A single-family home near Royal Lake Park went on the market this year with a line in the description that had nothing to do with square footage or granite counters: the house isn't in the HOA. Not "low HOA." Not "HOA covers snow removal." No HOA, full stop, and the listing treated that fact as a selling point worth calling out by name.
That house sits in Kings Park West, one street over from homes that do pay into a mandatory association, and a fifteen-minute walk from Burke Centre, where every one of 5,862 homes pays into one of the largest homeowners associations in Fairfax County. Three homes, three different answers to a question that never shows up on a listing sheet: what does owning this specific address actually obligate you to pay every month, forever, regardless of price.
Most Burke comparisons stop at median price. That number is a blend of markets that don't behave the same way, and the biggest variable hiding inside it isn't lot size or year built. It's which side of a covenant line the parcel happens to sit on.
What Eighteen Thousand Neighbors Bought Into
Burke Centre is a Planned Residential Community, a designation that let the whole 1,700-acre tract get built out under one set of governing documents from the start. That's why the Burke Centre Conservancy looks less like a typical subdivision HOA and more like a small municipal department: five named neighborhoods (Commons, Landings, Oaks, Ponds, and Woods), 65 clusters, its own paid administrative and finance staff, and more than 30 miles of paths threading through the common land.
Membership isn't optional for any of the roughly 5,862 homes inside the boundary, and the dues arrive in two layers. The master Conservancy assessment generally runs $260 to $320 a quarter and covers the five pools, the paths, the staff, and the architectural review process that signs off on exterior changes before you make them. On top of that, each of the 65 clusters levies its own assessment for local landscaping, snow removal, or common-area upkeep, and on some townhome clusters that add-on runs another $80 to $220 a month. Two houses in the same Conservancy can carry noticeably different total bills depending on which cluster they sit in. When you sell, the Conservancy also charges for the paperwork: $211 for a paper resale certificate, $176 if you take it electronically, capped at two copies.
None of that is unusual for a community built this way. It's the trade a buyer makes on purpose when the parcel is inside the boundary, and it applies the same way to every house in every cluster, whether the roof is twenty years old or two.
The Section Numbers Tell a Different Story
Kings Park West didn't get built as one planned tract. It grew section by section from the 1960s through the early 1980s, and the paperwork shows it. Sections 1 through 22 make up the bulk of the single-family homes, and large stretches of that footprint were never bound to a mandatory association at all. The only organization most of those homeowners can join is the Kings Park West Civic Association, and it's voluntary: $25 a year, funding a community newsletter, entrance landscaping, trail cleanup, block captains, and a neighborhood watch program, open to residents whether they pay or not.
Section 25 is different. Built between 1981 and 1983 by Richmarr Construction, its 78 homes along Sideburn Road and all of Stallworth Court and Headly Court fall under the West Park Community Association, a mandatory HOA formed in 1982 specifically to manage that section's common wooded area, playground, and architectural approvals. The townhome portion of Kings Park West carries its own mandatory association too, the Park West Community Association, and selling a townhome there means ordering a state-required disclosure packet first: $264.08, plus $58.69 if you need it rushed.
So "Kings Park West" isn't one answer either. A single-family home in the older numbered sections can close without a resale certificate changing hands at all, because there's no mandatory association to issue one. A townhome two streets over, or a house on Stallworth Court, closes with a state-mandated packet, a fee, and a timeline to manage before ratification.
What Two Trackers Can't Agree On
Pull Burke's home values from two different trackers looking at almost the same footprint in the same season and you'll get two different stories. Zillow's home value index, last updated through June 2026, put the average Burke home value at $742,103, down half a percent over the year. Redfin's ZIP-level read for 22015, covering May 2026, put the median at $724,785, down 7.7% over the year. Same general area, roughly the same month, a $17,000 gap in the headline number and a wildly different read on which direction the year moved.
That spread isn't a data error. Each of those numbers is a median or average across whatever mix of Burke Centre clusters, Kings Park West sections, and townhome resales happened to close in that particular window. Change the mix, and the number moves, even with no real shift in what any individual house is worth.
Recent sold-home data for Kings Park West puts its own trailing twelve-month median above both of those broader Burke figures, at $820,000, up 9% from the year before, with homes moving in a median of 13 days. The corner of Burke carrying the least mandatory overhead, not the amenity-rich planned community, is where recent sale prices have run hottest. Dues don't automatically win the price race, and their absence doesn't automatically lose it.
Price dispersion shows up inside Burke Centre too. An updated colonial with a finished walkout basement can close more than $150,000 above a similar-sized, unrenovated home just two streets away, same cluster, same dues, same amenity package. Association status explains one part of what a Burke price tag is doing. Condition and updates explain another. A buyer who only checks the topline median is missing both.
The Question Before Price Per Square Foot
Here's the comparison that actually matters when two Burke listings land at the same number:
| Community | Membership | Resale Packet Required at Closing | Approx. Dues |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burke Centre Conservancy | Mandatory, all ~5,862 homes | Yes, $211 paper / $176 electronic | $260-$320/quarter master, plus $80-$220/month on some clusters |
| Kings Park West townhomes and Section 25 | Mandatory | Yes, $264.08 (+$58.69 rush) | Not publicly posted |
| Kings Park West sections 1-22 | No mandatory association | None | $0 |
| Kings Park West Civic Association | Voluntary, open to all KPW residents | Not resale-triggering | $25/year |
Before comparing price per square foot on two Burke listings, the more useful question is which row of that table the parcel actually falls into. A house with no mandatory association carries no resale certificate to order and one less document on the closing timeline. A house inside Burke Centre or the KPW townhome and Section 25 footprint carries a real monthly number that a mortgage calculator won't show you, plus a packet fee and a request that's worth making as early in the process as the contract allows, so it doesn't become the reason ratification slips past the date everyone expected.
None of that makes one part of Burke better than another. It makes them different products wearing the same ZIP code, and the difference is the kind of thing you want confirmed in writing before you're past your inspection contingency, not discovered in the resale packet after you've already gone under contract.
If you're comparing two Burke listings and can't tell which row of that table either one belongs to, Pat Fales and Pam Morgan Associates can pull the covenant history and cluster records before you write the offer, not after.
