Latitude Margaritaville Hilton Head

The character

Latitude Margaritaville Hilton Head is Minto Communities' Lowcountry take on the Jimmy Buffett idea — a gated, active-adult community in Hardeeville, in Jasper County, near the Okatie area on the way toward Hilton Head, built entirely around the Margaritaville lifestyle brand and its unbothered, island-tinged sense of retirement. Where the region's older 55+ communities grew up over decades, this one arrived recently — Minto opened its model homes here in June 2018 — and all at once, which is exactly why its homes are new-construction, single-level, and low-maintenance from the studs out.

Life orbits Latitude Town Square, where a bandshell puts live music at the center of the calendar and the Latitude Bar & Chill sits a few steps away. Around it are the resort-style Paradise Pool, an indoor lap pool, a fitness center with an indoor whirlpool spa, and pickleball and tennis courts. There's no golf course inside the gates — the community is golf-cart-friendly instead, a clean point of difference from Sun City just up the road — and Minto plans to keep building it out past 3,000 attached and single-family homes. That combination of brand-new, lock-and-leave homes and amenities-on-tap is a natural fit for the certified-turnkey model — and it's the reason so many Lowcountry buyers end up weighing Sun City against Latitude, the region's two big active-adult names, before they choose.