Golf Community Reviews

     Toby Tobin, an astute Florida-based real estate blogger, has some interesting thoughts about housing data in a post he just published at his web site, GoToby.com.  His contention is that it is becoming a major challenge to make any sense of sales reports nationally or even locally given all the “noise” in the markets (“noise” is my term, not his).  With banks’ ever-changing lending criteria, the unprecedented numbers of foreclosure-susceptible properties, the expired home purchase tax credit that was in effect last year but is now expired, and the uncertainty over what Congress will do about the so-called Bush tax cuts, reading much of anything into national sales data may be a fool’s errand.

        I also wonder, “Why bother?” thinking about national sales data.  It is irrelevant to our own personal situations.  If you have a game plan to buy golf community property, either as a second-home or permanent home, your schedule and requirements should govern how you proceed.  With

few exceptions, prices will either rise, fall or remain steady pretty much across the country.  If you wait for the value of your current home to rise before you make a move you have planned to make, then the price of your future golf home will probably rise too (maybe a little faster, since the baby boomer demographic still wants to move south).  If you think your future golf community home may drop further in price and you are waiting for that, chances are good that the value of your current home will drop too.  In short, trying to time the housing market is about as easy as timing the stock market, which is to say it isn’t (easy).

        In general, the cost of living in the south is lower than in the north and far west.  A move to the south at any time is likely to save you money every year into the future.  Ignore what the housing pundits say about where the market is going.  Get on with your life.

        You can read Toby’s post by clicking here.

     Those of us distressed over what has happened to our home prices here in the U.S. need only look across “the pond” for even more misery.  According to an article in this month’s issue of International Living, officials in Ireland are reporting an overall 40% drop in real estate prices nationwide, but the utter lack of any buyers may force some homeowners to drop their prices up to 70% to compel a sale.  Author Ronan McMahon writes that on the edge of Dublin, for example, some new apartment prices have dropped from a list of $274,000 to $96,000.

        I haven’t really kept up with real estate prices near some of Ireland’s iconic golf courses, like Ballybunion and Lahinch, so I can’t be sure how far they have fallen.  However, new two-bedroom homes across the street from Ballybunion, arguably one of the 10 best golf courses in the world, are listed at 169,000 Euros, about $223,000 US.   Compare that with similar homes near our own nation’s iconic golf courses, like Pebble Beach and the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island – many well into the millions -- and some may find a summer place on the Irish coast too big a bargain to pass up, even toting up trans-Atlantic airfares and the travel times.

        Before any potential buyers raise a glass to the affordability of Irish golf real estate, however, consider McMahon’s cautionary words about the Irish real estate market.

        “…keep in mind,” he writes, “that the deals may get even better if Irish homeowners start to sell their weekend and holiday homes to raise cash.”

         The best advice here, if a base in Ireland next to legendary golf seems attractive, is to combine a little prospecting with a few golf vacations on the Old Sod.  Only about the size of Indiana, Ireland currently has about 10,000 more hotel rooms than it needs. Even if you are three pints of Guinness to the wind, you can figure out that much supply with so little demand spells bargains for American golfers.

        I received an email today pitching a home for sale in Ocean Ridge Plantation, the multi-golf course community about 45 minutes north of Myrtle Beach and under an hour from Wilmington, NC.  With four good to excellent golf courses in play and another on the way, and with a full roster of amenities in place and a solid mix of ensconced residents and vacation-home owners, Ocean Ridge is one of the more stable values on the southern North Carolina coast.

        The home listed in the email certainly fits the notion of value proposition.  At 4,000 square feet, four bedrooms and four baths, and with views of two holes on the Lion’s Paw layout, the $499,000 list price certainly seems fair, maybe even better than fair.  The realtor indicates the original price was $699,000 but the bank that now owns the home is anxious to sell.

        What especially caught my eye was that the realtor did a little helpful math by underscoring the list price per square

foot, $124.  Understanding the cost per square foot of a home is helpful in two conditions.  First, for those couples waffling between buying an existing home or building one to their particular specifications, a cost comparison per square foot could answer the question, “To build or not to build?”  As the emailed listing states, you cannot build a home in the coastal Carolina area for $124 per square foot (more like $150 to $175, according to local realtors).

        Second, the per-square-foot calculation will give you a read on how good a bargain you are getting relative to other homes in the immediate neighborhood.  Outside of older communities like Levittown, the legendary post World War II community on Long Island, NY, homes in a neighborhood are rarely exactly the same size and configuration.  In looking at larger and smaller home prices down the street, the square foot price gets you closer to an apples-to-apples comparison.

        In comparing one community to another with a different location, different set of amenities, different housing stock and all the other personality differences, cost per square foot cannot do much more than make you feel better –- or, perhaps after the fact, worse –- about the decision you made. 

        [Note:  I am pleased to say that one of my first customers purchased a home site five years ago in the aforementioned Ocean Ridge Plantation; recently he sent me an email to announce that he and his wife would begin building their dream retirement home there early next year.  If you would like more information on Ocean Ridge or would like me to arrange a “discovery” weekend for you, please contact me (click here)].

        As if the relatively few property owners at the Daufuskie Island Resort were not already on tenterhooks over the bankruptcy of their golf community, now they have to sweat out whether they will need to swim to get on and off the island a year from now.  The sole remaining ferry operator to Daufuskie, which is located between Hilton Head and Savannah, recently signed a one-year contract with Beaufort County, according to a recent story in Hilton Head’s Island-Packet newspaper.  Under a revised agreement with the ferry company, the county will pay as much as $500 per day toward the costs of running the ferry a couple of times a day during off-peak (winter) months, and a smaller subsidy during the heavier trafficked months when more non-resident passengers visit the island.  Resort residents face either of two potentials -– that the ferry company won’t make enough money to keep operating after next year or, in the current budgetary environment, the county will not be able to justify continued subsidies for such a small population.

        Of course, if a buyer should emerge for the entire resort, and the resort and its Melrose and Bloody Point (Weiskopf/Moorish design) golf courses should resume attracting vacationers, increased ferry fares should be enough to justify continuing operations.  Certainly new resort operators would see to it that transportation to the island was uninterrupted and frequent.  But at an auction in October, no bidders emerged to offer a minimum bid of $16.5 million for most of the resort, including the Melrose golf course and most of the other amenities.  (Bloody Point and the resort’s marina were not included.)

        On the other side of the island, the golf community of Haig Point continues to run its own frequent ferry service.  But its boats are too small to accommodate the resort’s residents.  Haig Point, whose mostly second-home owners would appear to have the resources to sustain the community through the housing recession, offers free golf club membership to virtually anyone who buys a resale home on the property, but carrying costs are relatively high, somewhere around $15,000 per year for POA dues, club dues and the operating costs of that darn ferry.  The 27-hole Rees Jones course is outstanding, one of the best in the golf rich state.

        Properties in Haig Point show all the classic markers of a risk/reward proposition.  For example, I received an email this week offering a 4 bedroom, 4 ½ bath, 4,000-square-foot home for sale for just $495,000. I say “just $495,000” because the lakefront home features a treed one-acre lot, an attached private guest suite and a previous appraisal of $1 million.  On an island with a bankrupt resort and nervous residents, a discount of about 50% does not seem far-fetched or out of line.

        Some Daufuskie Island and county residents are talking about two potential solutions to the resort’s ferry problem –- either to permit casino gambling on the island or to build a bridge from Hilton Head.  In conservative South Carolina, it is an open question which would take longer to build –- the bridge itself or a consensus on casino gambling.  Either way, it could be decades.

The 16th hole at the Jack Nicklaus-designed Melrose course at the Daufuskie Island Resort.  The resort is available for sale post bankruptcy.

     The Currahee Club in northern Georgia opened to fanfare in 2003.  Its Jim Fazio designed mountain golf course was quickly regaled by golf magazines as one of the best new courses in the nation, and the rest of the community was mentioned by many in the same breath as the established and successful Reynolds Plantation and Cliffs Communities.  Home sites were offered for well into six figures, and some homes topped out in the millions.  The golf community was especially popular with business executives in Atlanta, just over an hour away.  Currahee seemed like the ideal location for a trophy second home.

        Then, everything came crashing down in the era of credit default swaps and other dicey financial manipulations.  In mid 2009, Currahee’s owners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, indicating debt of a couple of hundred million dollars. Yet if you would like any updates on the bankruptcy, don’t look to the Currahee web site where its news tab leads you to an entry about a soapbox derby for the community’s kids.  The rest of the “news” is equally unhelpful in terms of updates.

         Golf club members are nervous and angry, as you might expect, and eager for better information.

        “I feel like we have been taken advantage of during the last year,” one member posted at a blog site where other members share their frustrations. “I have really questioned what my dues buy us. Other than an expensive hamburger and movie periodically, I see no events at the club.  No dinners, no bar. They collect for what? Club is usually closed.”

        Currahee isn’t the only club in America that has fallen on hard times, and its web site is not the only one that gives no hint of its financial status. But Currahee’s situation is a good reminder that not all is as it seems on the Internet – and that banks don’t exactly excel at communication.

         Of course, risk and reward go hand in hand, and Currahee has a foundation to succeed if its next owners have a good plan and deep pockets.  Prices in the community are at their lowest since opening. Those with an appetite for a little risk and a good source of accurate information might find themselves a good deal at a golf community like Currahee.

        If you have any questions about any specific golf communities, contact me and I will do my best to determine where they stand.

        I ran the following Thanksgiving message here one year ago.  For those who read it then or since, I beg your indulgence.  The example may be a year old but I hope you agree that the sentiment is timeless. To everyone, have a happy and healthy holiday.

        We had a runoff election in my small Connecticut town on Tuesday.  The two candidates had finished in a dead heat on November 2.  On Saturday, across from the high school football field, I noticed one of the two candidates waving to passersby, his wife (or maybe a campaign worker) waving at his side.  He won the runoff a few days later.

        Yesterday, as I was making a last-minute run to the supermarket for Thanksgiving provisions, I noticed the winning candidate stooping to pick up his campaign signs from a supporter’s front lawn.  He was alone, his car parked in the driveway next door.  It was a small act for sure, but a telling one.  The morning after, no doubt still basking in his victory, he was out doing the dirty work himself, no campaign helper in site.

        The scene was one tiny reminder of the huge contributions selfless people make to the health of our communities and our nation — local town councilmen and women, the brave men and women serving in the armed forces, the nurses and doctors in emergency rooms and the countless millions whose names we will never know but who labor without public recognition or year-end bonuses.

        The louder the Washington pols and media extremists shout, the more the quiet ones stand in contrast, the ones who actually get things done.  For them, we should give thanks.

        Successful beyond its wildest dreams, the social network Facebook needed more capacity to handle all those old high school friends re-connecting, figuratively and literally, as well as the gazillions of other friendships the company helped create worldwide.  Facebook has announced it will build a $450 million data center in the southwest quadrant of North Carolina, joining Apple, Google and other hi-tech ventures that have moved key operations to the Tar Heel State.

        The closest golf community to Forest City, where the data center and its 45 permanent employees will be located, is White Oak, which had the bad timing to open in the teeth of the recession and could use a few more “friends” (i.e. residents).  The Tryon community, whose golf course is one of the best we’ve played in the last few years, is just 14 miles from Forest City. (Read our review of White Oak here.)

        We couldn’t find a Facebook account for White Oak, but we’re betting it is only a matter of time.

After a hard day of facilitating friendships worldwide, new employees at Facebook's operations in Forest City, NC, will find a welcoming golf course and community eager for residents just 14 miles away.

     If you are a well-to-do golfer confident in a turnaround of the economy and the golf course business, there may never be a better time to pick up an interesting golf course at a bargain price.  Just last week, the famed Pleasant Valley Country Club in Sutton, MA, former home to both PGA and LPGA tour stops, sold at auction for $5 million to a family that runs another private course in the area.

        That $5 million is several multiples more than the listings of other clubs for sale around the country.  Musket Ridge,

for example, a Maryland daily fee course within easy driving range of the Washington metro area, is listed at $3 million and has reportedly received a few low-ball offers since being put up for sale in October.  The club, which was built in 2001 for more than $12 million, generates a reported $2.26 million in annual revenues.  Daily fee golf competition in the D.C. market is fierce, and the guess here is that the bank selling Musket Ridge will wind up giving it away for about the equivalent of annual revenues.

        A couple of hours west of Musket Ridge, Virginia National Golf Club is wedged into the historic territory between the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Mountains.  As a frequent visitor to the area, I can attest to how beautiful those mountains are, although I have not played the Davis Love Management run course in Bluemont.  The Civil War Battle of Cool Spring was fought on the site, an apt metaphor for a club that has struggled for most of its 10 years.  The challenging course (rating 73.3 and slope 137 from just 6,316 yards) was designed by Jerry Matthews.  No sales price is listed.

        Another 10-year-old club, the 18-hole semi-private Falls Village Golf Club in Durham, NC, has been on the market since last summer, after its owners entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Revenues for 2008 were just $1.38 million.  The Falls Village course was designed by Bill Daniels of the Lee Trevino Design Group. (This could mean the layout is friendly to those who fade the ball.) According to Google Maps’ satellite view, the course is surrounded by woods but, for now at least, no homes.

        In Hot Springs, AR, the Belvedere Golf Resort is listed at $1.295 million with an option to purchase an adjacent 460 acres for just $499,000.  The golf course, which was designed by Herman Hackbarth, opened in 1949 and is located in Hot Springs National Park.  Based on comments of those who have played the course recently, the next owner will have to invest a significant amount in renovating and reseeding a layout that has suffered in the last few years.

         If you would like me to investigate these or any other clubs for sale across the nation, contact me and I will get on it.  As always, there is never a fee for my services.