Fair Oaks Ranch Community Features: HOAs, Taxes, and Schools

Fair Oaks Ranch does not have one HOA. It has a master homeowners association, the Fair Oaks Ranch HOA (FORHA), and then a separate unit HOA for most individual neighborhoods. When you buy, you typically pay both assessments, and you need to read both sets of documents before you make an offer. The master association owns the shared infrastructure: roughly nine miles of walking trails, three private parks, a private nature preserve, and the community's security and common-area maintenance. Its office is at 7286 Dietz Elkhorn, Fair Oaks Ranch, TX 78015, and it can be reached at (210) 698-2225.

The unit HOA handles your specific subdivision: entry gates where they exist, common landscaping, frontage maintenance, and design review. The dues vary by neighborhood, which is why the standard advice to "expect a couple hundred a month" is not precise enough. Trailside at Fair Oaks Ranch, a newer section registered as an HOA in 2016, does not carry the same assessment as a gate community with a maintained entry and shared amenities. The seller's disclosure and the HOA resale certificate from the management company list the exact numbers, and those documents arrive during the option period.

One distinction California buyers miss: the HOA is completely separate from the Fair Oaks Ranch Golf and Country Club. Club membership is voluntary and paid to Invited (formerly ClubCorp), which operates the club. Owning a home in the city does not grant club access, and the two dues are billed separately.

FORHA's published list of unit HOAs and assessment committees gives a clean map of the city's neighborhoods. The established sections near the golf club and the newer builds at the city's west edge are the ones that dominate listings, and each carries its own HOA identity:

Every Fair Oaks Ranch home pays the city's tax rate of $0.2853 per $100 of assessed value for tax year 2025, the rate the city council set in September 2025. From there, the county and school district layers depend on which of the three counties the lot is in. The totals below are the 2025-26 rates as billed on each side of the city:

This is the detail that surprises out-of-state buyers: even the Comal County portion of Fair Oaks Ranch is zoned to Boerne ISD, not Comal ISD. The city's official position is that Fair Oaks Ranch lies entirely within Boerne ISD attendance boundaries, and its residents pay Boerne ISD school taxes through the Kendall County Appraisal District. If you see a listing note that says "Comal ISD" for a Fair Oaks Ranch address, verify it directly with the district, because the attendance-zone maps are the authority.

The campus pattern breaks down this way. Fair Oaks Ranch Elementary (PK through 5, at 29085 Ralph Fair Rd) is the Boerne ISD campus located inside the city. The middle school feed splits between Boerne Middle School South and Capt. Mark Tyler Voss Middle School depending on the neighborhood, and the district's high school zones pair with those middle zones, feeding Boerne-Samuel V. Champion High School in the Fair Oaks Ranch area, with Boerne High serving other sections. Boerne ISD also offers incoming freshmen a high school choice between the two campuses.

One caveat drives every conversation I have with families here: Boerne ISD redrew attendance boundaries in 2021 and again in 2024, so the elementary campus for a specific street may have changed. Before making an offer, put the address into the district's attendance zone map on boerneisd.net. The same diligence applies to any listing that claims a particular feeder pattern. For the full district picture, including TEA ratings and enrollment, see the Boerne ISD guide for California families.

The Fair Oaks Ranch Golf and Country Club at 7900 Fair Oaks Pkwy is the city's social anchor, and it is worth understanding as an amenity claim, not just a logo. The club operates two championship 18-hole courses: Live Oak at about 7,007 yards, par 72, and Blackjack at about 6,991 yards, par 72, both credited to Gary Player and his co-designers, with the clubhouse set in the original ranch home of oilman Ralph E. Fair Sr. Amenities beyond the golf include 14 lighted tennis courts, six pickleball courts, pools, a fitness center, and three dining venues.

Membership is voluntary and priced by Invited on request, so published figures are third-party estimates, not the club's rate sheet. Independent guides and member discussions suggest initiation from roughly $2,500 up to about $20,000 depending on the membership tier, with annual dues in the $5,000 to $10,000 range: a 2023 member report cited around $530 a month for classic golf and $705 a month for full golf. Tiers include full golf, sports, social, family, and junior executive. If the club is a factor in your decision, request real pricing before you shop homes, because the monthly club line can exceed the HOA line in your budget.

The city's zoning code institutionalizes the "big lot" selling point. Residential zones break into three tiers: R1 for lots under 0.3 acres, R2 for roughly 0.3 to 1.3 acres, and R3 for 1.3 to 5 acres. The rule with the most bite: lots without public water and wastewater service must exceed one acre with at least 150 feet of frontage. The newer Post Oak development, about 345 acres on the city's growth edge, requires one-acre minimum lots, which tells you the direction the market is moving.

What this means practically for California buyers is a little counterintuitive. One-acre minimums sound like endless space, and they are, but they are also why Fair Oaks Ranch is a driving community. There is no pedestrian retail district, no Main Street. The nearest coffee and errand runs cluster at Fair Oaks Parkway and the I-10 frontage, with Boerne's downtown about 15 to 20 minutes away. If you are deciding between Fair Oaks Ranch and Boerne, the head-to-head guide for families and the commute reality report cover the daily-use tradeoffs with real drive times.

Fair Oaks Ranch rewards buyers who do the operational homework. Before you fall for the golf course photos, pull three documents for any specific home: the HOA resale certificate from the unit association, the county appraisal district record showing which county the lot is in, and the Boerne ISD attendance zone map for the exact street. Those three documents determine your monthly HOA line, your property tax rate, and your school campus, and they vary from street to street more than any other Hill Country community I serve.

The general picture in one paragraph: a two-tier HOA that bills everyone through a master association plus a neighborhood assessment, property taxes around 1.6 to 1.67 percent before the homestead exemption, Boerne ISD schools for the entire city, and an optional country club membership running thousands of dollars a year on top of the HOA. The community is in my original Fair Oaks Ranch guide, and the community profile has the neighborhood-by-neighborhood view. If you want the exact HOA and tax stack for a specific section, start a conversation and I will pull the resale certificate and appraisal figures with you. The HOA behavior guide covers how Texas associations compare with California's for anyone new to enforced communities.