A buyer closing on a home in Preston this fall might reasonably picture weekend mornings on the first tee by spring. The house backs up to a fairway. The listing photos show manicured greens through the trees. Everything about the transaction points toward golf as part of the deal.
It isn't. Prestonwood Country Club, the private club anchoring Preston, states plainly on its own membership page that it is not accepting new members right now and has been running a multi-year wait list. Homeownership in Preston has never required club membership, and club membership has never required homeownership in Preston. They are two separate products that happen to share a mailing address, and right now, one of them is closed.
That single fact reshapes how three of Cary's best-known golf-adjacent communities should actually be compared. Preston, MacGregor Downs, and Lochmere get lumped together constantly as "Cary's golf neighborhoods," priced and marketed as a matched set. They are not a matched set. The membership structure behind each one is different enough that a buyer chasing golf access could easily end up paying the most for the neighborhood where playing golf is currently hardest to arrange.
The club and the HOA are not the same contract
Start with what each community's golf actually is, legally and practically.
Prestonwood Country Club in Preston is fully private, founded in 1988 by developer Hillman Duncan and his wife Betty on land bought from the Preston Development Company. It has grown into a 54-hole operation spread across three 18-hole courses, serving more than 1,800 Triangle families with membership categories that include Full Golf, Tennis, Social, and Dining. None of that is included in a Preston HOA payment. Club dues are billed separately, and right now the club isn't taking new members at any tier, waitlisted or not, according to its own membership office.
MacGregor Downs Country Club is also fully private, and considerably older. Designed by Willard Byrd, it opened in 1967 and hosted the U.S. Professional Match Play Championship in 1973, with a course renovation by Brian Costello completed in 2005. Membership here is optional and, like Preston, entirely separate from HOA dues. The club is part of the Concert Golf Partners network, which also operates The Club at 12 Oaks about 20 minutes away, and Concert Golf's premier membership tier lets a member use both.
Lochmere Golf Club breaks the pattern entirely. The Lochmere HOA is explicit that the golf course is not part of the association. The club itself is semi-private, now operated under the Invited network, and it sells memberships while also accepting daily-fee public play. Members can book tee times 14 days out, the public seven days out. A Lochmere resident who never joins the club can still walk up and pay to play the 18-hole, Gene Hamm-designed course that opened in 1985.
Three communities, three different answers to the question "does buying here get me golf," and the answer has almost nothing to do with the sale price.
What that looks like priced out
Community | Recent median sale price (2026) | Club structure | Current access |
|---|---|---|---|
Preston | About $1.235 million | Fully private, dues separate from HOA | Not accepting new members, multi-year wait list |
MacGregor Downs | About $1.2475 million | Fully private, dues separate from HOA | Open, optional membership |
Lochmere | About $762,000 | Semi-private, run outside the HOA | Open to members and daily-fee public play |
Compare those numbers against Cary's citywide median sale price, which sat at $645,000 for the three months ending in June 2026. All three golf communities carry a real premium over the town as a whole. But the premium doesn't buy the same thing in each place. In Lochmere, the least expensive of the three, a buyer can be on the course within a couple of weeks of closing, membership or not. In Preston, the most exclusive-feeling of the three, a buyer can own the home and still be years away from an invitation to join the club that gave the neighborhood its identity.
What the price gap is actually paying for, if not guaranteed golf
If club access isn't driving the premium, something else is. Mostly it comes down to land and vintage.
Preston's lots run large, typically a third of an acre to three-quarters, with some estate parcels topping a full acre, and the community was built mostly from the mid-1980s through the early 2000s. That means mature trees and established streetscapes, but it also means a buyer should budget for the renovation costs that come with a 20-to-40-year-old house: kitchens, bathrooms, HVAC systems, and roofs that are due or overdue.
MacGregor Downs runs smaller lots, a quarter acre to a half acre, but with construction spanning the 2000s to today, so the housing stock skews newer with fewer looming replacement costs. That newer-build convenience, paired with the neighborhood's deep golf pedigree, is a large part of what MacGregor Downs is actually selling at its price point.
Lochmere sits between the two in build era, mostly mid-1980s through the 1990s, with lots that tend to be larger than in newer Cary subdivisions. Its 2026 HOA assessment is a modest $836 a year, a figure the association itself publishes and updates. That HOA fee has nothing to do with golf because, again, golf isn't part of the association.
None of this is subtle once it's laid out, but it rarely gets laid out. Real estate marketing for all three communities leans on the word "golf" as shorthand for lifestyle, prestige, and amenity richness all at once, which flattens three genuinely different ownership structures into one interchangeable pitch.
Before writing an offer in any of the three
A buyer weighing Preston, MacGregor Downs, or Lochmere specifically for the golf lifestyle should get answers to a short list of questions before going under contract, not after closing:
- Is club membership required, optional, or entirely separate from the HOA, and does the club's own office confirm current availability?
- If there's a wait list, how long is it running right now, and is there any path to expedite it, such as a transferable membership sometimes advertised with a specific listing?
- What do current HOA dues cover, and are golf-adjacent amenities like pools or tennis part of the HOA or part of a separate club contract?
- For older homes in Preston or Lochmere, what's the realistic timeline and cost for major systems that haven't been replaced?
- If daily-fee or public play matters more than membership, which of the three even allows it? Right now, only Lochmere does.
That last question matters most for anyone who wants to golf occasionally rather than commit to a private membership. It's the one place where the cheapest neighborhood of the three is also the most accessible one, which runs counter to how most buyers instinctively rank the three communities.
There's a useful, if unusual, moment to see this play out in person. Prestonwood hosts the SAS Championship, a PGA TOUR Champions event, returning this October 16 through 18 as the tour's regular-season finale, with a $2.1 million purse and a 78-player field. It's one of the only weeks a year when the public can walk Prestonwood's fairways at all, tournament week aside. The rest of the year, the course stays exactly as private as the club's own membership page describes.
Frequently asked questions
Does buying a home in Preston guarantee membership at Prestonwood Country Club? No. The club states directly that homeownership in Preston is not required for membership, and it also isn't sufficient. Club membership is handled entirely through Prestonwood's own membership office, which is currently not accepting new members due to a multi-year wait list.
Can someone golf at Lochmere without living there or joining the club? Yes. Lochmere Golf Club is semi-private and accepts public play through its own tee-time booking system, in addition to selling memberships. It's the only one of the three clubs discussed here that works this way.
Are HOA fees and golf club dues the same bill in these communities? No, in all three cases. Preston and MacGregor Downs both keep HOA dues and country club dues on entirely separate invoices from separate entities. Lochmere goes a step further: its golf course isn't part of the HOA at all, so the HOA fee covers pools, trails, and shared amenities, not the course.
If you're weighing Preston, MacGregor Downs, Lochmere, or any other pocket of Cary against what you actually want your weekends to look like, that's exactly the kind of local detail worth working through before you write an offer. Kelly Shields has spent years tracking how these Cary communities actually function day to day, not just how they're priced. Explore more on the Cary neighborhood page, or get in touch for a free home valuation and a straight answer about what a given address really includes.
