Picture yourself on your covered patio, lake stretching out behind you, kids already at the park, and the whole weekend still ahead. This is The Orchards of Westlake -- and this lakefront six-bedroom is one of the best positioned homes in it. Nearly 4,000 SF of 2024 new construction. 4.5 baths. Gas kitchen with quartz countertops. Tile main floor, main-level bedroom suite, primary with lake views. 100 feet of waterfront. 2-car garage. Gated. Golf cart to Publix and Planet Fitness. No CDD fees. $22M park with pool, pickleball, basketball, and BMX two minutes from your front door. The city is still being built -- which means you're locking in today's price with tomorrow's infrastructure already permitted. Let me tell you about Westlake, because most people who haven't been here yet picture it wrong. They hear "western Palm Beach County" and they think distance. They think you're trading convenience for space -- that there's a catch buried somewhere in the price per square foot. Five years ago, that instinct would have been right. Today it's just outdated information being passed around by people who haven't driven out here recently.
Westlake is Palm Beach County's newest city. Incorporated in 2016. Purpose-built from the ground up on 3,800 acres. Not a subdivision. Not a master-planned development with a single builder and a sales center that closes when the last lot sells. A city -- with its own infrastructure, its own commercial corridor going up block by block, its own governance, and a master plan that reads like someone finally sat down and thought hard about what a Florida community should actually feel like to live in.
Here is the number that matters before anything else: Westlake has no CDD fees. In a county where community development district fees routinely add $2,000 to $4,000 a year to the cost of owning a home -- on top of HOA, on top of taxes, on top of insurance -- that is not a small thing.
The Orchards is Minto's fifth neighborhood inside Westlake. Three hundred fifty-eight homesites, most on the water, all of them gated. Liberty Lane runs along the lake. Lot 580 sits on one hundred feet of waterfront. When you walk out the back door, the water opens up in front of you and there is nothing between you and the far bank but light. This is not a retention pond behind a berm. This is the view they put on the cover.
Six bedrooms. Four and a half baths. Three thousand nine hundred ninety-seven square feet. Built in 2024 -- so everything is new. The roof, the AC, the appliances, the water heater, the plumbing, the electrical. You are not inheriting someone else's deferred maintenance. You are the first family to use this kitchen.
That kitchen has quartz countertops, a gas range, wood cabinets that run to the ceiling, and enough counter space to actually cook. The main floor is tile throughout -- cool underfoot, easy to clean, the right call in Florida year-round. Upstairs, carpet in the bedrooms where you want warmth and quiet underfoot at six in the morning.
Here is where this floor plan earns its price. There is a full bedroom and a full bathroom on the main floor. That is intentional architecture for the way families actually live in 2025. For the family bringing mom or dad down from New Jersey because the winters finally won -- that room is everything. Private space on the main level, no stairs, independence maintained, family kept close. Nobody has to negotiate the staircase at two in the morning. For the family without that situation yet -- it is the guest suite that actually functions. Visitors get their own floor, their own bath, and their own entry to the outdoors. They stop being house guests and start feeling like they have a place here.
The primary suite is upstairs, facing the lake. Your morning starts with that water view before the day has asked anything of you. The remaining four bedrooms are real rooms -- not offices relabeled to inflate the count, not bonus rooms with no closets. Two become kids' rooms. One becomes the home office with a door that closes when the call requires it. The last one is whatever this stage of your life needs. At nearly four thousand square feet you are not negotiating square footage against your own family.
Covered patio out back overlooking the lake. Room for a pool. Two-car garage. Gas cooking. This home is ready to live in the day you close.
The Westlake Adventure Park is a $22 million amenity complex built by Minto and deeded to residents. Two minutes from your front door: resort-style lagoon pool with a three-story water slide and splash pad. Pickleball courts. Basketball courts. A BMX pump park. Bocce. A dog park. An outdoor concert pavilion. An adult lap pool. The Lodge -- a multipurpose event space for residents to book. The pickleball courts mean parents have somewhere to be Saturday morning while the kids are at the pool. The BMX pump park means the twelve-year-old has somewhere that is genuinely his.
You can get there on a golf cart. Westlake updated its ordinance so residents drive directly from the neighborhood to the commercial corridor. Out of The Orchards and you are at Publix in five minutes without starting your car. Publix opened 2023. Planet Fitness -- 25,000 square feet -- opened 2024. Aldi is open. The Westlake Palms retail plaza broke ground January 2025. Coming next: Adrenaline World at Westlake Landings -- projected longest go-kart track in Florida, indoor trampoline park, VR, laser tag, mini golf. Already approved.
Westlake is entitled for 4,500 homes and 2.2 million square feet of commercial space. In 2025, GL Homes purchased over 300 acres inside the city for more than $100 million. Phase 1 of their Silver Lake neighborhood is approved for 294 homes. When GL Homes commits $100 million to a market, that is not a speculative bet. That is a capital decision by a builder who has been in this county for four decades. The city's population has grown sevenfold since 2020. The retail is not projected -- it is open. The park is not under construction -- it is in use.
The families arriving here are running the same math from different starting points. Broward buyers -- Pembroke Pines, Miramar, Coral Springs -- have equity, have outgrown their homes, and have spent eighteen months watching before deciding. Tri-state buyers from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut already ran the coastal math: a comparable home in Delray, Boca, or Wellington is $1.2 to $1.5 million. Here they get more square footage, newer construction, and a larger lot in the same county with the same schools and the same airport. The beach is 35 to 40 minutes east. They made a version of this trade when they chose Scarsdale over the Upper West Side. The families already here are not driving to the beach every weekend -- they are at the Adventure Park. Miami-Dade buyers moving north from Kendall and Doral want gated, new, and infrastructure that exists. This is it.
All of them are doing the same calculation: this square footage, on this much water, inside a city with a funded master plan and no CDD fees, does not exist at this price anywhere else in Palm Beach County.
One hundred feet of lake. Six bedrooms with a main floor suite. Four and a half baths. Nearly 4,000 square feet of 2024 construction -- nothing deferred, nothing inherited. No CDD fees. Golf cart to Publix. A $22 million park two minutes away. Two major builders actively building inside the city. A commercial corridor that is open and expanding.
This is the home for the family that did the research, ran the numbers, and moved when it still made sense to move.