According to a recent survey, U.S. homebuilder confidence in the housing market remains at a low ebb, with a rating of just 13 where 50 is average. A component index of the survey that measures expectations about the next six months was unchanged. This would all be news to the sales staff at Dominion Valley, a Toll Brothers golf community in central Virginia where sales are defying national trends and staff is brimming with confidence.
When you visit as many golf communities as I have –- well over 100 in the last five years -– you can feel the difference between real enthusiasm and faux enthusiasm among the staff you meet. In the places that are struggling, the on-site real estate agents either try too hard to paint a picture that just hasn’t materialized yet, or they hardly try at all (they point me to the golf course and say “have a good time”).
Hole #1 at Dominion Valley.
But in the rolling hills of Haymarket, VA, the gated Dominion Valley is on a roll. Sales of homes this year are up double-digit percentage points over the same period in 2009, and the community’s visitor’s center is welcoming an average of 25 to 30 prospects each weekend. Frequent hammering of nails into wood may interrupt concentration on the golf course but it is music to Dominion Valley’s sales agents. Confidence in the community is running high: The developer just built a new clubhouse restaurant called Mulligans (named not for a do-over shot but rather for Arnold Palmer’s dog); the small and stylish restaurant features TV screens in the booths and plug-ins for children’s game players, a clever touch.
Dominion Valley’s recent success in the face of a withering housing recession is a consequence of location and pedigree. A mile and a half from I-66 and just an hour and 15 minutes from the nation’s capital -- but much closer to the many office parks west of the city -- Dominion Valley counts a wide range of business people among its residents, including consultants, lobbyists, military personnel and many other government officials who don’t require daily commutes to the city. Haymarket offers plenty enough services and Dominion Valley enough amenities. More importantly, the community is just 20 minutes from Dulles International Airport, one of the easiest to use large airports in the nation.
The approach to the 3rd hole at Dominion Valley.
Surprisingly for a community with year-round golf, just 15% of Dominion Valley's residential population is retired. The age-restricted (55+) Regency community across the street is the option for those who have raised their children and would just as soon live in a place free of school buses. Both Dominion Valley and Regency residents benefit from a huge shopping complex, Merchants Square, just outside their gates, that was originally developed by Toll Brothers.
Philadelphia-based Toll Brothers takes a rather conservative approach to its properties, which is the right personality trait to weather the housing mess of the last three years. At Dominion Valley, you won’t find any vacant lots because the company only sells lot and home packages. When you buy, they build -- no speculators thank you very much. This approach has helped Dominion Valley control the way it looks to prospective buyers; unlike many other communities, you won’t find “vacant” lots in Dominion Valley.
Although the Dominion Valley golf course is open year round, Mother Nature intrudes every once in awhile.
With 2,200 homes already built in Dominion Valley’s first nine years, the development is about 70% complete. The community offers four different types of “product,” ranging from the “neo-traditional” single-family homes of the Village Collection, with prices beginning just under $400,000, to the Estate Collection whose homes begin in the high $600s and can range up to nearly 5,000 square feet and seven figures. The Carolina and Executive Collections anchor the mid-range selections, at prices from the $400s to the $600s. Dominion Valley really doesn’t have much local competition in its price ranges; homes at the lush and consciously sophisticated Creighton Farms, about a half hour up Highway 15, start above $1 million and other golf communities in the area do not offer private golf or the range of mid-six figure homes of Dominion Valley. (Note: Watch this space for a review of Creighton Farms in the coming days.)
Palmer, who has received the bulk of Toll Brothers’ golf course commissions, was responsible for the sprawling layout at the heart of the community, as well as a shorter course (par 62) across the street at The Regency, an age-restricted Toll Brothers community. Although golf membership is not required of residents of Dominion Valley, a dedicated golfer will find one of the club’s two golf memberships a good deal. Full-family golf initiation fees for a resident are $5,500, with $2,500 paid by Toll Brothers (or a homeowner who is a member) at the time of a house purchase. Dues are $385 per month. Dominion Valley’s unique “preferred” membership is just $300 for initiation, and $150 per month, but play is restricted to after 1 p.m. on weekdays and after 3 p.m. Friday through Sunday. However, “preferred” members have access to the club’s fitness center and are permitted to play unlimited golf at the Regency course.
The 8th at Dominion Valley reminds us that it is an Arnold Palmer design and, therefore, must have large bunkers.
Dominion Valley members also have access to the 26 other golf courses Toll Brothers manages across the U.S. A member of any one of the courses has playing privileges at all others with payment of a cart fee only. A few days after my visit to Dominion Valley, I met a member of a Toll Brothers sister course, Belmont, in Ashburn, VA, just 40 minutes from Dominion. He told me the reciprocal arrangement with Dominion was a great feature, although he lowered his voice to say “our course (Belmont) is better.”
That is saying something because the Dominion golf course is excellent, well manicured and fun to play. All the customary Palmer Design touches are in place, including the wide fairways, large bunkers and large, sloping greens. But as a nod to a wide range of golfers including the many juniors who use the course, the customary Palmer bunkers-on-steroids are more visual elements than in-play hazards. Still, some pieces of marshland and other scrubby areas between fairways and greens make club selection especially important. The Little Bull Run Creek also comes into play on a few holes.
The greens at Dominion Valley are approachable in large part because they are big, with plenty of opportunities for challenging pin positions. On the day I played, the greens were still recovering from aeration a week earlier. This turned out to be fortuitous in a way, saving me from certain three-putts when I wound up above the hole. Bunkers around the greens were very much in play, with many guarding the center front, leaving no option for run-up shots. I played the blue tees and thought the course played a bit easier than the 70.7 rating and 137 slope suggested, but when the greens recover and roll much faster, the course will toughen up significantly.
To encourage members to fix their fairway divots, Dominion Valley puts large sandboxes at mid-fairway about 100 yards from the greens on some holes. The boxes interrupt the attractive sweep of the fairways up to the greens.
Otherwise, I found only a few things to quibble with on the Dominion Valley course. The most egregious were the wooden boxes filled with sand that dot the middle of a few fairways, the first time I have seen such a bulky reminder to fix divots. Since every golf cart at Dominion Valley includes canisters filled with sand, one has to wonder how tough it is for members to grab a can and fill a divot. Also, I noted most green complexes did not have the customary “carts exit here” signs. That is a good thing; private club members ought to know where to leave the fairways in their carts. The club should consider removing the cart signs from the few holes where they interrupt the flow of the fairways to the greens.
Those modest criticisms aside, Dominion Valley is an under-rated destination for retiree golfers. It provides excellent golf at fair prices, a vast array of shopping options within a few hundred yards of the front gate, convenient access to a large international airport, and an easy drive to interesting destinations like Washington, D.C., Colonial Williamsburg and the Shenandoah Valley. Most of all, for those who consider a developer’s financial stability among the most important criteria when shopping for a golf community home, Dominion Valley offers the rock solid backing of Toll Brothers, one of the most respected national developers in the nation.
If you would like to know more about Dominion Valley or would like me to arrange for a Toll Brothers representative to provide you with detailed information about the golf club and real estate opportunities, please contact me.