Ask ten people in Hobe Sound who provides their water and sewer, and you will get more than one answer, and both of them will be right. Part of town has been on South Martin Regional Utility since the water company that founded it. Part of town still runs on septic tanks that Martin County is actively working to eliminate. The two systems do not overlap, and that distinction is the difference between a routine closing and a seller who owes a buyer money they never expected to owe.
If you are selling a septic-connected home in Hobe Sound this year, the disclosure question is not whether the county has billed you for anything yet. It is whether your neighborhood has come up in a county meeting in the last twelve months. Florida law does not wait for a bill to arrive before it calls something disclosable.
Two Utilities, One Town
South Martin Regional Utility, known locally as SMRU, is the sole source of drinking water and wastewater treatment for Hobe Sound and the Town of Jupiter Island. It traces back to the original Hobe Sound Water Company, which served the Gomez neighborhoods, Banner Lake, Zeus Park, and portions of Jupiter Island decades ago, long before the county ever built a case for converting anyone off septic.
Martin County Utilities is a separate operation. It handles water and sewer for unincorporated parts of Martin County, Hobe Sound included, and it is the agency running Connect to Protect, the county's active program to move remaining septic properties onto municipal sewer. If your home is served by SMRU, the county's conversion program is not aimed at you. If your home is on Martin County Utilities and still has a tank in the yard, it is.
| Utility | Coverage | Relationship to Connect to Protect |
|---|---|---|
| South Martin Regional Utility (SMRU) | Hobe Sound and Jupiter Island, historic service area | Not part of the county's program |
| Martin County Utilities (MCU) | Unincorporated Martin County, including remaining septic parcels in Hobe Sound | Administers Connect to Protect directly |
That split matters because the second utility is mid-rollout, and its rollout is exactly the kind of activity that Florida's disclosure rules were written to catch.
What Connect to Protect Actually Charges a Homeowner
The county's own program page lays out two paths depending on neighborhood size. Communities under 300 homes get an individual, on-site grinder station, installed with a small-diameter main and a directional boring technique that limits digging. Communities over 300 homes get an assessment-based vacuum sewer system instead.
For the grinder path, Martin County's published cost is $10,000 per home, reduced to a lump sum of $8,000 if the homeowner connects within 365 days of the new main becoming available. After that, the county estimates a sewer charge of roughly $18 a month, plus usage.
Homeowners who need help covering that cost have two documented options. Community Development Block Grant funding can provide up to $80,000 as a zero-interest, deferred-payment mortgage for qualifying low and very low-income households. Separately, the Solar and Energy Loan Fund, a nonprofit lender, offers an automatic $1,000 incentive plus a fixed ten-year payment plan around $92 a month, billed on the utility account itself.
None of that is abstract. It is the exact math a seller needs on hand before signing a disclosure form, because the form does not ask whether the county has finished the work. It asks whether an assessment is pending.
Where the Rollout Is Actually Happening
This is not a program sitting on a shelf. Three separate Martin County neighborhoods from the past two years show how fast Connect to Protect moves once it reaches a community.
Construction on a vacuum sewer system in the Coral Gardens neighborhood began in March 2026, with an estimated completion date of October 2027, according to the engineering firm managing design and permitting for the project. Vacuum technology was chosen there specifically because of the area's high groundwater table and flat terrain, the same conditions that describe much of coastal Martin County.
Further south, the South Sewall's Point conversion project was the subject of a contentious Martin County Council meeting in February 2026, with residents raising concerns about environmental hazards and the county's communication around the project's rollout. The outlet that covered that meeting lists Hobe Sound among the Martin County communities it tracks for this kind of infrastructure story, a reminder that septic-to-sewer fights are a countywide pattern, not a single-neighborhood event.
And in March 2025, the county received a $12.5 million state grant to help fund conversion of nearly 1,000 septic tanks in the New Monrovia and Port Salerno area, after an earlier grant of similar size had been returned when residents objected to assessment costs that were too high. The county's utilities director said updated cost estimates now run well below $12,000 per home, a meaningful drop from the numbers that caused the first grant to fall through.
Martin County has also been willing to extend service beyond its own urban service boundary when a specific project calls for it. Commissioners approved exactly that kind of extension back in 2018, over the objection of a Hobe Sound resident who argued the county's rural character depended on keeping municipal service inside that boundary. The debate from eight years ago is the same debate playing out today in Coral Gardens and South Sewall's Point. The county keeps finding reasons to extend sewer lines further, and each extension creates a new set of properties with a pending assessment question to answer.
The Disclosure Line Most Sellers Get Wrong
Florida's standard Seller's Property Disclosure form asks a direct question: is the property connected to sewer or septic. It also asks, separately, whether the seller is aware of any existing or proposed municipal or county special assessments that apply to the property. Those two checkboxes sit close together on the form, and sellers routinely answer the first one honestly while skipping past the second because nothing has technically been billed yet.
That is the mistake. Florida Realtors has been explicit that a special assessment counts as pending if it has been an item on an agenda or reported in the minutes of a governing body within the twelve months before the contract's effective date. It does not need to be approved. It does not need to have a dollar figure attached. If Martin County discussed your street's conversion in a public meeting sometime in the last year, the assessment is pending under the law, whether or not you attended that meeting or read the minutes.
The consequence for getting this wrong falls entirely on the seller. If a levied or pending assessment existed as of the contract's effective date and was not disclosed, the seller is responsible for paying it in full at closing, even if the buyer had already agreed to take on future installments. Ignorance of the meeting is not a defense. Given that Coral Gardens broke ground this year and South Sewall's Point was still being debated in February, any Hobe Sound seller on Martin County Utilities septic service should assume the twelve-month window is live until proven otherwise.
What This Means If You Are Selling on Septic Right Now
- Confirm which utility actually serves the parcel. SMRU and Martin County Utilities are not interchangeable, and only one runs Connect to Protect.
- Call Martin County Utilities directly and ask whether your specific neighborhood has appeared on a Connect to Protect agenda or in board minutes in the past twelve months, not just whether construction has started.
- If a project is pending, get the actual figures in writing, the $10,000 versus $8,000 early-connection cost, the estimated monthly charge, and any CDBG or SELF financing your household may qualify for.
- Complete the special assessment section of the disclosure form based on what the county tells you, not based on what has shown up on a utility bill.
- If you are under contract, tell your attorney about the timeline immediately. The twelve-month look-back means a meeting that happened well before you listed the home can still count.
What Buyers Should Ask Before Writing an Offer
If you are the one making the offer, ask the same question in reverse. Which utility serves this address, and has Martin County Utilities discussed sewer conversion for this street in county meetings recently. A septic system that is stable today can still carry a five-figure cost attached to it within the next contract cycle, and that cost is negotiable before closing in a way it is not after.
FAQ
Does every septic home in Hobe Sound eventually get converted to sewer? Martin County's program is ongoing and administered neighborhood by neighborhood, but it applies specifically to properties on Martin County Utilities, not to homes served by South Martin Regional Utility.
Is the $8,000 early-connection price guaranteed for every household? That figure applies to the standard grinder-station connection cited on the county's program page. Larger communities served by a vacuum sewer system are handled through an assessment-based process instead, so costs can differ by neighborhood.
Can a buyer back out if an undisclosed assessment surfaces after contract? That depends on the specific contract terms and timing, and it is a question for a real estate attorney rather than a blog post. What the disclosure rules make clear is that the financial responsibility for an undisclosed pending assessment falls on the seller.
Septic-to-sewer paperwork is exactly the kind of detail that separates a smooth Hobe Sound closing from a stressful one, and it rarely shows up until someone asks the right question at the right time. If you are weighing a sale or a purchase on either side of that utility line, Erin Duke-Warren and The Benchmark Group can help you get the answers in writing before they become a problem at the closing table. Let's Connect.
