Golf Community Reviews

Bear Lake Reserve's nine holes by Nicklaus Design covers the community's mountaintop, with home sites set well back.

    Before my first trip to Paris many years ago, a friend told me, "There is only one problem with Paris.  Too many Frenchmen."  It didn't ruin the experience for me; Paris remains among my favorite international cities.  
    But to borrow a page from my friend's line, the only problem with planned-community golf courses is too many darn houses.  Put another way, I have not yet met the golfer who prefers lining up shots toward a gable on the

second floor of a condo or at one of the three chimneys on a McMansion at greenside.  It is much less disquieting to aim toward a notch in the distant mountains or at a spreading Japanese maple tree behind a green.  To bring it down to a concrete example, literally, the 18th at Wild Dunes in South Carolina, with ocean left and condos along the right, doesn't quite excite the senses the way the 18th at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island does, with a natural corridor of ocean on the right and natural links-like terrain down the left.
    I have played community courses where it was hard to keep an occasional shot from bouncing off a roof, and others where it was hard to spot a roof.  At Castle Bay, a Scottish links style course north of Wilmington, NC, that was designed by its developer, the memory of a surprisingly entertaining round was pretty much neutralized by a string of homes packed against each other along the 18th hole.  That is not the kind of last (or lasting) image any golfer wants from a round.  At my own vacation home course at Pawleys Plantation, a couple of years ago the developer built a string of condos not more than 30 yards from the edge of the 15th fairway.  Because the hole is a dogleg left, the aiming line from the tee is at the second-floor bedroom deck in Unit #1 down the right side.  Slightly pushed shots wind up out of bounds right or, potentially, into the screen fronting one of the condos' porches.  Jack Nicklaus certainly did not have that in mind when he designed the otherwise splendid course in the late 1980s.
    More often than not, though, the name designers (and developers) get it right, justifying their six- and seven-figure fees.  Tom Fazio is among the best, cleverly balancing the needs of the golfer for unimpeded vistas and the developer for the extra revenue generated by golf course lots.  At Champion Hills in Hendersonville, NC, for example, Fazio gouged the fairways into the hills, creating a routing well below most of the community's amply sized homes.  Views from the homes down to the course are impressive, and yet a golfer focused primarily on his shots won't notice most of the homes.
    Cuscowilla, the Coore/Crenshaw course in rural Georgia that shows up perennially on best residential golf course lists, also does an excellent job of keeping its houses at a few hundred yards distance (one of the reasons it rates so highly).  Other, more recently developed mountain communities seem to be increasingly sensitive to the yin and yang of homes and course layouts.  Balsam Mountain Preserve (Palmer) and Bright's Creek (Fazio), for example, two North Carolina communities I visited a couple of months ago, have set their home sites up and away from their golf courses.  Ditto Bear Lake Reserve, whose nine-hole Nicklaus Design course occupies top of the mountain status in the Tuckasegee, NC, community, its few adjacent home sites tucked behind trees and well away from the field of play.
    Pete Dye also seems particularly adept at separating fairways from hulking mansions.  At his Oconee Course at Ford Plantation, south of Savannah, GA, ponds and lakes form a natural barrier between a richly designed layout and the community's $1 million+ homes.  At his older DeBordieu course, in Georgetown, SC, Dye faced a different challenge.  Years before Dye's commission to build the course, the owners of DeBordieu sold off all the prime lots along the beach, leaving the architect with a relatively flat piece of land, a few lakes and a bit of marsh land with which to work. You can smell the ocean from the golf course and if the wind is blowing right, you can hear it as well, but you never see it.  One is left to wonder if the timing had been different, would Dye's masterpiece Ocean Course have emerged just south of Myrtle Beach, rather than on Kiawah Island.  Nevertheless, Dye, who knows how to push earth around to create earthbound moonscapes, did a nice job of bobbing and weaving his layout around ponds and marsh, confining the encroaching homes to adjacent to the tee boxes rather than along aiming lines.
    Generally speaking, golf communities with the most expensive properties and golf fees, like the Carolinas' Cliffs Communities, put a safe distance between fairways and homes.  If you are going to pay $150,000 for initiation fees, more than $600 a month in club dues, and upwards of $1 million for a home site, you should expect the views from the course to be as luscious as the views from your home.

 
At Ford Plantation, Pete Dye and the developers used natural elements, like ponds, to separate homes from the course.

16th hole, Longpoint Golf Club, Amelia Island, FL (63)

    They are pulling the flagsticks out of the greens on many of the courses near my home in Connecticut.  With temperatures today in the 20s, some courses are caving in before the traditional after Thanksgiving shutdown.  But a few gas tanks drive away, tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day for golf, with no rain in sight in virtually all parts of the southern U.S. and temperatures ranging from chilly to balmy.
    If you are dreaming about or seriously contemplating a move south, here are tomorrow's expected high temperatures at a few choice golf courses, most of them in or near golf communities, in the southern U.S. (golf course, location and expected high temperature indicated).

18th hole, Dunes West, Mt. Pleasant, SC (58)

 

6th hole, Avery Ranch Golf Club, Austin, TX (74, am showers)

 

Chapel Ridge Golf Club, Chapel Hill, NC (53)

 

4th hole, Oxmoor Valley, Birmingham, AL (60)

 

18th hole, Governors Land, Williamsburg, VA (49)

 

3rd hole, Fox Den Golf Club, Farragut, TN (54)

     If you were one of more than 25,000 owners who had a home listed with Coldwell Banker in October, you received an unusual request from your local real estate agent -- drop your price 10%.  The firm hoped the national promotion, which ran for 10 days in mid October, would move many of those houses.  The promotion started with considerable fanfare, but one month later, I cannot find any mention anywhere, including the Coldwell Banker web site, about how many homes sold as a result.  That ought to tell us something. [Note to readers:  Please let me know if you have found data on the promotion.]   
    Coldwell prepared for the promotion by conducting a survey of its agents.  The company's 3,379 agents responded that 56% of their customers' prices were unrealistically high.  Therefore, the firm's thinking was that an across-the-board 10% price cut would cross the threshold between inappropriate and appropriate pricing and start moving houses again.  Nearly 80% of the agents observed that homes priced "appropriately" in their markets were attracting more buyers and moving more quickly, and more than ¾ believed a 10% reduction in prices would push their sellers' homes past the "tipping point."
    In announcing the promotion, CEO Jim Gillespie said "we believe it is critical for Coldwell Banker, as an industry leader, to help serve the needs of those listing homes with a Coldwell Banker broker and to help move the U.S. real estate market in the right direction."
    Let's be clear; there is no way that a fraction of 25,000 homes in a market with hundreds of thousands of homes in foreclosure was going to move anything except Coldwell Banker's own sales figures.  This promotion was wrong on a number of levels, not the least of them the hypocrisy of "helping" the U.S. real estate market.  First, is it ever a good idea to blame the customer?  I bet if Coldwell Banker surveyed their customers today, they would find that 90% of their agents told their customers it wasn't them who responded that the customer's listing price was too high.  No client's rep wants to be seen as distrusting the intelligence of his client (even if he does).  
    Second, any real estate agent who considers his customer's asking price too high is making an admission that he -- the agent -- did a lousy job of communicating up front.  It is the agent's job to use reasoned logic to guide the client toward a reasonable price.  But in this market, you can imagine that the pressure to acquire a listing is intense, and that thousands of times across the land, agents begging for a listing are saying things like, "Sure, Mrs. Jones, we can get that price even in this tough market."  Then a few weeks later, "Mrs. Jones, we never expected the market to be this bad, so let's take advantage of the company's promotion and drop the price 10%."  That is as icky as it sounds, the real estate equivalent of bait and switch.
    Some real estate industry observers see Coldwell's promotion as less about moving individual homes and more about the company's own suffering sales figures.  Coldwell, other than the cost of a press release and communication with their agents, had little skin in this game.  The discount was to be paid for entirely by their customers, as well as their own agents, whose commissions would be dinged by a shekel or two.  
    Coldwell missed reconciling a key ingredient of the promotion, buyers.  Many of their listing clients are in competition with the hundreds of thousands of properties in foreclosure, and a 10% cut doesn't begin to approach the prices at which the banks are willing to unload their own inventories of distressed homes.  And many real estate agents, Coldwell's included, are conducting "short sales" for which the sales price is less than the amount remaining on the owner's mortgage.  Those, of course, drag down market prices as well.  In short, the relatively few buyers able to finance a purchase with cash or to qualify for a loan have many, many low-priced alternatives.
    And, finally, there are the dismal unemployment numbers, which will continue to get worse before they get better.  We may be headed toward a 10% national figure if the auto industry restructures, which seems inevitable.  Those without a job not only won't be buying houses soon, they also may be putting theirs on the market, priced to move quickly.  That will just add to the immense pricing pressure.
    Coldwell Banker had hoped that a defibrillator was just what the doctor ordered to move properties listed by its 25,000 customers and help move the housing market forward.  Judging by the latest housing figures, the patient is still on life support.

The Coore/Crenshaw layout at Cuscowilla in Eatonton, GA, is consistently ranked in the top 3 of Golfweek's "Best Residential Courses" list.

    By Christmas time, we golfers north of the Mason-Dixon Line will be about two months past prime golf season and starting to shiver at the prospect of another three or four months of no golf.  We can ease our pain by going online and checking out some of the vacation bargains southern golf resorts and hotels offer between Christmas and New Year's.  Some golf communities actually offer even bigger bargains, as long as you will sit still for a couple of hours of a real estate tour.  The so-called "discovery packages" are good ways to learn about a community first hand and to check out their golf courses up close.
    I have personally visited the following communities and can recommend them as worthy of consideration.  I would be happy to put you in touch with a representative of any of these communities to arrange your discovery package.

Albemarle Plantation, Hertford, NC.

    The Plantation's package might be the best bargain in America, just $79 per couple for two nights in the community's Marina Villas.  One round of golf for two on the Dan Maples designed Sound Golf Links and breakfast each morning is included.  The only requirement is that you meet with a real estate agent and take a tour of the Plantation.  Full use of pool, fitness facility and tennis courts are also included.

River Landing, Wallace, NC.

    Located just off I-40 between Wilmington and Raleigh, River Landing is easy to reach by car but still out in the country.  The community includes 36 holes of Clyde Johnston designed golf.  A round of golf for two is included in the two-night stay (Friday to Sunday or Tuesday to Thursday), along with golf lessons and a tour of the community.  Cost is $139.

St. James Plantation, Southport, NC

    St. James offers as much golf as any community between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, 81 holes of golf in all, although the Plantation Preview Package will make you choose your one round of golf from among three of the courses.  The price is $199 per couple and includes two nights in an on-site condo and access to the private beach club (a few miles away), tennis and all amenities.  Of course, you are required to take the customary real estate tour.

Cuscowilla Golf Club, Eatonton, GA

    Cuscowilla, a golf resort and residential community on the shores of Lake Oconee, does not offer a discovery package per se, but its winter golf package for two amounts to essentially that (without the mandatory real estate tour).  The $245 per night package (plus tax) includes golf for two on the terrific Coore/Crenshaw course and lodging in one of the community's Lodge Villa Suites.  Cuscowilla is just about an hour from Atlanta International Airport.

Woodside Plantation, Aiken, SC

    Woodside provides lodging at a choice of area inns, with prices running between $145 and $189 for a two-night stay in the town of Aiken.  That's a good thing because Aiken is a charming town.  Included is a round of golf for two on Woodside's Nicklaus Design course, dinner for two in the clubhouse and a $50 pro shop credit.  The required real estate tour takes about two hours.

Osprey Cove, St. Marys, GA

    Local boy Mark McCumber designed the course and your "stay and play" package includes a room overlooking his 18th hole, as well as a round of golf for two, access to the pool, hot tub and fitness center.  The $99 per night package also provides access to dining and shopping in the pro shop.  Guests have the option of foregoing golf and instead taking a boat excursion to Cumberland Island where the wild horses roam.  Just leave a little time for the real estate tour.

Cooper's Point, Shellman Bluff, GA

    You will have to pay for your golf, but when I played a few years ago, it was something like $40.  The discovery package does include a night's stay in either a luxury hotel in Savannah or a bed and breakfast inn in nearby Darien, as well as dinner for two at one of the local seafood restaurants (Shellman Bluff is a tiny fishing port and nearby Brunswick is the unofficial shrimp capital of the east coast).  Total cost is $199 for 1 night and $299 for 2 nights, real estate tour (of course) included.

The Landings, Skidaway Island, GA

    At $325 for two nights and $450 for three nights, the discovery package at The Landings near Savannah is a little more expensive than the others, but with six golf courses on site and unlimited access to everything, including dining in the four clubhouses, the value is there.  One of your fellow readers purchased a home in the Landings and could not be happier, and I was impressed with the help he and his wife received from an on-site agent.  If you would like to talk with that agent or an agent at any of these communities, please let me know and I will make it happen.

The Arthur Hills designed Palmetto golf course at The Landings is one of six immaculately groomed courses in the 4,500 acre community near Savannah.

I am gratified when readers send me their opinions about things I write or add important information.  Bea Wray, a real estate agent who lives in Haig Point on Daufuskie Island, wrote the following about the article immediately below.  I am happy to put any of our readers in touch with Bea.

 

    I built our house for $210 per square foot.  Several wonderful builders have their own bunk houses on the island, so crews spend the week here, appreciate the steady work, and put out a full day.  Of course, this drives costs down. [Editor's note:  And speaking of driving costs, they are almost non-existent since no cars are permitted on the island; everyone uses golf carts.]   

    Plus, since the community already has over 250 residents, there is a staff of bellmen, luggage carts, trailers, etc. in place for very easy delivery to your door.  So, whether I order items for my home, groceries, even a late night sump pump, the cost is dramatically less than it would be if I lived in nearby Sea Pines on Hilton Head.

The Rees Jones course at Haig Point plays to 29 holes, the extra two providing two alternate par 3 routings.

    Haig Point on Daufuskie Island, SC, is one of the most peaceful communities I have visited, and it includes a terrific 29 holes of Rees Jones marshland golf, first built in 1986 and renovated last year.  The 29-hole layout includes two additional par 3s where members have a choice of straight-on shots or carries over the marsh.
    Coastal property prices had remained pretty steady through the first few months of the housing crisis.  Living within Frisbee-throwing distance of a beach is a turn-on for those who can afford the privilege, but now even in prized coastal properties like Haig Point, inventories are up and, consequently, prices are dropping.    
     Still, $7,900 for a wooded lot in Haig Point, even a small one, was a surprise.  How could that be?
    After doing some research, it seems the low price is a function of

history, market conditions and the higher-than-typical costs of living on a true island served only by ferry (or helicopter, if you own one).  International Paper developed the community back in the early 1980s when that company was one of the major landowners in America.  Seeing the migration trend from north to south that began in Florida in the ‘50s, the company converted some of its holdings across the nation from logging to leisure community development.  Haig Point was one of its golf communities but, like many corporations that get involved in businesses for which they have no experience, IP eventually abandoned many of their fledgling developments. 

    Those who had already built the few homes in Haig Point under the IP plan were offered the unsold lots at ridiculously low prices.  One local agent told me they basically "gave them away." The $7,900 lot is a remnant of that time.
    I won't belabor the obvious point that the housing crisis is having a savaging effect on prices across all manner of properties.  Beautiful and peaceful though it may be, Daufuskie's isolation appeals only to a small niche of intrepid souls.  And whereas people commute via frequent ferry service from the islands that dot Puget Sound to Seattle, the ferry from Haig Point travels to Hilton Head, not exactly an urban business center.  Residents of Haig Point, therefore, tend to be those relatively few who willingly trade modern and convenient services for splendid isolation.  That is not a broad market.
    Three modern high-speed ferries run between Haig Point and Hilton Head.  They are expensive to maintain, and when you throw in the golf course

and clubhouse, the communities landscaping costs and all the other costs of maintaining a high-end golf community, you wind up with carrying costs near the top end of most communities, about $14,000 or more annually.  Although the prices for most properties at Haig Point -- lots and homes alike - include the $65,000 initiation fee for the golf club, the $7,900 property does not.  Membership is not mandatory but, frankly, a home in the isolated Haig Point without golf and dining privileges is self-defeating.  There simply isn't anything much to do except take long contemplative walks and get involved in the club.
    What of the home one might build on this bargain-priced lot?  Because you cannot get labor or construction materials onto the island without using the ferry or a helicopter, construction costs are among the highest anywhere, an estimated $400 to $500 per square foot.  That modest cottage, say 2,000 square feet, could approach $1 million in costs.  By way of comparison, a 3 BR, 3 ½ BA Craftsman style cottage at Haig Point that overlooks the 10th fairway is on the market currently for just $489,900, golf membership included.  And there are plenty of other bargains just like it.
    If you are interested in property at Haig Point, let me know and I can put you in touch with an agent who knows the island well.  While visiting, be sure to check out the Daufuskie Island Resort and its two outstanding 18-hole courses, one an early Jack Nicklaus design and the other by Tom Weiskopf and Jay Moorish.

New Bern, NC, is a "small town gem," and the local community of Taberna's golf course shows polish of its own.

 

    One of the great things about my job is that I become friends with people from around the world without actually meeting them.  They find my site, I find theirs, and we wind up exchanging chitchat about golf, golf communities, and even politics.  The relationships grow without any of those icky issues of body language or the nuances of pauses or sighs that

can sometimes be misconstrued as something more than they are.  And I can never blame them for having passed on their germs to me during the cold season.  Our connections are based strictly on written words and, despite what Sarah Palin and John McCain tried to pin on Barack Obama during the U.S. Presidential campaign, words do matter.
    I have made two especially interesting contacts in the last few weeks with people whose well-written and well-constructed web sites cover different territories than the one you are reading now but are excellent resources for those contemplating a relocation to a golfing area -- or who dream of such.
    Jeffrey Prest is the blogmaster for CheapGolfsFinestHoles.com, a web site dedicated to exactly what the name implies.  He reviews "first-rate holes on third-rate courses" whose green fees are about £30, or $50 US at the current exchange rates.  It is an inspired and perfectly timed idea in the current economy, especially for those of us -- count me in the group -- who are seriously contemplating giving up their private club membership and hunting for bargains in daily fee golf.  As Jeffrey grows his portfolio of golf holes, including a fair number in the U.S., his site will only get better.
    As I write this, my new friend Bill Durell and his better half are driving the back roads of the U.S. south, somewhere between Mississippi and his winter home in Texas.  Armed with a camera, map, notepad and sense of adventure, the Durells are stopping at as many small towns as they can along the way.  Those towns that meet their strict specs (see their web site for the criteria) make the grade and get the full treatment at SmallTownGems.com. That means dozens of photos and a full description of local history and lifestyles.  I admire Bill's brutal honesty; he has a "disqualified" list of towns that fall short of "gem" status and a Hall of Shame for those that fall way short.
    Some of the small town gems are in great golfing areas and are worth considering if you don't necessarily require the amenities offered in many planned communities.  Some golfing rich small town gems that receive a gold star from Bill include New Bern, NC, Williamsburg, VA, Jonesborough, TN, Fernandina Beach and St. Augustine, FL, and Madison and Jekyll Island, GA.  

    Condo developers in New York City have run into the perfect storm.  Buoyed by foreign money and a wild-west mentality at the turn of this century, developers figured they could not go wrong by buying up and renovating existing hi-rise buildings or plowing over older buildings and putting up new hi-rise condos.  Many of those projects began selling units earlier this year, just in time for the financial market meltdown and the massive job losses on Wall Street.
    Real estate is all about supply and demand, and right now in New York City, as it is in most markets nationwide, there is too much of the former and too little of the latter.  Stories are rampant of Wall Street workers walking away from their contracts and their down payments.  The few buyers on the streets are in a state of high-anxiety about future price drops.  Who wants to put down $1 million on a place whose market value could slip to $800,000 in a matter of months?  Just like Wall Street, real estate markets abhor uncertainty.
    Developers holding dozens of unsold new condos have to do something more than offer a few upgrades in kitchen appliances or a part of closing costs in order to entice the nervous.  According to an article in the Real Estate section of the Sunday New York Times this weekend, those developers are beginning to mimic electronics and other retailers with a series of "price protection guarantees" that anyone contemplating property in the southern U.S. might do well to consider.  The way it works is straightforward and contractual:  If you sign up to pay $500,000 for a unit, for example, and the same (or almost the same) unit elsewhere in the building sells for $475,000 before you close, you get the lower price.
    The guarantee is a little easier to execute in a condo complex where units are essentially the same size and configuration than, say, for properties in a golf community.  But if two parties to a real estate transaction agree, you can write just about anything into a contract (short of violating local zoning laws).  For example, if you are interested in a lot adjacent to a golf course but want some price protection, you could negotiate a clause with the developer that would reduce your purchase price if another lot on the golf course sells for less than yours (on a dollar per acre basis).  Barring that, you could try for a contingency that says if similar properties sell for less than the price you signed up for before your closing, you can back out of the deal. 
    If you are that relatively rare person in the market for a home or property, don't be afraid to get creative.  You have all the leverage, and you would be foolish not to push for the best possible deal.