Nine courses, one address
Nine POA and member-owned courses inside the gates mean genuine variety — different designs, distances, and difficulty — without a commute. Verify the current course count with the POA, but nine is the long-cited number.
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The largest gated golf community in America
Golf living in Hot Springs Village
Nine courses, multiple lakes, and gated privacy across the Ouachita Mountains — a self-contained golf-community world about twenty minutes from downtown Hot Springs.
A gated golf world, not just a subdivision
Hot Springs Village ("HSV," or simply "the Village") is widely cited as the largest gated community in the United States, sprawling across roughly 26,000+ acres of the Ouachita Mountains in Garland and Saline counties, about a twenty-minute drive north of downtown Hot Springs. It is not a single golf course with houses around it — it is an entire incorporated-scale community with its own streets, utilities, recreational lakes, trails, and nine golf courses, all behind manned entrance gates. For a golf-minded buyer, that scale is the whole point: you can live inside the gates and reach a different course most days of the week without leaving home.
The Village is governed not by a city hall but by a Property Owners' Association (POA), funded by assessments every property owner pays. That structure — more than any single fairway — shapes what it costs and what it feels like to own a golf-community home here. We walk through the assessment mechanics on our buying-on-a-course guide; verify current figures with the POA before you rely on them.
The draw
Why golfers settle inside the gates
The Village's appeal to golf buyers comes down to a handful of durable advantages.
Gated & self-contained
Manned gates, private roads, and on-site amenities give the Village a secure, low-hassle feel that appeals strongly to seasonal residents and lock-and-leave retirees.
Mountain-and-lake setting
Fairways thread through the Ouachitas alongside recreational lakes and wooded ridgelines — a scenic backdrop that flatter, prairie golf communities can't match.
Low-tax Arkansas
Comparatively low Arkansas property taxes are a recurring reason out-of-state retirees choose the Village over pricier Sun Belt golf markets. Confirm current millage and any homestead credit with Garland County.
Where the Village sits — and who moves here
HSV straddles the county line north of Hot Springs, wrapping the small towns and forest of the eastern Ouachitas. Downtown Hot Springs — with its bathhouses, hospitals, and the national park — is a short drive south; Little Rock and its major airport sit roughly an hour east, which matters to out-of-state families flying in. The buyer base skews heavily toward active retirees and second-home owners, many relocating from higher-cost or higher-tax states, drawn by the golf, the lakes, and the price gap versus comparable communities in Florida, Arizona, or the Carolinas.
That said, the Village is not exclusively 55-plus — families and remote workers live inside the gates too. If you're weighing the retirement angle specifically, our retirement & 55+ guide covers the lifestyle fit, and our relocation guide covers the practical move.
Watch
See the Village from the air and the fairway
A feel for the scale of America's largest gated golf community.
Hot Springs Village — America's largest gated golf communityCommunity overview
Nine golf courses in Hot Springs VillageGolf overviewPicturing a home inside the gates?
Tell us how you play, whether you want course frontage or just Village access, and your budget — we'll point you to the right corners of HSV.
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