One of the pieces of advice I offer clients is that, if you have the time and resources, try to visit a golf community you might be targeting as a future home in a couple of different seasons. Travel to some southern locations in, say, spring or fall, and you will get an entirely different feel from a visit in summer or winter. Winter is a good time to find out how you might have to adjust to some climates in the South.
Today, I received a promotional email inviting me to take advantage of a Discovery Package at the community of Keowee Key in rural South Carolina. It was a good deal – 3 days and 2 nights in an on-site condo with a complimentary dinner for two in the Clubhouse and golf for two on the George Cobb designed course…for $349. However, I thought the promotion at this time was a bit odd – not because it is winter but because, as I write this, Keowee Key has just four properties listed for sale under $750,000; in late 2019, I recall plenty available in the $300,000 range.
Christine de Vlamming runs the marketing effort at Keowee Key, and I wrote her an email indicating my curiosity about promoting a community with very few homes for sale. Wouldn’t, I asked, that tend to alienate clients who would come to Keowee Key looking to buy? Or, alternatively, wouldn’t it encourage people to take advantage of a “discount” vacation, even if they weren’t serious about living there?
“We have a series of questions for all applicants that helps us to qualify them,” Christine wrote back within a half hour, “[to] avoid vacations.” She went on to explain that there are some properties for sale but they tend to go on the multiple listing service and come off quickly.
“We still want to keep the backlog [of prospects], she added. “Many folks do not move… until a year or so later, after they find us. We want them to fall in love with our personality.
“It’s all working very well despite how it looks.”
If you would like more information about Keowee or to take advantage of their Discovery Package, I would love to make the introduction for you. There are dozens of other discovery packages available in Southeast Region golf communities. Contact me here and we will figure out an itinerary for a visit to a few of them.
The Creek Club at Reynolds Lake Oconee, where homes, especially those priced under $1 million, are in ever-disappearing supply.
For many retirees who planned to move South to a retirement life of warm weather, lower cost of living and plenty of golf, the dream may seem as if it is dying, given the rapidly escalating prices of golf community homes and the radically shrinking inventories of homes for sale.
Dying, maybe, but not dead, and in the next issue of my free newsletter, Home On The Course, I describe a way for retirees to proceed full steam ahead, higher prices be damned. Yes, we Baby Boomers hate the thought of taking on debt, especially after many of us have spent 30 years paying off our homes. Why would we want another mortgage now?
That’s what I thought until I was persuaded otherwise. For the rest of the story, subscribe now to the newsletter to be sure it arrives in your inbox in the coming week. It’s free. Also, in the February issue, I scan some of the most popular markets for golf communities in order to describe how one Realtor justifiably defined his market as “on fire” and why it doesn’t look as if the flames will go out for some time to come.
Subscribe now. Thanks.
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