What Hemlock Farms HOA Dues Cover Before You Buy

You're comparing a lot in Hemlock Farms against a similarly priced place a few miles outside the gates. The purchase prices are close enough not to matter. Then you get to the HOA line on the listing sheet and it stops you. A few thousand dollars a year, due annually, before you've turned on a single light in the house.

Most buyers do the same math at that point: divide the number by twelve, compare it to a gym membership or a country club fee, and decide whether the pools and the gate are worth it. That comparison is the wrong one. The dues line at Hemlock Farms isn't really a lifestyle fee. It's closer to a small municipal budget, funding services a township would otherwise cover through property taxes and separate utility bills. And two of the things buyers most often assume are baked into that number aren't in there at all.

The Number, and Why It Moved

The most recent fully itemized figure Hemlock Farms Community Association published was for 2023, when dues on an improved lot rose to $2,688, an increase of $202 or 8.12 percent over the prior year, according to the association's own dues notice. Unimproved lots went up 7.11 percent that year and adjacent lots 7.14 percent, meaning the increase wasn't flat across the board. It scaled with what kind of lot you owned.

Dues get reset every year through a fall budget process, with member forums and Board hearings before adoption, so the 2023 figure is not what a buyer should expect to write on a closing statement in 2026. What it does show, clearly, is the anatomy of the fee. Two line items from that year's board explanation account for most of the increase: a $464,947 rise in payroll, including a new Assistant Comptroller position, and a roughly $38,400 jump in insurance costs. Those aren't amenity costs. They're the same categories that show up in a small town's operating budget.

Three Things Actually Inside the Fee

The dues aren't paying for the golf course or the ski hill primarily. They're paying for infrastructure a nearby non-gated home would either fund through separate taxes and bills, or wouldn't have at all.

1. A private water utility. Hemlock Farms operates its own water company, sourcing from deep wells in the Catskill Formation, testing and treating water for more than 3,400 homes. A buyer outside the gates is either on a private well they maintain themselves or paying a separate municipal water authority bill. Inside Hemlock Farms, that infrastructure cost is folded into the dues.

2. A private police force. The Department of Public Safety is HFCA's own private police department, with some officers commissioned under Pennsylvania's Private Police Act, coordinating with Pennsylvania State Police on anything serious. That's staffing, vehicles, and gate coverage at two of the community's three entrances around the clock.

3. Advanced Life Support ambulance service. In the 2023 budget, ALS service cost the association $431,405, working out to roughly $120 of that year's per-lot dues. This is a paramedic-level response embedded in the community rather than something dispatched from the nearest township.

Layer on top of that a Replacement Reserve, funded at $1,575,000 in 2023 and accounting for roughly $452 of the total dues that year. That reserve is what pays for road paving, pool repairs, and clubhouse maintenance without hitting owners with a surprise special assessment when the parking lot needs redoing. It's the difference between an association that budgets for wear and tear years in advance and one that waits for something to fail and bills everyone after the fact.

Two Things the Dues Line Doesn't Cover

This is the part that catches people off guard, because it cuts against the "everything's included behind the gate" assumption a lot of second-home buyers bring with them.

The Hemlock Farms Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company, which covers Porter Township, Blooming Grove, and part of Dingman Township, is a volunteer company that is not funded by community dues. HFCA's own site is direct about it: the Board encourages a separate annual donation to keep the company running, because the coverage exists alongside the dues-funded ALS service rather than inside it. So the paramedic response is bundled into your fee. The truck that might show up with it isn't.

The second item is the Lords Valley Country Club, the 18-hole golf course and tennis facility that sits inside Hemlock Farms geographically but predates the community and operates as its own private club, limited to 400 members, with dining and tennis facilities separate from HFCA. A buyer who assumes golf access comes with the gate fee will find out otherwise. It has its own membership structure entirely apart from the association.

Neither gap is a flaw in the community. It's just a reminder that "gated" doesn't mean "all-inclusive," and the dues number on a listing sheet tells you less than it appears to about what you're actually purchasing access to.

What the Same Services Cost Without the Gate

Step outside Hemlock Farms and those bundled costs don't disappear. They just get billed differently, or in some cases, don't exist at the same level at all.

• A private well means you own the pump, the filtration, and the maintenance schedule directly, with no association absorbing testing costs.
• Ambulance response in an unincorporated or lightly staffed township may come with a per-use billing model through county EMS rather than a flat annual assessment.
• Road maintenance and clubhouse-style amenities, if a smaller association has them at all, often get paid for through special assessments rather than a pre-funded reserve, meaning the bill arrives unpredictably instead of every year on schedule.

None of this settles which is the better financial choice for a given buyer. A retiree who wants predictable annual costs and paramedic-level response nearby is solving a different problem than an investor comparing a wooded lot with no association fees at all. The point is that the comparison only works once you know what's actually inside the number on each side.

Before You Write the Offer

A few things worth confirming directly with the association before a closing date gets set, since none of this should be assumed from a listing sheet alone.

Dues are set by lot classification, not a flat community-wide rate. Improved, unimproved, and adjacent lots have moved at different percentages in past years, so the number on one listing may not predict the number on the next lot over. It's also worth asking whether the Hemlock Farms Conservancy, the community's 501(c)(3) established in 2009, is currently funding programs like Chipper Days or hazardous tree removal that year, since those grants are described by the community as reducing pressure on the dues bill itself. That's a detail that shifts slightly year to year and is worth a direct question rather than an assumption carried over from a prior owner's experience.

FAQ

Do all Hemlock Farms lots pay the same dues? No. Dues are set separately for improved, unimproved, and adjacent lots, and the annual percentage increase has not been uniform across those categories in past budget cycles.

Is the volunteer fire company part of my HOA dues? No. The Hemlock Farms Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company operates on donations, not community assessments, even though the ALS ambulance service is dues-funded.

Is the Lords Valley Country Club included in my dues? No. It's a separate private club with its own membership structure, located inside the community but not operated by the association.

How often do dues change? Annually, through a budget process that includes member forums and Board hearings before adoption, typically in the fall.

If you're weighing a lot in Hemlock Farms against something outside the gates, or trying to figure out what a specific parcel's current dues actually fund, that's exactly the kind of question worth working through before an offer goes in rather than after. Linda Hanf and David Hanf work this market daily and can walk you through the current assessment for a specific lot alongside everything else that shapes what you're really buying. Schedule a free consultation to start that conversation.