Money Hill vs Beau Chene for Golf Living

This is the single most consequential difference between the two communities. At Money Hill, independent reporting and the club's own materials confirm that home buyers are required to join the golf club within 60 days of closing (lot-only purchasers, who haven't yet built, are reportedly exempt until they do) -- golf access is bundled to homeownership, not optional. At Beau Chene, the opposite is confirmed directly by the homeowners association's own site: club membership is 'separate and apart from' mandatory BCHOA dues, and is explicitly open to both Beau Chene residents and residents of surrounding Northshore towns. A Beau Chene buyer can own a home there for years without ever joining the club, and a non-resident can join the club without living in Beau Chene at all. A buyer who wants golf access guaranteed with the home should lean toward Money Hill; a buyer who wants the option to skip club dues entirely, or the flexibility to join a different club, has that at Beau Chene in a way Money Hill does not offer.

Beau Chene has the larger course footprint by a wide margin: 36 holes across two courses (the Oak Course, 1975, and the Magnolia Course, 1985), both designed by Joe Lee, and described in multiple independent sources (though not yet directly confirmed against the club's own site copy) as Louisiana's only privately-owned 36-hole golf facility. Money Hill offers a single 18-hole course designed by Ron Garl and opened in 1998 -- this research corrected a genuine AI-search-summary fabrication that had misattributed the Money Hill design to Jack Nicklaus, apparently blending it with English Turn (a real Nicklaus design elsewhere in the New Orleans metro); Garl, not Nicklaus, is the architect of record.

Beau Chene is substantially larger and more established: roughly 1,550 homes and condominiums across about 1,100 acres, built around a lakefront setting on Mandeville's west side, with the club itself occupying 351 acres within the community. Money Hill is a smaller, more recently developed community centered on custom estate homesites and a 186-acre lake in Abita Springs, a more rural-feeling setting further from Mandeville's denser suburban core. Neither community's exact home count for Money Hill was confirmed in this research, a genuine documentation gap on that side of the comparison.

Neither club publishes a first-party fee schedule, so both sides of this comparison rest on secondary, dated sourcing that should be confirmed directly before any purchase decision. For Money Hill, the only figures found trace to a 2024 forum post describing a promotional initiation fee of $2,024 (reduced from a standard $7,000) and monthly dues around $350-$425 -- given the promotional figure's suspicious resemblance to the calendar year it was offered, this research declines to treat it as a stable current rate. For Beau Chene, a February 2024 forum post describes three tiers: Eagle Club ($5,000 initiation, $410/month), Medalist Club ($1,000 initiation, $493/month, converting to Eagle status after 5 years), and a discounted Birdie tier for members under 40 ($1,000 initiation, $290/month). Both communities' HOA/dues structures are separately documented: Money Hill's HOA runs approximately $90/month per the club's own site; a specific Beau Chene HOA figure was not confirmed in this research.

There is no universal winner -- the right choice depends on how a buyer wants to relate to club membership. A buyer who wants golf access guaranteed and simplified into the cost of homeownership, and who is comfortable with a smaller, newer community, is better served by Money Hill. A buyer who wants a larger, more established community with a genuinely larger course footprint, more flexibility on whether and when to join a club, and the option of reciprocal access through Beau Chene's Invited Club Alliance network, is better served by Beau Chene. Both communities' current fee figures should be confirmed directly with each club before any purchase decision -- neither publishes a public rate sheet, and the figures found in this research are dated secondary-source estimates, not verified 2026 numbers.