Daniel Island's Community Enhancement Fee: Why the Rate on the Page Isn't the Rate You Pay
August 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
Picture two closings on Daniel Island the same week this fall. One buyer closes on a $750,000 townhome inside the Daniel Island Community Association. The other closes on a Daniel Island Park estate priced at $3,913,724, a figure drawn from an actual recent sale on Delahow Street. Both purchase agreements quote the identical line item: a Community Enhancement Fee equal to one half of one percent of the sale price, payable to the Daniel Island Community Fund at closing. Read the contract literally and the townhome buyer owes $3,750 while the estate buyer owes $19,569. In practice, the estate buyer's check is closer to $8,105. Same fee, same rate on paper, a fraction of the cost for the larger purchase.
That gap is not a typo in someone's closing statement. It is a fixed dollar cap sitting on top of a percentage fee, and it changes who actually pays the fee's full weight and who does not. If you are pricing a listing, comparing two homes in different pockets of the island, or just trying to get an accurate cash-to-close number before you write an offer, the cap matters more than the headline rate.
The Community Enhancement Fee is not a tax and it is not the same as your annual homeowners association dues. It is a one-time charge collected at closing and paid to the Daniel Island Community Fund, Inc., a separate entity from the property owners' associations that funds shared infrastructure across the island: parks, waterfront boardwalks, street lighting, and common landscaping. It shows up on the resale addendum every buyer signs, and it is due in full at closing, with no proration.
The Daniel Island Property Owners' Association publishes the fee structure directly, and the rate itself is not uniform across the island.
| Location | Rate | Cap |
|---|---|---|
| Most of the Daniel Island Community Association and all of Daniel Island Park Association | 0.5% of sale price | Capped, recently published at $8,105, up from $7,417 in earlier schedules |
| Codner's Ferry Park and Etiwan Park | 0.25% of sale price | Same cap structure, but rarely reached at typical price points |
That cap creeping upward from $7,417 to $8,105 in recent published schedules is itself a small tell. Each association's board approves its budget every fall, and the fee figures move with it. Any number quoted in a blog post, including this one, should be confirmed against the current year's schedule before you build it into a closing estimate.
Run the math at different price points using the 0.5% rate and the $8,105 cap, and the fee's real behavior comes into focus.
| Sale price | Fee if uncapped | Fee actually owed | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| $700,000 | $3,500 | $3,500 | 0.50% |
| $1,500,000 | $7,500 | $7,500 | 0.50% |
| $1,621,000 | $8,105 | $8,105 | 0.50% |
| $3,067,712 | $15,339 | $8,105 | 0.26% |
| $3,913,724 | $19,569 | $8,105 | 0.21% |
| $7,900,000 | $39,500 | $8,105 | 0.10% |
The crossover point sits right around $1.62 million. Below that, the fee behaves exactly the way it is described: half of one percent. Above it, the fee stops scaling and the effective rate falls the higher the price climbs.
That threshold lands inside Daniel Island's current market, and the picture changes depending on which side of the island you're standing on. A market update dated July 2, 2026 put the island's overall median listing price at about $1,780,450, with a median sold price of $1,307,500, comfortably under the cap threshold. Daniel Island Park tells a different story. The same report placed the Park's median listing price at roughly $3.04 million, and Redfin's neighborhood data for Daniel Island Park showed a median sale price of $3,067,712 as of May 2026, up 2.3 percent year over year. Individual Park sales have climbed higher still, with recent closings ranging from roughly $3.25 million up to $7.9 million.
In other words, the fee behaves exactly as advertised, a true half of one percent, for most typical resales elsewhere on the island, where the median sale sits well below the point where the cap takes over. It stops scaling almost entirely once you cross into Daniel Island Park, where the median sale itself already clears the cap threshold by close to double. Codner's Ferry Park and Etiwan Park sit at the other end of the spectrum. As the island's earliest established neighborhood, Etiwan Park's homes are unlikely to reach the roughly $3.2 million mark where their lower 0.25% rate would hit the same cap, so buyers there are the ones most likely to pay the fee exactly as the contract describes it.
Part of what makes Daniel Island's closing costs harder to estimate from a generic checklist is that the island is not governed by one association. It is three.
The Daniel Island Town Association covers the business district and most multi-family developments, including the Oaks. The Daniel Island Community Association covers single-family and townhome properties south of I-526, along with the Parkside Condominiums. The Daniel Island Park Association covers residential property north of I-526, which is Daniel Island Park itself, again excluding the Oaks.
Which association applies to a given address determines more than just which fee schedule to check. It also determines amenity access. DICA residents have use of the Beresford Creek Street boat landing. DIPA residents have access to a separate landing on Ralston Creek in Great Oak Park. Two homes a short walk apart can sit in different associations entirely, with different annual assessments, different capitalization fees, and different amenities attached to the dues.
Beyond the Community Enhancement Fee, a handful of other one-time and annual charges are specific enough to Daniel Island that they rarely show up on a standard buyer's closing cost worksheet:
None of these are large enough individually to change a buying decision, but stacked together with the Community Enhancement Fee, they add real dollars to a closing statement that a generic HOA disclosure would not flag. For current figures, the Daniel Island Property Owners' Association's finance office publishes an updated closing fee schedule each year and takes questions directly from agents and title companies working a transaction.
Here is where the cap stops being trivia and starts affecting an actual decision. Say you are comparing two homes listed at $1.6 million: one in Etiwan Park, one elsewhere in the Daniel Island Community Association.
The Etiwan Park home, at its 0.25% rate, generates a fee of $4,000, well under its own roughly $3.2 million cap threshold. The other DICA home, at 0.5%, generates a fee close to $8,000, right at the cap. Two homes priced identically on the listing sheet carry a fee difference of roughly $4,000 simply because of which side of an internal boundary line the property sits on. That is not a rounding error in a cash-to-close estimate. It is the kind of detail that belongs in a comparison spreadsheet before an offer goes out, not something discovered by accident at the closing table.
Who actually pays the Community Enhancement Fee, buyer or seller? The resale addendum for Daniel Island Park names the purchaser as responsible for the fee at closing. Like any closing cost, allocation can become part of contract negotiations between buyer and seller, so it is worth raising early rather than assuming it is fixed.
Is this the same thing as my HOA dues? No. The annual assessment paid to DICA or DIPA covers ongoing association operations. The Community Enhancement Fee is a separate, one-time charge paid to the Daniel Island Community Fund, Inc., earmarked for island-wide capital projects rather than day-to-day association budgets.
Will these numbers be the same next year? Not necessarily. Each association's board approves its own budget every fall, and fee schedules have shifted in recent years, including the cap itself moving from $7,417 to $8,105 in more recent publications. Always request the current year's schedule before finalizing a closing estimate.
A fee described as half of one percent sounds like it scales evenly with price. On Daniel Island today, it mostly does not. Knowing where the cap sits, and which pocket of the island your address falls into, turns a line item that looks identical on every contract into something you can actually plan around, whether you are budgeting a purchase or pricing a home to sell.
If you are weighing a purchase on Daniel Island, or trying to price a listing accurately once every closing cost is accounted for, Marie Pohlman can walk through the current fee schedule for your specific address and association before you write or accept an offer. Schedule a Free Lowcountry Market Consultation to get the numbers that actually apply to your closing, not last year's.
If you're wanting a Real Estate Agent with exceptional communication, unwavering patience, extensive knowledge of the Lowcountry's market, and one that produces results, please don't hesitate to reach out!