For half a century, Desert Island Country Club kept its tee sheet closed to anyone who wasn't a member. The Desmond Muirhead-designed course, built in 1971 on the parcel where Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope Drives meet, was bought outright by 220 members in 1981 and run since as a private equity club. Then, sometime in the last year, the gate opened. The club's own site now advertises public tee times on a course it says was "somehow kept under wraps for 50 years."
Along the way there was a brief, awkward chapter where the club rebranded as "The S at Rancho Mirage," a name that quietly disappeared not long after it went up, reportedly over concerns tied to using the Sinatra name. The signage came down. The club reverted. But the tee sheet stayed open to the public.
If you're comparing golf communities in Rancho Mirage right now, that sequence matters more than it looks. A club spending 50 years enforcing scarcity and then abandoning it isn't a footnote. It's a market signal, and it changes how you should read the premium attached to every fairway-facing listing in this city.
What "Exclusive" Actually Costs
Golf-adjacent HOA dues in Rancho Mirage aren't one number. They're a bundle, and what's bundled varies enormously from community to community, which is exactly why two homes with similar square footage and similar views can carry very different monthly obligations.
At Desert Island, the guard-gated high-rise community built around its 25-acre lake, HOA dues run just over $1,600 a month and cover security, three pools, tennis and pickleball courts, and a fitness center. Golf access is separate: a single membership carries an initiation fee of roughly $2,000 and about $675 a month in dues, on top of the HOA. Club and HOA are billed apart, which means you can own in the community without paying to golf in it.
Compare that to Desert Horizons Country Club, where the math works differently and comes in three separate pieces. The primary HOA assessment runs around $2,148 a month and bundles in a mandatory social and fitness membership, cable television, and a social capital fee. A second assessment adds roughly $350 a month for social dues and reserves. A third adds about $66 a month for cable and internet service. On top of all three, the mandatory social membership carries its own initiation fee of roughly $25,000, required and paid through escrow by the buyer at close.
Neither structure is wrong. But if you're comparing two listings by list price alone, you're comparing incomplete numbers. One community makes golf and club life optional and itemized. The other makes it mandatory and bundled into the sale itself.
| Desert Island Country Club | Desert Horizons Country Club | |
|---|---|---|
| Club membership | Optional, billed separately | Mandatory social/fitness membership |
| Initiation fee | Roughly $2,000 for a single golf membership | Roughly $25,000, paid through escrow |
| Monthly club dues | Roughly $675 for golf, on top of HOA | Bundled into HOA across three assessments (about $2,148 + $350 + $66) |
| Golf access | Now open to the public as well as members | Private, member and guest access |
The Water Rule That Protects the Fairway, Not the Rest of the Lot
Here's the part most buyers never think to ask about, and it's the reason the fairway view you're paying for may hold value differently than the clubhouse lawn a hundred yards away.
California's AB 1572 phases out irrigation of nonfunctional turf with potable water on commercial, industrial, and institutional properties, with that requirement taking effect January 1, 2027 for the businesses it covers. Golf courses were carved out of that definition. The law treats golf turf as functional, which means a fairway isn't subject to the same eventual watering restrictions as a strip of decorative grass outside a clubhouse entrance or along a community's non-golf common areas.
At the same time, Coachella Valley Water District has spent years paying property owners to remove the turf that isn't protected. The district's residential and HOA rebate sits at $2 per square foot for converting lawn to desert-friendly landscaping, and its golf course landscape rebate program pays the same $2 per square foot for turf removed around, not on, the playing surface, up to a $200,000 cap per project. Since 2022, CVWD has put more than $18 million into turf-replacement rebates for residential and HOA customers across the valley, a scale that tells you how seriously the district is treating non-golf turf as the place to cut.
Put those two facts together and you get a split incentive. The fairway itself is protected by statute. The rest of the property, the entry landscaping, the perimeter strips, the areas an HOA maintains outside the course, is exactly where conversion pressure and rebate dollars are aimed. A buyer chasing a fairway view is paying for something the law is inclined to preserve. A buyer assuming the whole community's green aesthetic is equally durable is making an assumption the regulation doesn't support.
Why the Premium Is Actually Two Premiums
This is where Desert Island's decision to go public becomes useful rather than just interesting.
A golf community premium has always bundled two different things: the value of the view and turf itself, which state law now treats as protected water use, and the value of exclusivity, the sense that access to this particular course and clubhouse is scarce and earned. Those two components don't move together. The turf protection is regulatory and slow to change. The exclusivity is a business decision a club's board can reverse in a season, which is precisely what happened at Desert Island.
When a 50-year private equity club opens its tee sheet to the public, it's telling you that the scarcity portion of its premium is being renegotiated, likely to generate revenue that supports the same course conditioning and reserve funding that private dues alone weren't covering. That doesn't mean the course gets worse or the water protection disappears. It means the part of your purchase price tied to "only members get to play here" is no longer guaranteed to hold the way it did a decade ago, even while the part tied to a green fairway against a desert backdrop remains protected by law.
If you're comparing a Desert Island-style community against a Desert Horizons-style one, you're really comparing how much of the premium you're paying for is durable turf economics versus how much is a membership status that a board vote could change.
Four Questions Before You Write an Offer
A few of these apply to any golf-adjacent purchase in Rancho Mirage, but they matter more now that access rules are visibly in motion.
- Is club membership mandatory or optional under the recorded CC&Rs, and is that answer specific to this address or general to the neighborhood? Ask for the language in writing rather than relying on what the listing agent tells you verbally.
- Who pays the initiation fee at close? In bundled communities like Desert Horizons, that figure is often assigned to the buyer through escrow. Confirm it before you're past your contingency period.
- Has the HOA converted, or does it plan to convert, non-golf common-area turf? Request the reserve study and recent board minutes. A pending turf-conversion assessment is the kind of cost that shows up after close if you don't ask before.
- What is the club's current tee-sheet policy for members versus the public? If a course has recently opened access, ask how that affects member booking windows during peak season, since that's the part most likely to keep changing.
FAQ
Does opening a golf course to public play lower home values? Not necessarily, and not on its own. Course access and property values move somewhat independently. What it does change is the exclusivity story a seller can tell, which is one input among several in how a home is marketed and priced, not the only one.
Will my golf course eventually be forced to remove turf? Under AB 1572, golf courses are defined as functional turf and aren't subject to the non-functional turf irrigation phase-out that applies to other commercial, industrial, and institutional properties starting January 1, 2027. Non-golf common areas maintained by the same HOA don't carry that same exemption.
Is club membership always included in the home price? No. Some Rancho Mirage communities separate HOA dues from club membership entirely, as at Desert Island. Others bundle a mandatory membership into HOA dues or require a separate initiation fee paid at close, as at Desert Horizons. Always confirm which structure applies to the specific address, not the neighborhood in general.
If you're weighing a fairway lot against a non-golf property in Rancho Mirage, or trying to figure out what a specific club's HOA packet is actually asking you to pay for, that's the kind of local detail worth walking through before you write an offer, not after. Lori Ebeling has spent 25 years reading these fee structures across the Coachella Valley and can help you separate what a property's price is protecting from what it's simply hoping you won't ask about. Schedule a 15-Minute Consultation to go through it together.
