Our April edition of Home On The Course, our monthly newsletter, has something for virtually everyone. Whether you are in full search mode for a golf home or simply contemplating a future search, our advice on how to “Make Sure that Golf Home is Right for You” will come in especially handy when you make your visits to golf communities. If you are just planning a golf trip with family or buddies, the latest rankings from the North Carolina and South Carolina Golf Rating Panels will lead you to the best golf courses “you can play” in each of those golf rich states.
        Finally, we show how a vacation or permanent home in a golf rich area of the South can lead you to free lodging in some of the best golfing areas of the world –- or, if you choose, cities like Paris, London and Athens where you won’t need your clubs to have a great time. Our friends at HomeLink, one of the premier home exchange organizations, are offering a special free trial to subscribers of Home on the Course (which, itself, is free for the asking).
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CraigheadgreenagainstwallA home exchange via HomeLink led my son and me to a free one-week's stay a mile up the road from the Crail Golfing Society and its 36-holes of splendid links golf beside the North Sea. HomeLink is offering our newsletter subscribers a free three-month trial. Please subscribe today; the newsletter will launch tomorrow morning.

        The other day, I selected at random a bunch of homes currently for sale in top quality golf courses and, using the online real estate service Zillow, checked their sale prices before the 2008 recession against their current list prices. In virtually all cases, values have not rebounded since 2007, in most cases not even close. So while sales seem to be proceeding at a fairly good clip in the better golf communities, sellers are not getting pre-recession values out of their homes. One takeaway: Golf homes in the better golf communities are good investments because in many cases they are well below their historical highs (see below).
Wachesaw approachOne home in Wachesaw Plantation, Murrells Inlet, SC, is currently listed at $660,000, $225,000 less than its value 10 years ago.
        The reason I embarked on this experiment was because a customer currently living in Pinehurst, NC, on one of the nine, famed Pinehurst courses filled out one of my Golf Homes questionnaires, requesting my assistance in the search for another golf-oriented home. I checked their current address on Zillow to see if their home was currently for sale; it isn’t, but Zillow estimates a current value of $461,000 (what they call a “Zestimate”); in 2007, the house sold for $700,000. Ouch. This caused me to select a number of our favorite communities and pick one home in each currently for sale to compare to its 2007/2008 selling price. The results were pretty startling.
        My first stop was our own vacation condo in Pawleys Plantation, Pawleys Island, SC. We purchased the unit in 2000 for a price in the low $200s, and by 2007, it had a value of $377,000. I was feeling my oats back then, but according to Zillow, the condo is now worth just $306,000. The story was the same elsewhere I looked:

Landfall, Wilmington, NC
2007 $725k
2017 $599K

The Landings, Savannah, GA
2007 $807k
2017 $698k*

Cliffs at Walnut Cove, Arden, NC
2007 $1.4m
2017 $1.175m

Wintergreen Resort, Nellysford, VA
2007 not available
2017 $450k
2015 $500k

Reserve at Keowee, Sunset, SC
2007 $680k
2017 $567k

Wachesaw Plantation, Murrells Inlet, SC
2007 $925k
2017 $660k

Palm-Aire, Sarasota, FL
2007 $462k
2017 $425k

Grand Harbor, Vero Beach, FL
2007 $190k
2017 $135k

Imperial Estates, Naples, FL
2007 $307k
2017 $265k

        As stock brokerages are required to state, past performance is no indication of future performance. But real estate prices in the U.S. typically return to past high prices. If you believe in the U.S. economy, then you can believe that an investment in a home that lags its historical highest price by double-digit percentages might be a good investment.