Look at Pelican Bay as one line on a spreadsheet and the story reads like the rest of Naples this year: prices easing, days on market stretching, sellers giving up a little ground. Look at the same community broken out by what people actually bought and a different pattern shows up. Through the first five months of 2026, villas in Pelican Bay closed faster, sold in greater numbers, and priced higher than the year before, while condos in the same gates softened and single-family homes sat on the market nearly three times longer than they had in 2025.
That split matters if you're comparing Naples neighborhoods on anything more useful than a headline median. A single community-wide number can hide two markets moving in opposite directions, and Pelican Bay right now is the clearest example of it.
What Actually Happened Between January and May
Villa sales in Pelican Bay ran ahead of every other property type during the community's peak contract-writing window, which typically falls between January and March but doesn't fully show up in closed-sale data until April or May once financing and inspection periods play out. Twenty-four villas closed in that stretch of 2026, up from 21 a year earlier. The median sale price jumped from $1,712,500 to $2,225,000, a gain of nearly 30 percent, and the average time to close dropped from 83 days to 69.
Single-family homes told a different story over the same window. Their median price ticked up only slightly, from $3,362,500 to $3,400,000, while average days on market ballooned from 85 to 230. High-rise condo volume held roughly steady, and while average sale prices cooled, medians in that segment still grew, suggesting the softening showed up mostly in a handful of lower-priced closings pulling the average down rather than in the core of the market losing value.
| Property type | Peak-season median (2025 → 2026) | Average days on market (2025 → 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Villas | $1,712,500 → $2,225,000 | 83 → 69 |
| Single-family homes | $3,362,500 → $3,400,000 | 85 → 230 |
| High-rise condos | Median grew; average cooled | Held roughly steady |
Zoom out to the full community and the picture flattens again. Redfin data for the three months ending June 2026 puts Pelican Bay's overall median sale price at $1.5 million, down 3.8 percent year over year, with price per square foot down 4.2 percent to $622 and homes taking 70 days to sell versus 63 the year before. That countywide-style blend is exactly the number a buyer sees first on a portal search, and it describes neither the villa market nor the single-family market particularly well. It's an average of two markets moving in opposite directions.
Why the Villas Won't Follow the Rest of the Market Down
The simplest explanation for why villa prices held up while condo and single-family pricing softened is also the least glamorous one: nobody can build more of them. Construction on Pelican Bay's first villa community, Tierra Mar, began in 1980. The last villa in the community was completed at Carlton Place in 2008. There's no undeveloped villa land left inside the gates.
Condo towers don't have that constraint in the same way. A boutique 19-story tower called Epique is under construction in Pelican Bay right now, offering 68 residences, which means that segment of the market can eventually add inventory in response to demand. Villas can't. When buyers want a villa, they are bidding on a fixed, non-renewable stock that has been the same size since the Bush administration.
That scarcity shows up unevenly across the roughly two dozen villa enclaves inside Pelican Bay. Tierra Mar led peak-season activity with five sales ranging from $1.5 million to $2.25 million. Bridge Way Villas had four sales between $1.825 million and $3.15 million. Las Brisas, a 50-unit Mediterranean-style community off Gulf Park Drive, had three sales including the community's highest villa transaction of the peak season at $5.55 million. Cocobay, Villas at Pelican Bay, and Vizcaya at Bay Colony each recorded at least two sales in the same window.
The variety inside that scarcity is real. Villa Coronado, the smallest development at just 14 attached units, rarely lists at all. Villa La Palma, the only villa product inside the private Bay Colony enclave, offers three floor plans starting around 3,600 square feet. San Marino, with 88 villas across the street from a beach tram station, sits at the larger end of the inventory. St. Andrews, a 16-unit development, backs directly onto Club Pelican Bay's golf course through a private pedestrian gate. None of these communities is taking on new construction, which is a different situation than a condo tower that might add a wing or a sister building down the road.
What a Villa Buys That a Condo Board Won't
Scarcity explains why prices moved. It doesn't fully explain why buyers wanted villas enough to bid them up while stepping back from condos in the same community. Part of the answer sits in what a villa's structure sidesteps that a condo association typically controls.
Pelican Bay's roughly 6,500 residences are governed by about 95 separate associations, each setting its own budget, staffing model, and rules. A full-service tower like Marbella runs a concierge model with room service, formal and informal dining rooms, and an on-site beauty and barber shop, all funded through building dues that reflect that staffing. A leaner low-rise like Serendipity, with 66 Gulf-side units and its own pool and clubhouse, structures its dues around a smaller scope. The Stratford, a 22-story tower of 81 residences at the community's southern edge, carries a high-rise's operating profile even though it's a short walk from the beach tram, Waterside Shops, and Artis-Naples.
Villas typically avoid a lot of what makes a specific tower's rulebook a dealbreaker for a specific buyer. Private garage entries mean no shared lobby or elevator to negotiate. Ground-level pools and courtyards mean no waiting on a building-wide amenity schedule. Pet and rental policies vary by villa community rather than by a single association's blanket rule, which gives buyers with larger dogs or shorter-term rental plans more room to shop across the roughly two dozen villa enclaves until they find one that fits, something a single condo tower's association can't offer on its own.
None of that means villas skip Pelican Bay's cost structure entirely. Every property in the community, villa or condo, owes the same mandatory Pelican Bay Foundation assessment and the Pelican Bay Services Division line on the county tax bill, regardless of which building or enclave it sits in. What a villa buyer typically avoids is the layer of per-unit dues that fund concierge staffing, elevators, and larger reserve funds in a full-service tower. A prepared buyer still wants the resale capital assessment and the building or association's dues structure priced into an offer before signing anything, because that number can run into the thousands of dollars depending on which of the 95 associations is collecting it.
Reading the Comparison Correctly
If you're weighing Pelican Bay against another Naples enclave on price alone, the community-wide median is the wrong tool. It blends a villa segment that gained nearly 30 percent in peak-season pricing with a single-family segment where days on market nearly tripled and a condo segment where per-square-foot pricing eased. The number itself is accurate. It just doesn't describe any single buyer's experience.
The broader Naples market gives some context for why this kind of split is showing up now. The Naples Area Board of Realtors reported 5.4 months of supply countywide as of August 2026, down from 8.1 months a year earlier, with the market above $5 million still favoring buyers at 9.7 months of supply while everything below that threshold sits closer to balanced. Inventory is tightening overall, but not evenly, and Pelican Bay's villa-versus-everything-else split is a smaller-scale version of the same unevenness playing out inside one gated boundary.
A buyer who wants a villa should expect to compete for one. Five Tierra Mar sales during peak season 2026 all closed at $1.5 million or above, and the segment's average marketing time ran about two weeks faster than the rest of the community. A buyer more focused on timeline flexibility or negotiation room may find more of both in the softer condo segment, where per-square-foot pricing has eased even as the community's amenity access, including its beach tram system and its two Foundation-run beachfront restaurants, Marker 36 and Sandbar, stays the same regardless of which building someone owns in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does buying a Pelican Bay villa include membership at Club Pelican Bay? No. Club Pelican Bay, the 27-hole golf course and its 50,000-square-foot clubhouse renovated in 2017, is a separate, privately owned club with its own application, initiation fee, dues, and waitlist. Owning property anywhere in Pelican Bay, villa or otherwise, does not include club membership.
Are rental and pet policies the same across all Pelican Bay villa communities? No. Policies vary by individual villa association. Some communities allow more frequent short-term rentals than others, and pet approval processes differ from one enclave to the next, which is worth confirming before writing an offer on a specific villa.
Is new villa construction planned anywhere in Pelican Bay? Based on current development activity, no. The last villa built in the community was completed at Carlton Place in 2008, and Pelican Bay has no remaining land zoned for additional villa product. New construction activity in the community, including the Epique tower, has been in the condo segment.
Comparing neighborhoods on a single median price will always miss what's actually happening inside a community this varied. If you want the villa-versus-condo math run against your specific price range and timeline, or you're deciding between Pelican Bay and another North Naples enclave entirely, Brian J. Giacomello at Live in SWFL can walk through the current inventory building by building.
