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 Home On The Course Newsletter
Click here to sign up for our Free Home On The Course newsletter, providing you with helpful information and observations about golf communities and their golf courses.
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Same old same old, but with ads |
If you are a regular visitor to this space, you probably noticed a few changes recently. We are giving up a little space, at the margins, to advertisers. These ads help pay the bills and defray some of the expenses of visiting golf communities to report accurately and honestly to our readers. Since our reviews are objective and unbiased, not promotional, we pay our green fees and accommodations when we travel. This makes Golf Community Reviews unique in the industry; other sites are paid a promotional fee by the communities and the information they provide is uniformly positive. They offer excellent information about golf communities, but no nuance whatsoever.
Our objectivity, however, comes at a price. We look to the ads to keep the lights on and pay for other necessary services. One thing we will not change, though, is our uncompromising honesty and advice about golf real estate and the good and bad choices that await us all.
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Friday, 19 December 2008 05:59 |
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Hitting the wall: Colgate's Seven Oaks, #10 |
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One in a series of reviews of memorable holes played in 2008.
Although the playing season is short in Hamilton, NY, home of Colgate University, the school-affiliated Seven Oaks golf course is long on nice views and a few challenging holes. The par 4 10th, at 380 yards from the tips, isn't long, but then again the tee shot is less a matter of length and more a matter of position. Be right, or else. A sprawling tree guards the left half of the green, meaning that any pulled shot will leave you with a tricky pitch shot to the green at best, or a watery grave at worst. Approaching over the tree is not really an option, since it is nestled close to the green. Better to take your medicine from the left side of the fairway and aim for the right side of the green and hope for a two putt on the slightly crowned surface.
Even with a well-placed drive, you can literally hit the wall with your approach shot at the 10th. The stone façade at the immediate front of the green presents two options, neither of them comfortable. You can play well over the front and hope you don't skip into the deep rough behind the green, or you can take the risky way and just clear the wall to provide any chance at a birdie putt. Chipping back across the green from the deep rough, and down into the water, is not out of the question. Neither is a memory of #10, for better or worse.
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Thursday, 18 December 2008 10:47 |
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Have home prices and interest rates reached harmonic convergence? |
I received an email from a real estate agent in North Carolina tonight, the first of many such appeals I expect to receive in the coming days and weeks.
"I just wanted to drop you a line to say we are receiving updates from lenders today," she wrote, "saying that mortgage rates for new home loans and refinances are at 50-year lows in the 4.5 % range today." She added that, "If you are in a position to buy a home, now is the time to do it, as both prices and rates are optimal."
Even discounting the customary salesperson hyperbole, home purchase isDespite salesperson hyperbole, this may be a good time to pull the trigger and buy a house.
It is hard to imagine interest rates ever going lower than, say 3.5%, which would be a record low. But with rates like that, could those sitting on the sidelines really afford to wait for home prices to drop much lower? The purpose of the low rates is to get people to start buying homes again, and if the medicine works, that perfect point of lowest prices and lowest interest rates might not last for more than a nanosecond. I still think the sheer numbers of foreclosures, uncertainty about Detroit and the overall employment crisis, as well as problems on the horizon with installment credit lenders, may send housing prices even lower. But how much lower is the question, and would waiting for another 10% drop be worth giving up a percentage point or two on a 30 year fixed mortgage, for example?
It is good to be cautious about salesperson hype about the "best time" to buy; a salesperson always thinks it is the best time to buy, and a good salesperson makes a persuasive case for it. But events may be conspiring to make calls to purchase something less than hype. New home construction has trickled to nearly nothing, which appears to be having a steadying effect on the national inventory of homes for sale, holding fairly steady at 10 months, or about four months more than the point of "balance." Add to the leveling inventories the drop in interest rates, and the many Baby Boomers who must be tired of waiting to get on with their relocation to a warmer, better place may just make their move.
If this is not the best time to buy, we may be getting close.
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Wednesday, 17 December 2008 16:40 |
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