Article Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post

By Laura Mize

Published June 29, 2015

Like many other communities in South Florida, Lantana’s Sea Pines neighborhood is well kept with nicely manicured lawns and homes.
  
Unlike many of those other attractive communities, Sea Pines has no homeowners’ association to regulate property maintenance and appearance. There’s no professional landscaping troupe here to keep hedges perfectly trimmed or rotate in blooming flowers.  

 

Still, Sea Pines stands out as one of Lantana’s prettiest neighborhoods. “It’s a very beautiful neighborhood and fairly consistent, which is also unusual that you have that consistency and with no association, with no association fee attached to it,” said Diane Keane, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker who works in the neighborhood. Keane says she finds true pride of ownership in the community, as well as a friendly feel. “The neighbors know each other,” she said. “There’s just a feeling of community there, which is very nice.”

Sea Pines has a lot of things going for it, such as access to nearby parks — including adjacent Maddock Park — and its vicinity to local schools.
   
Lantana Middle School, which earned an A in 2014, sits just north of the neighborhood, while Lantana Elementary School, a C school, is a short distance to the northeast. Lake Worth High School, a B school, is about four miles away.

“There’s also community facilities with the sports complex and the pavilions and the nature preserves and things like that, the rec center at the oceanfront,” Keane noted. “ … it’s such close proximity to the (Intracoastal Waterway), to the beach. It’s also easy to get onto Federal Highway or I-95, as well. So it’s just a very well positioned little community.” The neighborhood sits less than 2½ miles from the beach, according to Nicole Dritz, a community planner for the town of Lantana. “Its location is one of the best things about it,” she wrote in an email.

And, with no formal neighborhood association, boats and recreational vehicles are welcome here, making it easier for residents to enjoy the perks of coastal living.
  
The lack of a homeowners’ association also makes the neighborhood more affordable.
 
“When people go to get loans, that association fee has to get worked into their loan ratios. And having worked with people that are shopping by a loan payment,” Keane said, “ … sometimes that association fee is what pushes them over the edge of not being able to buy the house.”
  
Dritz also mentioned that Sea Pines residents have an infrastructure upgrade coming.
 
“The town is currently working with engineers to develop a new comprehensive drainage plan for the neighborhood,” she wrote.
  
The town council recently approved $162,997 in funding for the project.
 
Sea Pines homes are mostly concrete-block ranches built in the 1980s, with the largest around 1,800 square feet, Keane said. Many have two-car garages, an unusual feature for homes built in that era on the east side of town, she added.
  
Backyards are big enough to fit a swimming pool, which many of the homes have.
  
Fifteen-year Sea Pines resident Jackie Stull appreciates all these attributes, as well as the low traffic on her loop-shaped street.
  
“The traffic on our street is really mainly just to that street itself,” she explained. “So, it’s not a freeway for everyone.”