Golf Community Reviews

        Like life itself, the search for the perfect golf home often takes some unexpected turns. You should always have a plan and follow it when you are looking to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars but, as Yogi Berra once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

        Barry and Carol Hudson, most recently of Fayetteville, NC, learned the lessons of flexibility when they went searching for their perfect golf home. They knew they wanted to live in a golf community in the Carolinas, but they thought it would be on the coast. They went so far as to put in a bid on a home in the sprawling Dataw Island golf community after visiting 10 other golf communities in the Carolina Lowcountry. If their bid had been accepted, they might be living happily ever after in a marshland community that features two excellent golf courses by Tom Fazio and Arthur Hills. Instead, they find themselves a full five hours from the coast, on a beautiful lake in a community, The Reserve at Lake Keowee, with one fine Jack Nicklaus golf course.

Competitors in the BMW Charity Pro-Am tee off on the 6th hole at The Reserve at Lake Keowee, one of three venues used on the first three days of the tournament.  (The others are Greenville Country Club's Chanticleer course and Thornblade Club.)

 

        Dick and Chris Bishop of Vienna, VA, just outside of Washington, D.C., had water on their minds, as well as mountains and good golf, when they began their search for a golf home, even though they were not boaters. “We just like to look at it [the water],” said Dick. There are dozens of golf communities that would have fit their ideal location, but as so often happens, friends who had purchased a property in The Reserve at Lake Keowee urged Dick and Chris to take a look there.

        “We thought a golf course was the number one amenity we were after,” says Dick, “but when we found the perfect lot, that turned out to be our top amenity.” That lot, which has some of the best lake views in the community, has had a big beautiful house on it since 2008.

        “We built it with our family in mind,” says Chris, referencing the three daughters, their husbands and nine grandchildren who visit at least once a year.

High-quality golf communities like The Reserve at Lake Keowee are seeing a resurgence of interest now that the economy is on more solid footing.  Homes being built in the Village Point section, adjacent to the lake and Village center, start in the $600s.

 

        When you talk with experienced golf home prospectors like these two couples, you understand that flexibility may be the most important characteristic in a golf home search. Both couples had lived suburban lives for decades, with plenty of services and conveniences nearby; and yet, they wound up in what, by most definitions, is a remote part of the South, Sunset, SC, a half hour from the town of Clemson and a full hour from Greenville. Such distances don’t lend themselves, say, to dinners out that include a couple of glasses of wine and then a drive along dark country roads. But you learn to make accommodations.

        “If we know we are going out to dinner in Greenville,” said Dick Bishop, “we usually bring a designated driver along with us.” Grocery shopping also tends to be a communal exercise in a community like The Reserve; if the Bishops are heading to the supermarket in Easley, 20 minutes away, they’ll ask their neighbors if they need anything. The neighbors return the favor.

        Carol Hudson confided that she would have been content to live in or near the city of Greenville itself; the Hudson’s son and wife and their young children live there.

        “But it is so beautiful out here by the lake,” said Carol, “that I was convinced.” Both the Hudsons’ son and a daughter who lives in Oklahoma and visits once or twice a year have become “Legacy” golf club members who have all the club privileges of their parents without any additional dues payments.

        “The Legacy membership is a nice benefit for our family,” says Barry.

        Golf overall at The Reserve is a big deal, so much so that, despite what may seem a hassle at some other clubs was welcomed by most club members at The Reserve –- a professional golf tournament. Preparations by the PGA Tour closed the course for a week prior to the Web.com tour’s BMW Charity Pro-Am event last weekend, and then for the three days of the tournament itself, but few residents complained, according to the two couples.

        “It’s a minor inconvenience,” said Barry Hudson, “but we are happy to have the tournament on our course.” (At 7,112 yards, The Reserve was the longest of the three in the tournament rotation. The course, which I’ve played, is no pushover, but suffice to say that the tournament winner finished 27 under par, most of those on the Thornblade Club course but 9 of them at The Reserve. Indeed, these guys are good.)

        Dick and Chris Bishop not only welcomed the tour event, they also jumped right in to help run things at The Reserve. (The BMW Charity Pro-Am field plays the first three rounds on three different Greenville area golf courses, then at the Fazio-designed Thornblade Club for the fourth and final round.) Dick Bishop was named co-chairman of The Reserve’s part of the event and was glued to his golf cart for the three days, making sure things went smoothly. (They did.) More than 120 residents of The Reserve volunteered to be walking scorers, hole marshals, drive shuttle vans, serve food and drink and provide hospitality services for players and guests during the tournament.

        “I loved to see the pros play the course I play every week,” said Dick.

        Both couples supervised the building of their homes at The Reserve and tout the benefits of having things laid out just the way they wanted them.

        “We were always going to build,” said Dick Bishop, who conceded that their project went smoothly in 2006, “and we enjoyed the process with the architect and builders.”

        For the Hudsons, the process was not quite as smooth, with a number of “redos” necessary along the way, an issue that didn’t seem in retrospect to bother Barry too much.

        “Carol wound up being the ‘foreman’ on the project,” he admitted.

        Prospective buyers love to see a golf community developer with deep pockets. A strong and steady backer, like Lord Baltimore Capital at Leland, NC’s Brunswick Forest, not only provides a sense of financial security but the extra cash the community can spend to market itself. That is a big reason why Brunswick Forest sales kept chugging along through the recession.

        For those dedicated readers wondering why your correspondent has been missing in action for the past week or so, the excuse is that I have been in the Lowcountry of South Carolina for a few days of some of the best golf you can enjoy in the southeast. My Connecticut friend Larry, a former work colleague during our corporate lives, maintains a “national” membership at Secession Golf Club near Beaufort, SC (that’s the one pronounced “byooh-fert” as opposed to the town of the same name in North Carolina, which is pronounced “beau-fert”). Most of the more than 700 members of Secession hail from some distance, including other countries. (I heard a few Scottish brogues in the clubhouse bar.) But no members anywhere -– or guests for that matter -– are treated any better than at Secession, where a doting staff, excellently trained caddies (they are mandatory, no carts available) and golf professional Mike Harmon, straight out of central casting for gregarious old pro, are well in evidence.

        All blossoms should be in bloom this weekend in Williamsburg, VA, where the LPGA tour is making its annual spring visit to the Kingsmill Resort. The bustling golf community, which appeals both to vacationers, second-home owners and year-round residents, is ideally suited to host a professional tournament, given the amount of resort housing on site; the three excellent golf courses, including the River Course that was originally designed by Pete Dye in the 1970s, and then redesigned by Dye 10 years ago; and the built-in corps of volunteers who live around the golf courses.

        As we have noted here a few times before, smart money is on the prowl for quality golf courses with surrounding real estate potential. Golf communities are being seen as good investments not just by developers experienced in building and managing such developments, but also by deep-pocketed investment firms who look at all areas of investment and put their money where the opportunities seem best. The benefit to buyers is that home prices in a formerly “damaged” golf community are still low, but they won’t be for long once the owner invests in a meaningful and visible way.

        Included in our mailbox last week was a flyer from Auction.com touting an upcoming online auction of lots in some very familiar golf communities in the Carolinas. Coincidentally, stuck among lots in the Cliffs Communities, The Reserve at Lake Keowee, and Bear Lake Reserve near Sylva, NC, were a couple of properties just 1½ miles from our Connecticut home.

        The best way for an Internet-based service like ours to convince potential customers to become real customers is with testimonials from satisfied customers. We received a wonderful, unsolicited note last week from a customer who wrote us from her new home at The Landings, near Savannah, GA. She and her husband participated in our first couples “discovery” weekend 1½ years ago, enjoyed the golf, the food in the clubhouse and the general ambience of The Landings. With our assistance, they bought a beautiful golf home there last August and will take up residence full time once their home in upstate New York is sold.

        “We feel that finding you, filling out your questionnaire, and talking with you was the best thing we did!!” she wrote. “Your knowledge and guidance was what we needed!”

        We also helped an oil company executive and his wife last year purchase a lot at Bluffton, SC’s Berkeley Hall, home to two outstanding Tom Fazio golf courses.

        “Thanks for lining us up with Tom [our Realtor in Bluffton] and his

team; they were very helpful in high-grading the properties to view and providing community info,” he wrote. “Also, lining us up with a local builder was critical for us to gain an idea of homes that we might build.” Construction recently started on their new home, with its view of both the golf course and a lake, and they expect to relocate full-time to Berkeley Hall later this year.

        Of course, the greatest compliment of all is to be referred by a satisfied customer to a friend or relative. “My brother Steve is interested in possibly purchasing a golf property in SW Florida,” wrote a customer we helped purchase a beautiful lot perched above the Jack Nicklaus golf course at Governors Club in Chapel Hill, NC.  “I told him all about you and your service, and he is very interested in speaking with you. I took the liberty of giving him your office and cell phone number.”

        That is a liberty we are always happy for our customers to take. If you would like an idea of which golf communities match up the best with your requirements, please fill out our online Golf Home Survey. There is no fee for our services and no obligation to purchase a property. And we will never share your personal information without your express permission.  Click here for our questionnaire.

        This is a great time to be looking for a golf home, as prices in many golf communities have hit bottom and are starting to rise. We look forward to assisting you.

Last year, one of our customers purchased a lot like this one, with a view of one of the Tom Fazio golf courses as well as a lake at Berkeley Hall in Bluffton, SC.  He and his wife are building their own dream home now. 

        I read an interesting and accurate comment earlier today by a contributor to a discussion forum at TopRetirements.com. She wrote: “We are also looking at…South Carolina. The property in SC appears to be much less than FL as they only assess property at 4% of the market value. We compared a $220,000 home in SC to one in FL, and the difference is nearly $2,000. Has anyone else found this to be true?”

        It’s a good question…and a good point. As we have counseled here many times, taxation is relative to a couple’s personal situation. If you have a million dollar income in retirement, a golf community in a no-income-tax

state like Florida (or Texas, Tennessee and Alabama) will be high on your list to investigate. But if like most of the rest of us, you will rely on less than a six-figure annual income from pensions and/or social security, then income tax may very well take a back seat to property and sales taxes, which affect every homeowner, no matter their income.

        There are some scenarios in which a state with an income tax is cheaper to live in than a state with no income tax at all. According to the tax calculator at the web site dollarology.net, a couple with an annual income of $100,000, annual “non-food” expenses of $50,000, a grocery bill of $10,000 a year, a home worth $800,000 and a car driven 10,000 miles per year at 22 miles per gallon would pay a total of $8962.17 if they lived in Delaware, which assesses an income tax, and $9556.36 if they lived in Florida, which assesses no income tax. The Delaware couple would pay almost $6,500 more in state income tax, but that would be more than offset by lower sales taxes (Delaware does not charge any) and property taxes (much lower in “The First State”).

        Interestingly, couples that live more modestly will find Florida slightly more advantageous than Delaware and most other states. (Since income would be lower, you would think the effects of income tax would be disproportionately less significant in Florida, but it is not so.) When you lower income to $60,000, non-food expenses to $30,000, groceries to $8,000 and the house value to $225,000, the result is an advantage of $55 per year in taxes for Florida over Delaware.

        Yes, it is a negligible difference, and not enough in itself to turn a couple from considering a higher income tax state. Indeed, when you take our first example above –- the couple with a $100,000 annual income –-

and put them in, say, South Carolina, they will generally pay $4,560 more annually than if they lived in a Florida golf community, and $6,115 more than in North Carolina. Those are not inconsequential differences, but some couples may look at what they have saved by moving South and say, “What the heck.” For our scenario immediately above, for example, New Jersey total taxes are $7,000 more than those in South Carolina.

        By the way, the most advantageous tax state of all is Alaska. We understand the golf there is excellent -– in July.