A Cliffs membership is a separate purchase from a Cliffs home, and as of the 2026 published schedule only two categories are still sold. Full Golf carries a $100,000 initiation fee and $1,710 a month. Active carries $50,000 and $850 a month. Both add a one-time $3,000 home club improvement fee, and both fees are non-refundable and due with the application rather than at closing. Full Golf provides unlimited play across all seven Cliffs courses with no greens fees anywhere in the system. Active provides everything else the club operates, with no access to the courses or driving ranges. Every other category a buyer will find quoted online, including Home Golf, Non-Resident Golf, all three Sports levels, Social, Corporate and National, has been eliminated and cannot be purchased.

Who This Is For (and Who It's Not)

Ideal for

• Buyers who play regularly and want reciprocal access across Glassy, Valley, Mountain Park, Walnut Cove, Keowee Falls, Keowee Springs and Keowee Vineyards
• Buyers who will use the wellness centers, Beach Club, Lake Club, racquet courts or trails several times a week without ever picking up a club
• Families where parents or adult children will visit often enough that Legacy Access changes the math
• Anyone comparing a Cliffs home against a non-club community and needing the honest annual carry rather than the monthly dues line

Not ideal for

• Buyers who play a dozen rounds a year. Guest fees at $125 accompanied are cheaper than $20,520 in dues, and there is no shame in doing that arithmetic.
• Buyers who assume club dues replace the property assessment. They are separate charges with separate governing bodies.
• Buyers hoping for an inexpensive social tier. Social was eliminated. The floor is now Active at $50,000 to join.

Lifestyle Reality

The distinction that matters day to day is not price. It is whether you play.

Full Golf members get 14-day advance tee times at their home course and 7-day advance at the other six, with no greens fees at any of them. That reciprocal structure is the actual product. A member at Cliffs Valley can play Keowee Springs on a Thursday and Mountain Park on a Saturday without paying to walk on.

Active members get the rest of it, and the rest of it is substantial. Wellness centers, Beach Club, Lake Club, racquet sports courts, clubhouses, dining, marina facilities, the equestrian center, private parks, pavilions, and the hiking and biking trails. What they do not get is the course or the range.

For a household where one spouse plays and the other does not, this is worth a conversation before anyone signs anything. Two Full Golf memberships is not the automatic answer.

The annual food and beverage minimum is $1,200 for resident members, and Full Golf members are exempt from it entirely. If you eat at the club twice a month you will never notice the minimum. If you bought in for the trails and the Lake Club and rarely sit down to dinner, you will.

Real Estate Reality

Membership does not come with the house. It is applied for separately and approved by the club, and the initiation is not a closing cost, it is due with the application.

That timing surprises buyers. A household budgeting $100,000 of initiation into their loan discovers it is a cash obligation on a separate schedule.

A current member moving to another property inside The Cliffs pays a $5,000 transfer fee, subject to membership office approval. That is a real number to factor if you are buying at Glassy now and suspect Keowee is where you actually want to be in five years.

The broader point for anyone weighing a Cliffs address against a comparable home outside the gates: the house is one decision and the club is a second one, and the second one carries a six-figure entry plus roughly $23,000 a year. That does not make it a bad decision. It makes it a decision that deserves its own analysis rather than being folded into a mortgage conversation.

Insider Perspective: What Most Buyers Miss

Almost every fee table online is out of date. Multiple sites publish the full historical grid of Cliffs memberships. Most of those categories were eliminated. Existing members may remain in them or convert to Full Golf or Active, but nobody new can buy them. If you are reading a page that quotes Social dues as an option, you are reading a page that will waste your time.

The cheaper membership carries a spending obligation the expensive one does not. Full Golf members are exempt from the annual food and beverage minimum. Active members owe $1,200 a year. This runs opposite to what everyone assumes, and it narrows the real gap between the two.

Active is the sleeper, and almost nobody frames it that way. Half the initiation, $850 a month, and the entire club experience minus the courses. For a buyer who does not play, it is the correct answer, and it rarely gets presented as anything other than a consolation tier.

Legacy Access is a family extension, not a way in. It exists only for linear family members of a Full Golf member, parents, children and grandchildren over 23, and their spouses. The $250 application and $0 dues look extraordinary until you read the rest: greens fees at every round, up to three accompanied guests, no unaccompanied guests at all, 3-day booking, and tee times that do not start until 11:00 am.

Dues are not the whole number. Annual cart and trail runs $1,800 single or $2,500 family. Add the $35 handicap and $125 bag storage and a family golfer is near $23,180 a year all in, before a single guest round. Budgets built on the $1,710 monthly figure alone come in about 13 percent light.

Guest economics quietly shape how you use the club. An accompanied guest is $125. An unaccompanied guest is $275. If your plan involves sending business contacts out to play without you, price that before you decide the club is your entertainment budget.

Three trade-offs worth sitting with

The $50,000 you save choosing Active over Full Golf is permanent, and so is the loss of course access. Converting later means paying the difference at whatever the schedule says then, not at today's number.

Annual cart and trail at $1,800 pays for itself around sixty rounds a year at the $30 daily rate. Below that you are prepaying for convenience.

Buying inside a Cliffs community without joining the club is entirely possible and materially cheaper. It also removes most of the reason people move there. Some buyers do it happily. Others spend two years watching the club from the outside and join anyway, having saved nothing.

Related Insights

Anyone weighing whether the total picture justifies itself should start with our broader assessment of whether living in The Cliffs is worth the cost, which covers the ownership side rather than the club side. Because the two get conflated constantly, it is also worth understanding what Cliffs property assessments actually cover, since those are billed separately from anything described here. Buyers new to this kind of community tend to repeat the same handful of errors people make in private club communities, and most of them are avoidable with one honest conversation beforehand, which is largely what choosing the right advisor for this market is for.

A Local, Advisory Perspective

We work in these communities every week, and the membership question comes up earlier in the process than most buyers expect. Our view is that the club decision deserves its own analysis rather than being absorbed into a home search. Sometimes that means Full Golf without hesitation. Often it means Active, or waiting a season before joining anything. The figures here come from The Cliffs' own published 2026 schedule, and we would rather a client walk in knowing the real annual number than discover it after the fact.

Frequently Asked Questions

What memberships are available at The Cliffs?

Only two Cliffs memberships are still sold: Full Golf and Active. Full Golf costs $100,000 to join plus $1,710 a month and includes unlimited play across all seven courses. Active costs $50,000 plus $850 a month and includes every club amenity except the golf courses and driving ranges. Home Golf, Non-Resident Golf, Sports, Social, Corporate and National have all been eliminated, though existing members may remain in those categories.

How much does a Cliffs membership cost per year?

A Full Golf membership runs about $23,180 a year once dues, annual cart and trail, handicap and bag storage are counted, on top of $20,520 in dues alone. An Active membership runs about $11,400 a year including the $1,200 food and beverage minimum. First-year cost is higher because initiation and the $3,000 home club improvement fee are due with the application.

What is the difference between Full Golf and Active membership at The Cliffs?

Full Golf includes unlimited access to all seven Cliffs courses with no greens fees, while Active includes no course or driving range access at all. Active covers everything else the club operates, including wellness centers, the Beach Club, Lake Club, racquet courts, dining, marina, equestrian center and trails. Active also carries a $1,200 annual food and beverage minimum that Full Golf members are exempt from.

Is a Cliffs club membership the same as the property assessment?

No. Club membership and property assessments are separate charges with separate governing bodies. An owner in a Cliffs community can pay their property assessment and carry no club membership at all. Any figure quoted for club dues does not include what you owe on the property side.

What is Legacy Access at The Cliffs?

Legacy Access is a privilege a Full Golf member extends to linear family, meaning parents, children and grandchildren over the age of 23 and their spouses. It costs $250 to apply and carries no monthly dues, but greens fees apply at every course and access is limited. Legacy Access members book three days out, tee times start at 11:00 am, they may bring up to three accompanied guests, and unaccompanied guests are not permitted.