Hampton Lake

The character

Hampton Lake is the Lowcountry's lake community — a gated, all-ages neighborhood in Bluffton built around a large freshwater recreational lake rather than a golf course, which is exactly what sets it apart from almost everything around it, its golf-and-marsh neighbors included. The lake has grown with the community to 227 acres, with some 15 miles of shoreline and 7 miles of navigable waterways inside a community of roughly 900 to 1,000 acres. It isn't scenery you drive past: residents boat, paddle, and fish on it, and the whole plan bends toward the water instead of the fairway — a design that earned it the BALA "Best Community in America" award in 2008 and a "Best Lake Community of the Year" honor in 2016.

Daily life orbits the nationally acclaimed Lakeside Amenity Village — anchored by The Lake House clubhouse and The Boat House — where a community fleet of electric Duffy boats, a pontoon, skiffs, kayaks, and canoes launches onto a deliberately low-horsepower lake. Resort pools, a lazy river, Fitness Central, tennis, and pickleball sit a few steps from Backwater Bill's lakeside restaurant and bar, and the newer Parkside Amenity Center adds Crystal Lake — a roughly four-acre Caribbean-inspired lagoon with a white-sand beach, turquoise water, and tiki huts. Developed by Reed Development and opened in 2005, it's a newer community — most homes are recent new-construction or recent resales — which is exactly the kind of low-mile, move-in-ready inventory the certified-turnkey model reads best.