According to Business Week magazine, some of the U.S.'s former retirement hot spots, which also were favored by investors ("speculators" would be a better term), are in full discount mode.  Among the popular spots where prices are dropping like stones are ones you would expect, like Miami and San Diego.  But Bend, OR, not far from the famed Bandon Dunes golf courses, was a surprise to us.
    No one can predict if these markets have reached the bottom of the slide - we suspect not - so proceed with caution.  In any event, you can read the article at Business Week's web site by clicking here.

    Also arriving in our inbox today was an offer from Centex Homes, a national builder with some neighborhoods in golf communities.  Centex is offering up to $50,000 off some of its houses the Myrtle Beach area, including the Barefoot Resort, home to four nice golf courses by Norman, Dye, Fazio and Davis Love  III.  For a list of the Centex homes available in the Myrtle Beach area, with their sales prices and discounts listed, you can go to http://www.centexoffer.com/showcase.html.  

The 5th at Royal Lakes is called "Roc's Monsters" but "Great Spectacle" seems more apt, given the eyeglass shaped traps at the front.

    Unless you are very wild right or left, you have to work hard to miss the fairways at the Royal Lakes Golf Club in Flowery Branch, GA, about 40 miles northeast of Atlanta.  But that advantage the course gives you can be easily taken away by a course superintendent who wakes up on the wrong side of bed.  The course can play a half-dozen strokes more difficult if the pins are front and back on the multi-level sloping greens.
    I watched some excellent collegiate golfers take on Royal Lakes over the last two days in the Oglethorpe College Invitational, a 12-team match.  Those players who were content to shoot the gap between the left and right sides and play some bank shots into the fairways, and were not too greedy about going for the most difficult pin placements, put up a few nice scores, a half dozen or so in the 60s (including my son, Tim, who scraped out a 69 on Monday before a closing 78 on Tuesday).  Others who tried to make it a long-drive contest were greeted with out of bounds stakes above the banks on both sides of most fairways.  Some good players registered double-digit scores on a few holes; I watched one hit two out of bounds off one tee on his way to a 9 on a par 4.
    Another player dumped a few in the water at the par 5 11th, which is a hole Royal Lakes members and daily fee players probably like and loathe in equal measure.  The hole is not long, just long enough for all but the biggest hitters to lay up with their second shot to a fairway area the size of a large green (this after a drive of a 3 or 5 wood to avoid bounding down the fairway and into the pond).  The green is totally surrounded by water save for the spit of land players use to walk from rear left to the green.  I am not a big fan of holes where, essentially, you are forced to lay up with your first two shots.
    The Atlanta area is suffering through its worst drought ever, but except for the water-level markings on the stone walls in front of a few greens, there was not much evidence of a water shortage at Royal Lakes.  No one complained about the greens being too fast or too hard (these are teenage golfers, and if there is anything wrong with the greens, they will let you know).  The balls rolled medium fast to maybe a little slower than that today, after a night of much needed rain.
    Homes look down on the course, which was designed by Arthur Davis and opened in 1990, but are well at a distance from the banked fairways.  Some of the homes are enormous, 6,000 square footers, but we also saw some more modest houses.  A 4 bedroom, 4 ½-bath home overlooking the 18th fairway is currently listed for $500,000.  Judging from a flyer we picked up behind one tee box, other homes in the well cared for neighborhood are similarly priced (Flowery Branch is on the northern edge of the commuting radius to Atlanta).
    In the manner of more famous courses, Royal Lakes gives cute little names to each hole; the author must have made them up after a few beers in the nice clubhouse.  Among my favorite designs was "Roc's Monsters."  I don't know who Roc is, but the huge "spectacle" traps in front - they look like giant eyeglasses - are deep and monstrous.  There is only one way into them, from the rear, and the same way out.  I have even less of a clue why the intimidating looking 9th hole is called "Bolt Your Nuts," unless that is some reference to the testosterone needed to play the hole.  The best tee ball at #9 is a three or five wood down the right side so that the mounds will scoot the ball forward and toward the 150 yard marker, which is perilously close to a lake that runs down the left side.  The approach is to a green with a deep, triangular swale that runs from the front to a point about two thirds of the way to the rear of the green.  A ball in there must negotiate a fairly steep rise to a hole on either side of the swale.
    The aforementioned 11th with water everywhere is named "More Land Please."  Indeed, it certainly could use it, while Atlanta could use some of that water.
    Here are my ratings for Royal Lakes (scale of 1 to 10):
Layout = 8 (unusual in the extreme)
Playability = 7 (a few weird holes)
Condition = 8 (must be draining the lakes)
Aesthetics = 8 (something about funneled fairways)
Amenities = 7 (it's a very good daily fee club)

The 9th hole is all about placement off the tee and an approach shot somewhere outside the big swale in the green -- unless, of course, the pin is in it.   

Royal Lakes Golf & Country Club, 4700 Royal Lakes Drive, Flowery Branch, GA.  (770) 535-8800.  Greens fees in the $50 range, depending on day of week.  Championship tees:  6,980 yards, rating 73.6, slope 139.  Men's tees:  6,550 yards, 72, 131.  

    In choosing the right home on the course for you, the most important person to talk with is not your real estate agent, or the seller's agent, or the golf pro at the community course or your potential next-door neighbor (or any of the other residents for that matter).  The key contacts for your research are the president of the community's homeowner's association and the president of the golf club (if the club is member run).
    Nothing can ruin life in a community like an association or club board that is either contentious with residents, contentious among themselves, confused about the priorities of the community, spendthrift in their ways because they don't understand the priorities of the folks they represent or, on the contrary, cheap in the extreme, thereby letting the facilities run down and everyone's investment erode. 

    Homeowners associations are typically responsible for assessing and collecting dues to run the community's operations, including hiring outside agents to manage the community's affairs.  The association also enforces the community's covenants and bylaws and can amend the bylaws within the guidelines of proper governance.  Typically, though, it is the decisions of the association on seemingly small things that raise the ire of residents, such as additions to existing homes, tree removal, the style of mailboxes and the placement of satellite dishes.
    Bylaws and covenant restrictions don't provide the most scintillating reading, but pouring through them before you buy in a specific community could save you a lot of grief later.  So can an honest conversation with the head of the homeowner's association and/or club president.

The club board and homeowner's association at Champion Hills in Hendersonville, NC, use a businesslike approach to governing, keeping personality and politics out of decisions.  It doesn't hurt to have a fine Fazio layout in which club members are willing to invest.