Calusa Homes for Sale — Kendall

Calusa lies in West Kendall between Kendall Drive (SW 88th Street) and SW 120th Street, inside the census-designated place called The Crossings, which runs from Florida's Turnpike west to SW 137th Avenue and counted 23,276 residents on 3.56 square miles in 2020. The CDP names three neighborhoods, The Crossings, Devon Aire and Calusa, all developed in the 1970s and 1980s. Calusa is the one built around a golf course.

The Calusa Country Club at 9400 SW 130th Avenue opened in 1968 as a semi-private 18-hole course, and the lots around it were sold in the 1970s with a 99-year covenant, running to 2067, that kept the land as golf unless 75 percent of the ring of bordering homeowners agreed otherwise. Facundo Bacardi, of the spirits family, bought the course in 2003; it closed in the early 2010s and sat idle for more than a decade while the fairways grew over and a bird rookery took hold on the lake. What happens to those 168 acres was argued before the County Commission for the better part of ten years, and that argument is the neighborhood's defining fact.

Portals date the detached houses of Calusa Club Estates from 1974 to 1989 and list them from about 1,597 to 4,465 square feet, with three to six bedrooms. The larger, later houses tend to sit on Calusa Club Drive and the streets that ring the old course, where lots were sold as golf frontage; the smaller, earlier plans fill the interior streets. Most are single-story concrete block, and many still carry roofs, windows and additions that predate Hurricane Andrew and the 2002 statewide code.

At the edges are attached sections, including Calusa Club Village, a condominium at 8811 SW 132nd Place with a pool and elevators. These carry monthly dues and, if a building is three stories or more, fall under Miami-Dade's recertification program. Treat a Calusa condo and a Calusa house as two different purchases with two different document lists.

Calusa's house streets are not gated and portals show many with no mandatory association fee; the condo sections have their own associations. The document that governed the neighborhood for fifty years was the golf-course covenant, and its release is the story every buyer should know.

By December 2016, with the course closed, the owner and GL Homes were floating as many as 1,100 homes on the land. Bacardi's entities gathered releases from more than three-quarters of the 146 ring lots, and on October 29, 2020 the County Commission voted to lift the covenant. Commissioners rezoned the land in November 2021, GL Homes bought it that year for a reported $32 million, and residents organized as Save Calusa sued. In 2024 the Florida Supreme Court sided with them, finding the county had failed to properly notify residents of the hearing. On April 23, 2026 the Commission approved the application again, 8 to 5, for 524 detached homes at about three per acre on roughly 168 acres, with the houses beside the rookery removed and the lake enlarged, changes the Tropical Audubon Society endorsed. No construction date has been announced; permitting is expected to take months.

The public schools listed for The Crossings CDP are Calusa Elementary, Devon Aire K-8 Center, Arvida Middle School at 10900 SW 127th Avenue, founded in 1975, and Miami Killian Senior High; confirm any assignment with the district boundary tool. The county's Devon Aire Park at 10411 SW 122nd Avenue, 11.83 acres with lighted ball fields, tennis courts, a playground and restrooms, is the closest large park, and the county lists a small Calusa Club Estates Park inside the neighborhood.

Kendall Drive is the commercial spine and the commute road, with the Turnpike interchange at its east end and SR 874 beyond it toward Dadeland and the Metrorail. Traffic on Kendall Drive and the nearby intersections was the residents' main objection to the redevelopment; test it at rush hour before you buy.

If the house backs onto the former course, read the approved site plan before you value the view. The 2026 approval removed homes beside the rookery and enlarged the lake, but a lot that faced open fairway for fifty years may face a construction site and then a neighbor. Ask what disclosures the seller has received and check the county zoning file.

Then treat it as any 1970s Kendall house. Order wind mitigation and four-point inspections, pull the permit history for enclosed patios, converted garages and roof work, and price the roof if it predates the mid-1990s. Pull the FEMA flood zone for the exact address; Kendall's lakes and canals put many parcels in Zone AH or AE, and flood insurance is required for any federally backed mortgage in a Special Flood Hazard Area. The county hotline is 305-372-6466.

Calusa buyers compare on lot position first: on the old course or off it, and if on it, what the approved plan puts behind the fence. Be direct about it in the listing; the county vote was front-page news. Then they compare on roof age, permit cleanliness and post-Andrew windows.

Price against Calusa sales, not against gated 1990s communities near the Turnpike or Devon Aire townhomes. With houses running from 1,600 to 4,500 square feet, the right comparable is the same plan type on the same kind of street. A current wind mitigation report and a closed permit file shorten negotiations more than staging.