Island Green

Turn a golf cart off Baytowne Avenue toward the quiet, wooded north end of Sandestin and the resort's energy falls away almost at once. The road narrows into a pocket of pine and palm where the fairways of the Raven Golf Club wrap close around the houses, private lakes sit still between the lots, and only a handful of cul-de-sacs branch off a single lane. This is Island Green, a small, reserved residential district on the bay side of Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort. It takes its name from the course it adjoins - the Raven's celebrated island green - and it lives up to the calm the name suggests: a non-rental enclave of custom homes set apart from the visitor bustle of the wider resort, valued above all for its privacy.

Island Green sits in the northern, bay-side interior of the Sandestin peninsula, just off Baytowne Avenue and backing onto the championship Raven Golf Club. It is a green, low-density corner of the resort: mature pines, hardwoods, and palms shade the streets, and several homes look out over tranquil private lakes and the rolling greens of the golf course. The land here feels wooded and settled rather than newly cleared, the houses tucked into landscaping that has had time to grow in. Because it lies within Sandestin, Island Green is best understood as one quiet district inside a much larger world. The full resort spans roughly 2,400 acres from the Gulf of Mexico to Choctawhatchee Bay, with more than seventy neighborhoods, four golf courses, a marina, and a bay-front village. Island Green occupies just a small, calm pocket of that expanse - the residential edge of the Raven course - while the beaches, shops, and gathering places of the resort remain a short cart ride away.

The defining feature of Island Green is the golf course at its back. The Raven Golf Club was designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., who carved it through the marshes, wetlands, and towering pines of Sandestin's northern section, between the Baytowne village and the estate enclave of Burnt Pine. It plays to roughly 6,900 yards at par 71, a layout Jones has described as a modern take on traditional design, with large, undulating greens that make club selection a challenge on nearly every hole. The course carries a competitive pedigree, too: it hosted the Boeing Championship, a stop on the PGA Champions Tour, in 2006 and 2007. Its most photographed hole is the par-3 sixth, which plays over water to a true island green ringed by sand and lagoon - the very feature the neighborhood's name echoes. For residents whose lots front the Raven, that scenery becomes the everyday backdrop: fairway and water views out the back windows, and a course of genuine reputation just beyond the property line.

Island Green is a neighborhood of custom single-family homes rather than a uniform tract. Its residences are built in a mix of Mediterranean, Tuscan, and contemporary styles, set on large lots and known for understated elegance and fine finishes. No two houses are quite alike; the emphasis is on individuality, quality, and the way each home sits within its wooded, water-touched setting. The layout reinforces that intimacy. The district is arranged as just three cozy cul-de-sacs off Island Green Lane, which runs in east and west legs - a compact, dead-end street pattern that keeps through-traffic out and gives the neighborhood a hushed, tucked-away feel. Between the mature trees, the private lakes, and the greens of the Raven, the overall impression is of a settled residential pocket that happens to sit inside a resort, not of resort development itself.

What most sets Island Green apart within Sandestin is that it is a non-rental community: short-term rentals are not permitted here. In a resort where much of the housing turns over with vacationers week to week, that single rule changes the entire character of the street. The homes are occupied by residents and second-home owners rather than a rotating cast of guests, and the neighborhood keeps a quiet, stable, neighbor-not-visitor calm that is genuinely uncommon this close to a busy resort core. For buyers who want the reach of Sandestin without its transience, that distinction is the whole point. Island Green offers privacy and security - a settled residential base behind the resort gate - while the beaches, marina, and village stay just minutes away. It is the difference between living in a resort and vacationing in one.

For all its seclusion, Island Green is woven into the wider resort, and life here runs largely on cart paths rather than highways. From the neighborhood, residents can ride to the shops, restaurants, and boardwalk of the Village of Baytowne Wharf on the bay, out to the beaches on the Gulf side, or over to the marina and the resort's pools, tennis and pickleball courts, and miles of walking and biking trails. The full menu of Sandestin's amenities belongs to the resort as a whole and is shared by its neighborhoods, Island Green among them. The daily rhythm, though, stays quieter than the resort's core. Mornings might mean a round on the Raven at the back door; afternoons, a cart ride to the sand or the marina; evenings, dinner at Baytowne and a cart ride home to a dark, still cul-de-sac. It is resort living reached from a residential base - all of Sandestin's energy on tap, none of it camped in the front yard.

Island Green suits people who want a calm, low-turnover home or second home inside a full-amenity resort. Golfers drawn to the Raven have the course at their doorstep; anyone who prizes privacy and a settled street will value the non-rental rule and the dead-end, three-cul-de-sac layout. For buyers who want the full sweep of Sandestin - its beaches, bay, marina, and village - reached from a quiet, wooded corner where the neighbors stay put, this small bay-side district offers a distinct and appealing kind of resort life.