Pull up any February 2026 snapshot of The Ridges and the median sold price looks like it fell off a shelf. One widely circulated figure put the community median near $2.7 million, down sharply from the 2024 annual median of roughly $4.44 million at about $813 per square foot. Read that as a price drop and you will misread the market. What actually happened is that the mix of trades shifted toward condos and semi-customs while the top of the community held. And the reason the top is holding, and the reason the mix is about to shift again, sits just west of the 215 with earthmovers on it.
The thesis, in one sentence
The single event repricing The Ridges in 2026 is not interest rates and not inventory. It is the private conversion of the old Bear's Best golf course into Amara Golf Club, and the widening gap between fairway-fronting parcels and interior lots is where the story lives.
The mechanism
Mulligan Holdings Inc., led by Andrew Pascal (founder of PlayStudios and former Wynn Resorts COO) and Mike Mixer, bought Bear's Best Las Vegas for $30.5 million, and both principals live inside The Ridges. Their stated first priority was defensive: protecting the course from a rezoning fight of the kind that consumed the shuttered Badlands course in Queensridge, which spawned years of litigation and a settlement in the hundreds of millions after the city lost repeatedly in court.
The redevelopment itself is a full rebuild, not a refresh. The public course closed June 22, 2025, redevelopment began September 2025, a private-club reopening is projected for October 2026, and 15 boutique villas are slated for completion by December 2027. The design partner is Jackson Kahn Design. A new two-level clubhouse with underground parking will sit off a reconfigured Flamingo Road entrance, and the club will cap membership at 250 plus 15 villa memberships, with a $250,000 initiation that increases every 50 members.
Two facts inside that paragraph matter more than the rest. The membership cap is small. The residents-first ownership is unusual. Together they are the reason underwriters and buyers in the community are treating Amara as a permanent floor under fairway-fronting values rather than a speculative catalyst.
Where the premium is actually landing
The Ridges is not one market. It is roughly 380 homesites across 12 individually gated enclaves, and the Amara news does not touch them evenly. Here is the working framework buyers should use when they tour:
| Enclave tier | What Amara changes | What it does not change |
|---|---|---|
| Fairway-fronting lots in Redhawk, Falcon Ridge, Arrowhead, Silver Ridge | Direct visual and access relationship to a private Nicklaus-tradition course with capped membership; comparable golf frontage at Southern Highlands and Red Rock Country Club trades at a 12 to 18 percent premium over non-golf lots | Nothing about interior comparable inventory |
| Ridgeline custom estates in Azure, Promontory, The Pointe, Rimrock | View-cone and elevation drive price; Amara is a nice-to-have, not the pricing lever | 2025 produced two Azure sales at $16M (68 Sun Glow Lane) and $13.5M (19 Flying Cloud Lane), both view-driven |
| Interior lots without golf or view exposure | Least affected by Amara; still benefit from the general community halo | Traditionally the softest resale category in a supply-constrained market |
| Fairway Hills condos (Toll Brothers) | Full club access lift is real but not yet priced in; this is the mispricing | Nothing about maintenance profile or floor plan inventory |
Read the middle column as the actual reason Q1 2026 medians look uneven. When Azure trades, the community median spikes into the mid-single-digit millions. When Fairway Hills and semi-customs trade, it prints in the low $2Ms. Same community, different products, one number that averages both and tells you nothing useful.
The trade nobody is making
Fairway Hills is the argument most agents will not put in writing because it sounds like a downgrade. It is not.
The community was built by Toll Brothers with a planned 128 units running roughly 1,959 to 3,370 square feet, and current pricing sits between about $680,000 and $1.7 million depending on floor plan, view, and vintage. That buys full Club Ridges access, the enclave's own sub-clubhouse with pool and fitness, double-gated security, and a Ridges address. And critically, it buys direct visual exposure to what is about to become a private, membership-capped Nicklaus course.
Here is the asymmetry. When Amara opens in October 2026, the underwriting case for custom estates on Redhawk and Falcon Ridge fairway lots gets rewritten in real time. The condo market inside the same gates reprices slower because condo buyers weight lifestyle and cost basis differently than estate buyers weight view and land. A Fairway Hills unit acquired in mid-2026 owns the same amenity uplift as the fairway estate next door, at a fraction of the entry cost and without the estate carrying costs. That is the trade.
There is a real counterweight worth naming. HOA structure inside The Ridges runs roughly $350 to $600 monthly at the enclave level, layered on top of the Summerlin master-plan assessment. Combined annual carrying costs at the estate tier commonly run $7,500 to $12,000 in dues alone, and Fairway Hills adds its own sub-clubhouse assessment. Model the full carry before the offer, not after.
What actually happens at the closing table
The market data is the easy part. Transactions inside The Ridges have their own friction.
- Showings are appointment-only and double-gated. The community gate plus the individual enclave gate mean cold drive-bys do not exist. Listing agents coordinate access windows, and buyer agents without a track record inside specific enclaves regularly get bounced at the second gate. Build showing days around confirmed windows, not open-house drop-ins.
- Off-market inventory is meaningful. In enclaves like The Pointe (12 homesites, three separate gates) and Rimrock, listings are the exception rather than the rule. A buyer working only from MLS is seeing a fraction of the real supply.
- Amara membership timing is now a negotiation term. With the club capped at 250 members and initiation scaling upward every 50 members, whether a seller holds a founding-tier membership deposit and whether that deposit is assignable is a live question in a purchase contract. It was not a factor twelve months ago.
- View cones get appraised. In the ridgeline enclaves the difference between a lot that catches both Strip and Red Rock and one that only captures one has appraised as high six figures. Comp selection matters more here than in almost any submarket in the valley.
- Design review has teeth. Custom rebuilds and material tear-downs pass through Summerlin's architectural review, and timelines are measured in months, not weeks. Buyers modeling a scrape-and-build should assume the review adds a full development cycle to their pro forma.
The broader Las Vegas luxury market told a softer story in the same window. In April 2026, the valley luxury Market Action Index sat near 35 with roughly a third of active listings carrying at least one price reduction. Inside The Ridges' top enclaves, that pressure did not translate. The pool of buyers for a $5M-plus Azure or Promontory home is small, out-of-state, and largely rate-insensitive. Migration from California, New York, and Illinois continues to feed it, and the zero state income tax argument still lands with the same buyers it landed with three years ago.
FAQ
How reliable is the October 2026 Amara reopening? It is the developer's stated target, published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal in April 2025 and reaffirmed in on-site construction updates through spring 2026. Golf course rebuilds carry weather and grow-in risk. Villas are separately scheduled for late 2027 completion. Model your acquisition thesis around the course opening on time, but do not overweight it in offer price.
Does buying a fairway lot lock in a membership? No. The residential purchase and the club membership are separate transactions. A homesite next to the eleventh green does not include an Amara membership. Confirm any purported membership right in writing during due diligence.
Is Fairway Hills actually inside the gates, or adjacent? Inside. Fairway Hills sits within The Ridges' guard-gated perimeter and layers a second gated entry on top. Residents access Club Ridges alongside custom-home owners.
How does The Ridges compare to Ascaya or MacDonald Highlands for a fairway-fronting buyer? Different valley, different course. The Henderson communities offer south-valley Strip sightlines and different course pedigrees. The Ridges offers west-valley Red Rock exposure and, after October 2026, a private Nicklaus-tradition course with a hard membership cap. The choice is less about price per foot and more about which side of the valley you want to live on.
If you are weighing a Ridges purchase in the next twelve months, the sequencing matters more than the search. Which enclave, which lot orientation, whether to enter through Fairway Hills or a semi-custom, and how to structure showings inside a double-gated community are the decisions that shape the outcome. That is the kind of conversation Kristi Badolato has with clients every week. Let's connect when you are ready to walk through it.
