Gated, and closer to everything than you would guess
St. Johns Forest sits on County Road 210 close to I-95, right in the heart of St. Johns. It is a smaller neighborhood, and it is gated, which is the first thing most of my buyers respond to. There is also a back gate that puts you onto 9B, which gets you up into Duval County fast. Strategically, this is one of the better positioned communities we have.
The roller rink
Here is something no other neighborhood around here can claim. When St. Johns Forest was built, it got its own roller rink. Families still use it, and there is roller hockey out there. It is a genuinely different amenity for this area, and for some families it has been the reason they chose the community.
The rest of the amenity center holds up too. There is a slide pool surrounded by lush tropical landscaping, and it feels more like a resort than a neighborhood pool.
Two neighborhoods wearing one name
I want to be honest about this one, because it is the thing you need to understand before you shop it. St. Johns Forest was planned as a high end luxury community, and the front of the neighborhood delivers on that. You have gorgeous ICI and Toll Brothers homes around 4,000 square feet.
Then it got built out through the crash, and the back of the neighborhood tells a different story. Builders like Taylor Morrison put smaller product back there to finish the community quickly. The result is that you drive in past the big homes and end up somewhere that feels like a different neighborhood, and that mix has brought the overall price point down over time.
That is my personal read, and it cuts both ways. If you were hoping for a uniformly luxury community, this is not it anymore. If you want a gated address in a great location with good bones and room to negotiate, the value here is real. Which part of the neighborhood you buy in matters more here than almost anywhere else I sell.
Schools and location
You get the St. Johns County schools, and you get one of the easiest commutes in the county in nearly every direction. For a family that needs to get to Duval for work but wants to come home to St. Johns, this is a short list community.
