Club membership at Great Waters is separate from the home purchase, and buyers should review the membership agreement and payment requirements before closing. You do not inherit the seller's club membership when you close on a home at Great Waters. You apply for your own, on the day of closing, at whatever tier you choose to pay for. Skip that step and the eligibility does not carry over later. It is gone for that property, permanently.

That structure alone would be worth knowing before you write an offer. This year it matters more, because the club just added a course that changes which tier is worth paying for.

The tier most Great Waters buyers assumed was enough

Reynolds Lake Oconee runs on a non-equity club model, which means the membership belongs to the club, not to the house, and each buyer negotiates their own tier independent of what the previous owner held. Three tiers currently exist: Silver, Platinum, and Reserve. Under the club's most recently published fee schedule, Silver carries an initiation fee around $45,000, Platinum around $90,000, and Reserve around $135,000, with monthly dues layered on top depending on the option a member selects. Those numbers reset periodically, so anyone drafting an offer should confirm the current figures with the membership office rather than assume last year's schedule still holds.

Course access differs by tier: Great Waters is available with Platinum, not Silver. Silver's course access has historically stopped at The Landing and The Preserve. Platinum is where the rest of the resort lineup opens up, including Great Waters, The National, The Oconee, Richland, and the members-only Creek Club. For years, Platinum was effectively the ceiling. If you wanted the full resort, you paid for Platinum and you had it.

That ceiling moved this year.

What Fenmoor changes about the math

Reynolds is building its eighth golf course, Fenmoor, designed by architect Steve Smyers on a site at the headwaters of Lake Oconee where the terrain runs through marshland, native grasses, and rolling ground carved by branches of Richland Creek. Construction is underway now, with a Fall 2026 opening. Nine of the greens sit along the water. When it opens, Reynolds will offer 144 total holes of golf across its properties, a total that Forbes reported trails only Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina and Boyne's Michigan properties among American golf destinations.

Fenmoor is reserved exclusively for Reserve-tier members. A Platinum member paying dues on every other course in the community, including Great Waters, does not get to play it. That distinction did not exist in this form before Fenmoor was announced. Reserve simply added Fenmoor on top of every privilege Platinum already carried, which means the practical cost of full access to Reynolds Lake Oconee rose by roughly $45,000 with the addition of the Reserve tier.

For a buyer specifically drawn to Great Waters, the Jack Nicklaus-designed course that was one of his earliest solo design projects and remains one of the more scenic shoreline layouts in the Southeast, this changes the question you're actually answering at the closing table. It used to be a simple one: how much golf do I want. Now it is a question about a course you may not have seen yet, on a part of the property most Great Waters residents rarely visit, priced at a premium that has nothing to do with the home itself.

Club membership details for Great Waters buyers

A Great Waters listing may describe the lot, the square footage, the view corridor toward the 18th fairway. Club membership is a separate consideration: the buyer inherits nothing from the seller's club relationship, the tier decision has to be made fresh at closing, and waiting to decide later carries real risk. If a buyer chooses not to acquire membership at closing, that property permanently loses its eligibility for future membership. There is no grace period and no return trip to the membership office next year to reconsider.

That single rule is worth sitting with if you are comparing Great Waters against homes in other Lake Oconee communities that don't tie ownership to a club decision at all. The home price gets you the house. The membership fee, chosen and paid separately, gets you the golf course you can already see from your back porch.

The upside works in the buyer's favor too. Homes clearly positioned to qualify a new owner for club membership, or already tied to an active one, tend to draw stronger buyer interest than comparable homes without that story attached in a private club community like Reynolds. Buyers here are not only evaluating square footage. They are evaluating whether the membership arrangements provide the course and water access they want.

What this means if you're comparing tiers this fall

If Fenmoor access matters to you, personally, not as a resale talking point but as something you'll actually use, the decision to go Reserve instead of Platinum needs to happen with eyes open to the fact that this gap is new. It didn't exist for buyers who closed on a Great Waters home three years ago. The difference now is that Fenmoor is reserved for Reserve-tier members rather than included in Platinum access.

Reynolds has been adding private, members-only courses in stages, first the Creek Club, then Richland, now Fenmoor. The new access distinction is the reason a Great Waters buyer in 2026 is making a different calculation than a Great Waters buyer made five years ago, and it is the kind of detail worth working through with someone who tracks these changes as they happen rather than discovering it after the ink dries.

A few questions worth asking before you write an offer

Can I buy a home at Great Waters without joining the club? Yes. Club membership is not a legal requirement of property ownership at Reynolds Lake Oconee. It is, however, the only path to the golf course, marina access, and clubhouse privileges that make most buyers choose this address in the first place.

Does the fee schedule change every year? It does, and not always by the same amount or in the same direction. Any dollar figure quoted here or anywhere else should be confirmed directly with the membership office at the time you're drafting an offer, not assumed from a prior year's numbers.

If I join at Platinum now, can I upgrade to Reserve later for Fenmoor access? The membership office handles upgrade requests directly, and the club's own materials point buyers toward that conversation rather than assuming an automatic path. Anyone weighing Platinum against Reserve this fall should ask about upgrade timing before deciding which tier to join at closing.

If you're weighing a Great Waters purchase against other Lake Oconee addresses, or trying to work out whether Platinum or Reserve makes sense for how you'll actually use the club, this is exactly the kind of closing-table detail worth mapping out before you're under contract instead of during your due diligence period. Charity Joiner + Company works Lake Oconee closings alongside Los Angeles coastal transactions every week, and can walk you through the current membership landscape before you write an offer. Request a Red-Carpet Consultation and let's talk through how club membership costs may factor into a Great Waters purchase.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.