Lake Nona Custom Home Builders: The Country Club Four

Four builders, one address, and the first major expansion of Lake Nona's original neighborhood in nearly forty years.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Four custom builders work exclusively inside Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in the Lake Nona area: Akers Custom Homes, DeVoe Custom Homes, Goehring & Morgan Construction and Maroon Fine Homes. Issa Homes and Phil Kean Designs also build there and in Laureate Park. The club is a 600-acre private residential golf community established in 1986 around an 18-hole Tom Fazio championship course. Cromwell, along the south shore of Lake Nona, is its first major expansion; Tavistock Development Company platted around 46 lots in the initial release and assigned three lots to each of five custom builders, with spec homes priced from roughly $3.875 million when construction began in early 2024. Homes inside the club record under plat names such as Lake Nona Estates rather than under the club name.

Every other post in this builders series covers a company that works across neighborhoods. This one covers four companies that work inside a single gate.

Akers, DeVoe, Goehring & Morgan and Maroon Fine Homes build custom estate homes in Lake Nona Golf & Country Club and, within the Lake Nona area, essentially nowhere else. Grouping them on one page is not a shortcut — it is the accurate way to describe the situation, because the decision a buyer faces here is not "which neighborhood" but "which builder, on which lot, inside one club."

Who builds inside the club, and where else do they work?

Four builders work only inside Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in this area; two others build there and in Laureate Park as well.

What is Lake Nona Golf & Country Club?

The original Lake Nona — a 600-acre private residential golf community established in 1986, four decades before the master plan grew up around it.

This is worth stating plainly because the sequence surprises people. Medical City, the Town Center, Laureate Park, the whole modern idea of Lake Nona — all of it came later. The club came first, built around an 18-hole championship course Tom Fazio designed in 1986, threaded through pine forest, oak groves and freshwater lakes.

The course is ranked among the top 100 in the world and has hosted the Solheim Cup, the World Cup of Golf, the Tavistock Cup and LPGA championship events. The membership has long included touring professionals, which is most of the club's reputation outside Orlando.

Beyond golf: a clubhouse of roughly 40,000 square feet with dining rooms, a wine cellar, a grill room and a golf shop; an 18-room guest lodge overlooking Lake Nona and the 18th fairway; and the Bath & Racquet Club with a fitness center, tennis courts, a resort-style pool and a playground. There is boat ramp access to the lake, and the community runs 24-hour gated security and concierge services.

That boat ramp matters more than it sounds. Lake Nona is a private ski lake with no public access, and the club is one of only two residential neighborhoods on it — the other being Water's Edge. Compare the club against other golf communities in the area on our Lake Nona golf courses page.

What is the Cromwell expansion?

The first major expansion of the club, along the south shore of Lake Nona — and the reason all four of these builders have new inventory at once.

Tavistock Development Company, the master developer of Lake Nona, platted a new section it calls Cromwell along the south shore of the lake. The initial release ran to roughly 46 lots. Rather than selling them off individually, Tavistock assigned three lots to each of five custom builders — Akers, DeVoe, Goehring & Morgan, Maroon and Issa — who began construction on spec homes in early 2024 priced from roughly $3.875 million.

Some specifics from that first wave give a sense of the scale: Goehring & Morgan started a five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bath house of about 5,866 square feet with a three-car garage on a half-acre lot, priced just under $4.4 million. Many of the lots back to a large pond with a seawall, which creates separation from the commercial buildings on the far side.

Two practical notes. First, prices and availability from a 2024 release do not describe today's market — treat those figures as scale indicators, not as current pricing, and check what is actually available now on our new construction listings. Second, Cromwell records in the MLS as Lake Nona Estates 10, not as Cromwell and not as Lake Nona Golf & Country Club.

That last point applies across the whole club. Homes inside the gate record under plat names like Lake Nona Estates and various Lake Nona phase and parcel designations. If you search by the club's name you will find a fraction of the inventory and a fraction of the sold history. This is the same recorded-name problem that hides inventory in Summerdale Park and Nona Terrace, and it matters more here because the numbers are larger.

The four builders

Each of these companies is small, Central Florida based, and building estate homes inside one gate — but they are separate businesses with separate histories.

Deliberately absent from those four paragraphs: any ranking. These are small private companies building bespoke houses, and the quality of your experience will depend far more on the specific team, the specific architect and the specific contract than on anything published about the firm. What follows is how to actually tell them apart.

How do you choose among them?

Look at completed houses, talk to the owners of those houses, and read the contract structure — in that order.

Walk finished work, not models. A custom builder's portfolio is its real product. Ask each builder for addresses of homes they completed three to seven years ago inside the club, not just the newest spec. Recent work shows you what they are selling; older work shows you how it holds up.

Ask for owner references and actually call them. The questions worth asking are about process, not aesthetics: Did the schedule hold? How were change orders priced? What happened when something went wrong after closing? A builder who cannot produce references from completed jobs inside this club has told you something.

Read the contract structure before you fall in love with a rendering. Fixed price versus cost-plus, how allowances are set and what happens when you exceed them, how change orders are priced, what the draw schedule looks like, and what the warranty actually covers and for how long. On a build at this level, the contract is the product.

Understand who is designing. Some homes here come from the builder's in-house design capability, some from an independent architect the buyer hires. Those are different projects with different cost structures and different lines of accountability. Settle that early.

Separate the club from the house. Membership terms, categories and costs are set by the club, not by your builder or your seller, and they are a substantial ongoing obligation independent of the purchase. Confirm the current terms with the club directly before you commit to anything.

What should you check before buying or building here?

The recorded plat name, the lot's specific position, the appraisal reality, and the club's current terms.

Plat name first, for the search reasons above. Pull sold data under Lake Nona Estates and the relevant phase and parcel designations, not just the club name, or you are pricing against a partial history.

Lot position second, and it drives value more than square footage does at this level. Golf frontage, lake frontage, pond frontage and interior are four different assets with four different price bands, and what is behind and across from the lot matters as much as what the lot itself has. Go stand on it.

Appraisal third. Custom estate homes at this price point in a small community are inherently hard to appraise — there may be no genuinely comparable recent sale, and every house is bespoke. If you are financing rather than paying cash, treat the appraisal as an event to plan for rather than a formality.

Then the ordinary diligence that still applies at any price: confirm the assessment on the specific parcel rather than trusting a listing remark — our CDD fees explainer covers how — and confirm school zoning for the exact address with our schools guide, since OCPS assignments can change.

Building in the club: pros and cons

What works. This is the only address in the Lake Nona area where a top-100 golf course, a private ski lake with a boat ramp, a 40,000-square-foot clubhouse and a genuine custom build all sit behind one gate. The four builders are small, established, Central Florida companies whose principals are typically involved in the work rather than running a division of a national. Cromwell is a rare event — the first major expansion of a community that has been essentially built out for years, which means new lots in a place that has not had them. And the club's history and membership give the address a durability that newer luxury product does not have.

What does not. Custom building is the longest, most expensive and least predictable way to acquire a house, and it goes wrong more often than production building does because there are more decisions and fewer standard answers. Small private builders have small balance sheets; if a warranty question arises in year eight, the company answering it is a local firm, not a corporation. Club membership is a substantial and separate ongoing cost that buyers routinely underestimate. Appraisal and resale in a small, bespoke market are genuinely harder in both directions. And the recorded-name problem means most buyers never see the full sold history before they price an offer.

What the neighbors know

The membership is the thing residents talk about, and specifically who else lives there. A club whose homeowners have included a long list of touring professionals develops a particular social texture — people are used to neighbors who travel constantly and want to be left alone when they are home. Longtime members describe that as the appeal rather than a curiosity.

The other recurring subject is the lake. Boat ramp access to a private ski lake with no public entry is the amenity residents mention that outsiders never think of, and it is one of only two addresses in the whole area that has it. And on the golf side, what members say about the Fazio course is consistent: it is understated rather than showy, which is exactly why it has aged as well as it has.

Official sources

• Lake Nona Golf & Country Club: custom builders
• Lake Nona Golf & Country Club overview and history
• GrowthSpotter: Tavistock releases the Cromwell lots, March 2024

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Considering a build or a purchase inside Lake Nona Golf & Country Club? I can pull the complete sold history under every plat name the club records under, walk lots with you, and tell you what an appraiser is likely to do with a bespoke house in a small market. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

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