Glen Oaks vs. The Legacy: Two Very Different Des Moines Golf Communities

Glen Oaks Country Club is a genuine private club -- a 2018 source put its initiation fee at $20,000 with $130-$570/month dues, though current, post-2022 (Concert Golf Partners ownership) pricing is not published. Membership is not confirmed to be required for or bundled to Glen Oaks homeownership, but it is a real, separately-purchased product with an application process. The Legacy Golf Club, by contrast, has no membership program at all -- it is a daily-fee public course, and a resident of the surrounding community plays on identical terms to any visiting golfer. If guaranteed, on-demand club-level golf access matters to you, that is a Glen Oaks application away, not automatic; if you simply want to live near a golf course without any membership commitment, The Legacy removes that question entirely.

Glen Oaks is a gated development -- central Iowa's first, opened in 1994 -- with median home prices running roughly $668K to $1.04M across 2025-2026 snapshots found. The Legacy is not gated, and its listings run far more affordably, roughly $270K-$310K in mid-2026 snapshots. That gap reflects both the gated/private-club premium at Glen Oaks and The Legacy's much larger, more varied housing stock (900-plus homes across townhomes and custom single-family product from multiple builders, including Hubbell Homes and Tanzanite Homes).

Glen Oaks is a 532-acre, 506-lot development built around a single Tom Fazio course, with a mix of housing types under several sub-associations. The Legacy is larger in raw home count (900-plus residences) but was built out by multiple independent builders under one shared brand and a distinctive circular street plan wrapped around the course, rather than around a single gated perimeter.