The Bear's Club vs Old Palm Golf Club: Golf Community Comparison

This is the defining difference between the two clubs. The Bear's Club is invitation-only: the club's own sourcing does not confirm that buying an estate home there requires or guarantees membership (membership_required_for_homeowners and membership_tied_to_property are both recorded as unconfirmed), and press coverage describes the roughly 100-member roster as effectively full with a multi-year waitlist as of 2026. A buyer purchasing a home in the community should not assume club access comes with it. Old Palm works in reverse: membership is mandatory and tied to the property -- every homeowner pays the equity fee at closing as a condition of the purchase itself, so golf access is certain but not optional. A buyer prioritizing certainty of access should weight that difference heavily; a buyer prioritizing exclusivity and willing to navigate an invitation process (or already has a relationship to the club) may see The Bear's Club's model differently.

Old Palm's fee structure is the better-documented of the two: a $175,000 equity fee paid at closing, with 80% reported refundable at resale, plus roughly $22,000 in annual dues. The Bear's Club has not published a specific initiation figure -- it is reported informally to run 'well into six figures,' but no single number could be confirmed this session -- while its annual dues are reported to start at $25,000, similar in order of magnitude to Old Palm's dues despite the initiation-fee gap. Because The Bear's Club's true cost of entry (and whether an invitation even comes with a published price) is not public, a prospective member should expect a more opaque, relationship-driven process than Old Palm's more transactional equity-purchase structure.

Both clubs are organized around a single 18-hole course carrying a marquee designer's name -- Jack Nicklaus at The Bear's Club, Raymond Floyd at Old Palm -- rather than a multi-course footprint. Where they differ sharply is community size: The Bear's Club is a tight, 96-home gated estate community, while Old Palm spans 294 homesites across four neighborhoods (Golf, Isle, Grand, and Custom Estates) on 650 acres. That roughly threefold difference in home count, combined with The Bear's Club's capped-near-100 membership versus Old Palm's cap near 330, means The Bear's Club offers a meaningfully smaller, more intimate community and membership roster, while Old Palm offers more housing inventory and a larger (though still capped) membership base.

At The Bear's Club: the actual initiation fee (no published figure exists), whether homeownership requires or is tied to club membership, and current waitlist status given reports of a full roster. At Old Palm: whether a membership waitlist exists beyond its roughly 330-member cap, and the current equity fee and refund terms, since fee schedules change. At both clubs: amenities beyond clubhouse dining (tennis, fitness, pool, spa, and practice facilities are not publicly documented for either community in this research pass) and membership transferability. Confirm all of the above directly with each club before making a purchase decision.