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Where Michael Jordan plays |
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Friday, 28 March 2008 |
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This is a traveling day for me, heading to Camp Lejeune for three days to watch a collegiate golf tournament and then on Monday, inspecting North Shore Golf Club, in the community of the same name, south of Lejeune and north of Wilmington. In the meantime, an article at Golfweek online caught my eye, about Forest Creek Golf Club, 36 holes amidst the pines of Pinehurst, a Fazio masterpiece and compared sometimes to Pine Valley. Homes near the course start in the high six figures and run into the millions, as does Michael Jordan, perhaps the club's most famous member. You can read the Golfweek piece here .
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Marines keep communities spit polished |
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Thursday, 27 March 2008 |
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Taberna's golf course and community are neat, on a number of levels.
A couple of years ago, a local real estate agent took me for a drive around the community of Taberna near the North Carolina port city of New Bern. Taberna is not the most lavish community; the homes are generally smaller than in many golf communities in the south and, consequently, home values run in the low to mid six figures.
But what Taberna may lack in heft, it more than makes up for in neatness, especially on one street we drove along. The homes were small, all the same distance from the street, all designed in the same general manner, but every one of them and their surrounding yards were manicured, with nary an extraneous object on the lawns. I asked my real estate agent about it, and she had a one-word answer: "Marines."
Taberna is within a half hour of the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station. A fair number of active-duty marines live in Taberna and decide to stay there after retirement. What's not to like? New Bern is an interesting small city, the birthplace of Pepsi Cola and home to nice restaurants and modern conveniences. Beaches are within a half hour. Golf is year round, and a new community, Carolina Colours, is adding 18 holes designed by the respected Bill Love. Taberna's own golf course is inexpensive to join and a treat to play; its owners, a green superintendent and his wife, have lavished attention on the course since they purchased it a few years ago. I enjoyed it when I played it.
I thought of Taberna yesterday when I made arrangements to fly to Jacksonville, NC, this weekend to watch my son play in a college golf tournament at Camp Lejeune, the huge Marine base nearby. On Monday, weather permitting, I will play the golf course in the community of North Shore in Sneads Ferry, about a half hour from the base and close to Topsail Beach. I hadn't heard of North Shore before I started doing some research about the area. Look for a review here next week, as well as photos and comments about the two courses at Camp Lejeune. Comments I have read about the base's Gold and Scarlet courses, which are open to the public, are that they are always in terrific condition, the grass nicely trimmed and everything in perfect order.
It figures.
New Bern, NC, is a port city with much to do for those who like boating, as well as golf.
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Lawrence Yun's snake oil cure for the shanks |
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Wednesday, 26 March 2008 |
Consider you are out playing a round of golf. You dead-shank every other shot on the first eight holes and triple bogey every one of them. Then, from the fairway on the par 5 ninth, you shank yet another approach shot into the woods. The ball hits a tree and bounces onto the green and into the hole for a birdie. Would you say you had corrected your swing or were just lucky? If you were Lawrence Yun, you'd say that hitting the tree and bouncing into the hole was a sign that your swing was just fine and more birdies lay ahead.
For those unfamiliar with Mr. Yun, he is the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, which essentially means he has a real estateEven when he is negative, Yun cannot help being irrationally positive.
The most recent irrational exuberance by the NAR was a response to the February report on home sales, released Monday. "...the improvement [in sales] is another sign that the market is stabilizing," said the unsinkable Mr. Yun, who for balance added the limp caveat that existing home sales won't show a "notable" gain until the second half of this year. Even when he is negative, he cannot help being irrationally positive.
Is he kidding? In February, existing home sales rose for just the first time since last July. Compared with the same month a year ago, February sales were down nearly 24%. And median home prices dropped by more than 8%. A ton of new condos are coming on the market in cities like the already suffering Miami and Las Vegas and lenders are acquiring more new foreclosure properties faster than they can sell the ones they already have. Mortgage lenders are tightening their criteria for loans, and corporations are starting to slow down their transfers of existing employees and their hiring of new ones. In the face of all this, by what logic does anyone, let alone an economist, see a "notable" turnaround just four or five months from now?
When I used to watch my kids play peewee soccer, I marveled at how their coaches could keep encouraging the kids on the team no matter how many times they kicked at thin air or ran toward the wrong end of the field. Mr. Yun, I suppose, would make a good little kids soccer coach. He has no business coaching anyone about economics. It would be nice if the Wall Street Journal and other respected media outlets would finally understand that and stop using him as a source.
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Open houses: Vacancy rates put pressure on prices; rentals challenge neighborhood cohesion |
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 |
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The latest vacancy rate data from the U.S. Census Bureau are ugly. Nationwide, the rate rose to 2.8% in the fourth quarter of 2007, up from 2.7% in the third quarter. In formerly hot markets, the numbers are considerably worse. In Orlando, for example, 7.4% of all homes are unoccupied, the highest such rate in the nation. Miami/Ft. Lauderdale (4.4%), Las Vegas (4.9%), and Phoenix (3.7%) are bad too.
The story of how these markets got to this point is well documented. Insist on a contingency with the developer that covers you in the event a certain percentage of the community's homes are rented.
Many of the vacant units have been rented which, on the face of it, would These are desperate times, and these are desperate developers.
"[Our] neighborhood was going downhill as people had been buying the homes and renting them out to some real [expletive deleted]," said one former Orlando resident on a real estate discussion board, congratulating himself on selling his home in 2005. He complained about "people who do auto repairs in the street in front of their house and then throw used motor oil in the grass in their front yard..."
That is certainly an extreme case, but hints at an unintended consequence of filling vacant homes with renters. If you are contemplating the purchase of a home in a new community in one of the areas hit by high vacancy rates, the advice here is to proceed with caution. You might insist on a contingency with the developer that covers you in the event a certain percentage of the community's homes are rented. That may have seemed farfetched just a few years ago, but these are desperate times, and these are desperate developers.
The Wall Street Journal has a recap of the national vacancy rate crisis, including an interactive map that shows rates in selected metro areas. Click here to see the article.
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