of what sits underneath them does not.
Community HOA structures compound the gap further. Single-family homes in communities like Savanna or The Lakes typically run $200 to $400 a month in association fees, while premium communities like Weston Hills or Windmill Ranch Estates run higher, sometimes $400 to $600 or more monthly, reflecting country club amenities and golf course access. Stack the district assessment on top of that HOA range and two Weston listings priced identically on a portal can carry a genuinely different monthly number once everything is added up.
The part that matters at the closing table
None of this is disclosed on a listing sheet. It surfaces in two places: the TRIM (Truth in Millage) notice mailed each August, and the estoppel letter requested when a property changes hands.
When a Bonaventure or Indian Trace property sells, the city sends an estoppel that spells out any remaining prorated assessment obligations tied to that parcel. According to the city's finance FAQ, new owners assume the remaining prorated payments as part of their annual tax bill, reduced as bonds mature, unless the seller prepays the balance at closing. For a Bonaventure property today, that conversation is largely moot on the debt service side since the bond is retired. For an Indian Trace property, especially one financing a share of that new $56.3 million capital bond, it is not moot at all, and it's worth asking early rather than discovering it on a tax bill after the ink is dry.
FAQ
Is the Bonaventure Development District the same thing as a Community Development District? No. The city's finance FAQ is direct on this point: Bonaventure was created under Chapter 189 of the Florida Statutes as a dependent special district, while Indian Trace was created under Chapter 190, the statute that defines a true CDD.
Does the 2021 bond payoff mean Bonaventure properties no longer carry any special assessment? Not entirely. The debt service portion, the piece tied to repaying the 2002 bonds, is gone. The district still levies an assessment to cover ongoing operations and maintenance, including rights-of-way and stormwater management.
How do I find out which district assessments apply to a specific Weston address? Start with the seller's most recent TRIM notice, which breaks out non-ad valorem assessments by line item. An estoppel request through the city will confirm current district obligations tied to the parcel before closing.
Is the new Indian Trace capital spending funded by property taxes? The city's own budget announcement states the $56.3 million for Vista Park Phase II and the Regional Park maintenance yard relocation will not be funded with ad valorem taxes, and will instead be repaid through a municipal bond serviced by other revenue sources.
Weston's median price tells you what the market thinks a home is worth today. It doesn't tell you which district drew the line through the parcel, what that district's bond schedule looks like, or whether you're buying into a debt that's about to retire or one that just got issued. That's a conversation worth having before you write an offer, not after you've closed.
If you're comparing Weston communities and want the district-level detail behind a specific listing, the Sklar Team can walk you through it. Request Your Free Home Valuation and we'll start with the numbers that actually explain your carrying cost.