Silverado Resort and Spa vs Mayacama Golf Club for Golf Living

Silverado Community spans roughly 1,200 acres across nine separately-HOA'd neighborhoods (including The Grove, Mansion Estates, Cottage Drive, and Oak Creek East) with conventional single-family homes and condos, many built in the 1970s-90s. Mayacama is a much smaller, deliberately low-density gated community where the dominant ownership structure is deeded 1/10 fractional Residence Club interests in villas or casitas (roughly three planned weeks per year of use, plus additional short-notice access for housekeeping cost only), with only a limited number of traditional full homesites available due to land value and environmental constraints. A buyer who wants a conventional whole-home purchase will find that a much more standard proposition at Silverado than at Mayacama.

At Silverado, golf access runs on two tracks: resort/hotel guests can pay to play the North and South Courses without any residential connection, and separately, homeowners on parcels with a 'potential membership appurtenant' can activate club membership by paying a prevailing initiation fee (or a reported $40,000 transfer fee for an existing transferable membership) within 30 days of closing -- not every parcel in the community carries that right at all. At Mayacama, membership is invitation-only and requires sponsorship by an existing member; the club does not publish pricing, and whether membership is required for either the fractional or full-homesite ownership path was not confirmed in this research. Neither club's access model should be assumed as automatically included with any specific home purchase -- both require direct confirmation of the individual parcel's or membership category's status.

Silverado's national profile comes primarily from tournament golf: its North Course has hosted the PGA Tour's fall-season event every year since 2014 (Frys.com Open, Safeway Open, Fortinet Championship, now the Procore Championship). Mayacama's national profile comes from course design and residential exclusivity: a Jack Nicklaus design that Golfweek ranked the fifth-best residential golf course in the country, reported (though unofficial and conflicting) initiation-fee figures ranging from $85,000 to $250,000-$400,000, and a membership process gated by member sponsorship rather than open application. Silverado is the more accessible, larger-scale, tournament-golf-driven option; Mayacama is the smaller, higher-barrier, design-pedigree-driven option -- and buyers should not assume either one's price tier or membership process without direct confirmation, since neither club publishes an official current rate sheet.