Gone with the Wind: Golf Communities Dropping “Plantation” from Names
What’s in a name? When it comes to universities, towns, sports teams and, yes, even some golf communities, quite a lot actually. In the wake of the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and other African Americans, and the protests that ensued, names associated with an ugly aspect of our nation’s past — slaveowners Calhoun, Jackson (as in Stonewall and Andrew), Lee and dozens of others unknown by most Americans — have been stripped from government and academic buildings.
Business too is responding. Branding is everything in American commerce, and golf communities are businesses, pitching themselves as bastions of leisure and relaxation. This is why many golf communities developed in the 1980s and ’90s added the word “Plantation” to their names to imply the ethos of an Old South lifestyle. It worked well enough until a rising consciousness about the region’s history of slave ownership, culminating in protests around the nation and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, exacerbated the distinction between the lifestyles of plantation owners and the persons they controlled.
Some communities tackled the name issue as long as a decade ago, although their reasons were more commercial than social. For example, the former Woodside Plantation in Aiken, SC, a town about as indigenously Southern as there is, dropped the “Plantation” moniker in 2010 when the developer began to create new neighborhoods both inside and beyond the gates of the original community.
“By that time, we were actively marketing Woodside, The Village at Woodside and Hollow Creek Preserve (an equestrian community outside of Woodside),” according to Woodside’s marketing executive Diana Peters.
“It became clear to us that using ‘Woodside Plantation’ was confusing prospects since everyone associated that name with Woodside proper.” In 2015, the organization decided to use “Woodside Communities” to identify the growing group of communities.
However, the Woodside Plantation Property Owners Association (WPPOA), which owns the roads and signage in the community, has not yet dropped references to “Plantation” but is beginning to research the costs of changing signage and other expenses involved in a switch of names. A vote of the property owners is likely after the research is done.
Whereas the developers of Woodside eliminated “Plantation” from its official name for commercial reasons, more communities have followed suit recently for reasons much more related to popular concerns. Many of those changes have also been handled quietly, especially at such deluxe communities as Wexford on Hilton Head Island and the triumvirate of high-quality golf communities in Bluffton, SC — Colleton River, Berkeley Hall and Belfair. (Editor’s note: My vacation home is located in Pawleys Plantation in Pawleys Island, SC, and, to date, the homeowners’ association board there has not taken up the issue of a potential name change. Given the shrinking number of communities that retain “Plantation” in their names, it is just a matter of time before some reporter at a local newspaper or TV station decides to ask why.)
In some cases, as noted above, the main objection to dropping the “Plantation” handle is financial — the cost to change printed materials and signage. But the counter argument is one of enlightened self-interest. We are at a moment when the sellers’ market in southern golf communities has never been stronger because inventories are historically low and demand, thanks to the pandemic and more people working from home, is high. Owners of southern golf community real estate are not about to let a little thing like the name of their communities threaten their selling power. When two powerful motivations like social consciousness and investment security converge, change is inevitable.
Is it Time to Migrate Your Thinking about Migration?
In last issue’s Home On The Course, I wrote about how the pandemic is boosting the fortunes of the golf industry and the prices of golf community properties. Here are some additional thoughts on the subject.
There are many reasons to hate coronavirus. It has taken the lives of our fellow citizens, shaken up families, pretty much debilitated the economy for years to come and reinvigorated the game of golf. Wait. What?
It feels a bit churlish to write about the pandemic’s benefits to the golf industry, but they are too obvious — and ironic — to ignore. The truth is golf was back on its heels before the pandemic, making something of a slow recovery from all the course closings of the prior decade but with no net growth in the number of courses in the nation and only incremental increases in rounds played.
But while driving most people indoors to safety, the pandemic has also driven many outside their homes for the only safe recreation this side of hiking. Dormant golfers, those who gave up the game because of family responsibilities or for reasons of cost, are back, filling up tee sheets at public courses in virtually every part of the country. Personal example: In the summer of 2019, at my favorite local course, Keney Park in Hartford, CT, I could call the pro shop at 9 a.m. and ask for a tee time in the neighborhood of 10 a.m. and I would have a selection of times to choose. Recently, my friend Pete called Keney to book a tee time three days in advance; the best he could get was 12 p.m. We played with threesomes and foursomes stacked in front and behind us; it took an hour longer to play than it did last summer at the same time, and as we made our way down the 10thfairway, a threesome from two holes ahead drove past us heading to the clubhouse, complaining the play in front of them was too slow.
The pandemic is also having a profound effect on golf community home values and, in fact, home sales in some surprising areas. (Example: A report in mid-October indicated that Hartford County in Connecticut — that’s my county of residence – had the third largest real estate sales increase in August among all counties in the nation when compared with the same month’s sales figures in 2019. I knew homes were selling in our neighborhood, but I had no idea…) The real estate brokers and agents I work with in the Southeast are reporting that folks fleeing the cities are beating a path to their doors. Inquiries about real estate in the region are way up, twice as many visits are scheduled for this fall as were requested last year, and prices are rising so fast that homeowners reluctant to list their homes for sale in prior years are coming off the sidelines.
“It has been an amazing market here for the last several months,” Tom Jackson wrote me in early October. Tom is my real estate contact for the Bluffton, Hilton Head and Daufuskie Island markets. “We are seeing lots of buyers; at Haig Point (Daufuskie) we have about 23 homes under agreement right now, Colleton River and Belfair have been on fire as well. At Palmetto Bluff (Bluffton community with million-dollar homes) we have seen so many sales that the home inventory is down to 18 homes.”
Here is another staggering figure Tom shared about Palmetto Bluff, where most homes are valued north of $1 million. In mid-October, 47 properties there were pending sales. At the same time in 2019, that number was zero.
Golf communities are facing something of a perfect storm of incoming migration – from city dwellers who believe they will be safer at some remove from cities, to all those Baby Boomers who put their relocations on hold when the virus hit, to the millions of company employees who are going to remain working from home because they like it and their employers are going to save a bundle on office rents and utility costs (and, no surprise from this writer who works from home, those employees are just as productive there — some more so). And since developers were slow to recover from the 2008 recession and scared to build new communities, inventories are historically low in the areas of the Southeast most popular with those relocating from elsewhere.
Even the most mathematically challenged among us knows what happens when demand is high and supply is low. I’ve looked at pricing in a number of communities in the Southeast over recent weeks and, not surprising, the list prices for single-family homes and condos have risen perceptibly from earlier this year, whereas the price of homesites (lots) are only up incrementally, if at all. That would argue for consideration of building your dream home but, unfortunately, construction prices are up as much — in some locations, maybe more — than the increase in resale home prices.
Because of the pandemic, many folks in the Southeast who have reached a certain age that compels them to return “home” because of health issues have not listed their southern homes for sale — yet. When they do, the short inventory situation will convince them to list at inflated prices. (The marketing director at Keowee Key in South Carolina told me last week that homes are selling above list price and that bidding wars are not uncommon.) But buyer beware; we cannot predict what the herd psychology will be once a vaccine for the virus is readily available. If the pandemic is perceived as well under control, migration patterns may return to something resembling the normal and ordinary; those who paid inflated prices during the pandemic might find themselves with a property that has depreciated in value.
On the other hand, home working for large numbers of employees may be here to stay. It is logical to think that the millions of workers at home will start looking for lower cost of living options that will provide them with extra space for their home office; and that could continue to cause even higher prices on southern real estate, especially in golf communities perceived as high-quality. (With flexible work hours at home, expect more rounds of golf.) If your heart is set on relocating in a southerly direction, perhaps you should get serious – yesterday.
Larry Gavrich
Founder & Editor
Home On The Course, LLC
One Golf Community Saves Itself
A few years after I started my business, Home On The Course, I learned a good lesson: Real estate values inside the gates of any community can crash within months when the adjacent country club hits the skids financially. It took years, for example, at Mount Vintage near Aiken, SC, for property owners to recover from a takeover by the local bank that held the mortgage on their failing golf course. Even in the currently robust market, house values are barely higher today than when that community first opened in 2000. At the vaunted Cliffs communities, the 2009 recession and a membership plan “forced” on buyers at closing and a membership fee that reached $125,000 destroyed land and home sales and caused a change in ownership a few times over the last 10 years.
Without question, a golf community with a successful golf course at its core supports real estate values in the community. With the constant barrage in the media about golf community courses that can’t make it financially and are plowed over for new housing, it is gratifying to hear about one whose membership and non-golfing residents together tackled a financial shortfall and came out the other side with a viable plan.
I have written about Cypress Landing in Chocowinity, NC, a number of times since I first visited in 2015. I cannot remember how I first heard of the community, but it surely wasn’t because of an aggressive marketing campaign. Cypress Landing is low key about itself, even though it has much to recommend, including an adjacent river, a fun and scenic golf course and some of the most reasonably priced real estate I’ve encountered. And its proximity to the medium sized town of Greenville, NC, home to East Carolina University and a huge medical center complex, makes it less remote than the town with a name like Chocowinity might imply.
I mention Cypress Landing in my new book, and during the course of reviewing my final draft, one golf real estate insider told me he had heard of financial difficulties at the community’s golf club. I have a reliable contact at Cypress Landing, and he confirmed the financial issues but indicated members and residents were working on a solution. The heart of the issue was that the club did not have enough members to sustain it and that fees were too low to stem the cashflow issues.
Faced with the potential closure of the major asset the community has, members and residents debated the future of the club and came up with a plan to amend the community covenants that separated operation of the golf course from the homeowners’ association. Without getting into too many arcane details, by a 4 to 1 vote among the 716 homeowner association (HOA) members, it was resolved that HOA annual dues would be increased by $350 annually for the next five years; a new HOA committee, called the Golf Course Committee, will consist of five members that include a non-golfing member from the community; and the HOA would have closer coordination with Billy Casper Management Group which operates the golf course for the community. There are other wrinkles to the new agreement, but that is the gist of it.
Despite friction between the golf members and non-golfing residents in many golf communities, Cypress Landing showed that enlightened self-interest, in this case real estate values, can drive consensus. The five years of increased dues means each member of the HOA will spend a total of $1,526, or about .4% of the value of the average home in the community. (I estimate that to be $350,000.) Even if the golf club merely survives, let alone thrives, that is a good deal any way you look at it.
Letter to Editor
My Oops
In your latest e-mail article ("Covid-19's Surprising Effect of Golf and Golf Communities"), your math calculations are incorrect concerning the rates of confirmed cases of Covid-19 vs. the general population.
For example, the confirmed cases in Bluffton, SC do not represent .047%. They represent 4.7%, or .047 (1,084 divided by 23,000). The other statistics are also stated incorrectly because of the confusion between percentages vs. decimal representation. This is a common mistake, and one that I sometimes make, too.
Otherwise, a great article, as usual.
Richard A. Freeman, Esq.Miami Beach, FL
Editor’s note: Thanks, Richard, for keeping this English major’s math straight.
Now on Sale
Buy from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
If you are considering a search for a permanent or vacation home in a golf-oriented area, please contact me for a free, no-obligation consultation at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Gone with the Wind: Golf Communities Dropping “Plantation” from Names
What’s in a name? When it comes to universities, towns, sports teams and, yes, even some golf communities, quite a lot actually. In the wake of the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and other African Americans, and the protests that ensued, names associated with an ugly aspect of our nation’s past — slaveowners Calhoun, Jackson (as in Stonewall and Andrew), Lee and dozens of others unknown by most Americans — have been stripped from government and academic buildings.
Business too is responding. Branding is everything in American commerce, and golf communities are businesses, pitching themselves as bastions of leisure and relaxation. This is why many golf communities developed in the 1980s and ’90s added the word “Plantation” to their names to imply the ethos of an Old South lifestyle. It worked well enough until a rising consciousness about the region’s history of slave ownership, culminating in protests around the nation and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, exacerbated the distinction between the lifestyles of plantation owners and the persons they controlled.
Some communities tackled the name issue as long as a decade ago, although their reasons were more commercial than social. For example, the former Woodside Plantation in Aiken, SC, a town about as indigenously Southern as there is, dropped the “Plantation” moniker in 2010 when the developer began to create new neighborhoods both inside and beyond the gates of the original community.
“By that time, we were actively marketing Woodside, The Village at Woodside and Hollow Creek Preserve (an equestrian community outside of Woodside),” according to Woodside’s marketing executive Diana Peters.
“It became clear to us that using ‘Woodside Plantation’ was confusing prospects since everyone associated that name with Woodside proper.” In 2015, the organization decided to use “Woodside Communities” to identify the growing group of communities.
However, the Woodside Plantation Property Owners Association (WPPOA), which owns the roads and signage in the community, has not yet dropped references to “Plantation” but is beginning to research the costs of changing signage and other expenses involved in a switch of names. A vote of the property owners is likely after the research is done.
Whereas the developers of Woodside eliminated “Plantation” from its official name for commercial reasons, more communities have followed suit recently for reasons much more related to popular concerns. Many of those changes have also been handled quietly, especially at such deluxe communities as Wexford on Hilton Head Island and the triumvirate of high-quality golf communities in Bluffton, SC — Colleton River, Berkeley Hall and Belfair. (Editor’s note: My vacation home is located in Pawleys Plantation in Pawleys Island, SC, and, to date, the homeowners’ association board there has not taken up the issue of a potential name change. Given the shrinking number of communities that retain “Plantation” in their names, it is just a matter of time before some reporter at a local newspaper or TV station decides to ask why.)
In some cases, as noted above, the main objection to dropping the “Plantation” handle is financial — the cost to change printed materials and signage. But the counter argument is one of enlightened self-interest. We are at a moment when the sellers’ market in southern golf communities has never been stronger because inventories are historically low and demand, thanks to the pandemic and more people working from home, is high. Owners of southern golf community real estate are not about to let a little thing like the name of their communities threaten their selling power. When two powerful motivations like social consciousness and investment security converge, change is inevitable.
Is it Time to Migrate Your Thinking about Migration?
In last issue’s Home On The Course, I wrote about how the pandemic is boosting the fortunes of the golf industry and the prices of golf community properties. Here are some additional thoughts on the subject.
There are many reasons to hate coronavirus. It has taken the lives of our fellow citizens, shaken up families, pretty much debilitated the economy for years to come and reinvigorated the game of golf. Wait. What?
It feels a bit churlish to write about the pandemic’s benefits to the golf industry, but they are too obvious — and ironic — to ignore. The truth is golf was back on its heels before the pandemic, making something of a slow recovery from all the course closings of the prior decade but with no net growth in the number of courses in the nation and only incremental increases in rounds played.
But while driving most people indoors to safety, the pandemic has also driven many outside their homes for the only safe recreation this side of hiking. Dormant golfers, those who gave up the game because of family responsibilities or for reasons of cost, are back, filling up tee sheets at public courses in virtually every part of the country. Personal example: In the summer of 2019, at my favorite local course, Keney Park in Hartford, CT, I could call the pro shop at 9 a.m. and ask for a tee time in the neighborhood of 10 a.m. and I would have a selection of times to choose. Recently, my friend Pete called Keney to book a tee time three days in advance; the best he could get was 12 p.m. We played with threesomes and foursomes stacked in front and behind us; it took an hour longer to play than it did last summer at the same time, and as we made our way down the 10thfairway, a threesome from two holes ahead drove past us heading to the clubhouse, complaining the play in front of them was too slow.
The pandemic is also having a profound effect on golf community home values and, in fact, home sales in some surprising areas. (Example: A report in mid-October indicated that Hartford County in Connecticut — that’s my county of residence – had the third largest real estate sales increase in August among all counties in the nation when compared with the same month’s sales figures in 2019. I knew homes were selling in our neighborhood, but I had no idea…) The real estate brokers and agents I work with in the Southeast are reporting that folks fleeing the cities are beating a path to their doors. Inquiries about real estate in the region are way up, twice as many visits are scheduled for this fall as were requested last year, and prices are rising so fast that homeowners reluctant to list their homes for sale in prior years are coming off the sidelines.
“It has been an amazing market here for the last several months,” Tom Jackson wrote me in early October. Tom is my real estate contact for the Bluffton, Hilton Head and Daufuskie Island markets. “We are seeing lots of buyers; at Haig Point (Daufuskie) we have about 23 homes under agreement right now, Colleton River and Belfair have been on fire as well. At Palmetto Bluff (Bluffton community with million-dollar homes) we have seen so many sales that the home inventory is down to 18 homes.”
Here is another staggering figure Tom shared about Palmetto Bluff, where most homes are valued north of $1 million. In mid-October, 47 properties there were pending sales. At the same time in 2019, that number was zero.
Golf communities are facing something of a perfect storm of incoming migration – from city dwellers who believe they will be safer at some remove from cities, to all those Baby Boomers who put their relocations on hold when the virus hit, to the millions of company employees who are going to remain working from home because they like it and their employers are going to save a bundle on office rents and utility costs (and, no surprise from this writer who works from home, those employees are just as productive there — some more so). And since developers were slow to recover from the 2008 recession and scared to build new communities, inventories are historically low in the areas of the Southeast most popular with those relocating from elsewhere.
Even the most mathematically challenged among us knows what happens when demand is high and supply is low. I’ve looked at pricing in a number of communities in the Southeast over recent weeks and, not surprising, the list prices for single-family homes and condos have risen perceptibly from earlier this year, whereas the price of homesites (lots) are only up incrementally, if at all. That would argue for consideration of building your dream home but, unfortunately, construction prices are up as much — in some locations, maybe more — than the increase in resale home prices.
Because of the pandemic, many folks in the Southeast who have reached a certain age that compels them to return “home” because of health issues have not listed their southern homes for sale — yet. When they do, the short inventory situation will convince them to list at inflated prices. (The marketing director at Keowee Key in South Carolina told me last week that homes are selling above list price and that bidding wars are not uncommon.) But buyer beware; we cannot predict what the herd psychology will be once a vaccine for the virus is readily available. If the pandemic is perceived as well under control, migration patterns may return to something resembling the normal and ordinary; those who paid inflated prices during the pandemic might find themselves with a property that has depreciated in value.
On the other hand, home working for large numbers of employees may be here to stay. It is logical to think that the millions of workers at home will start looking for lower cost of living options that will provide them with extra space for their home office; and that could continue to cause even higher prices on southern real estate, especially in golf communities perceived as high-quality. (With flexible work hours at home, expect more rounds of golf.) If your heart is set on relocating in a southerly direction, perhaps you should get serious – yesterday.
Larry Gavrich
Founder & Editor
Home On The Course, LLC
One Golf Community Saves Itself
A few years after I started my business, Home On The Course, I learned a good lesson: Real estate values inside the gates of any community can crash within months when the adjacent country club hits the skids financially. It took years, for example, at Mount Vintage near Aiken, SC, for property owners to recover from a takeover by the local bank that held the mortgage on their failing golf course. Even in the currently robust market, house values are barely higher today than when that community first opened in 2000. At the vaunted Cliffs communities, the 2009 recession and a membership plan “forced” on buyers at closing and a membership fee that reached $125,000 destroyed land and home sales and caused a change in ownership a few times over the last 10 years.
Without question, a golf community with a successful golf course at its core supports real estate values in the community. With the constant barrage in the media about golf community courses that can’t make it financially and are plowed over for new housing, it is gratifying to hear about one whose membership and non-golfing residents together tackled a financial shortfall and came out the other side with a viable plan.
I have written about Cypress Landing in Chocowinity, NC, a number of times since I first visited in 2015. I cannot remember how I first heard of the community, but it surely wasn’t because of an aggressive marketing campaign. Cypress Landing is low key about itself, even though it has much to recommend, including an adjacent river, a fun and scenic golf course and some of the most reasonably priced real estate I’ve encountered. And its proximity to the medium sized town of Greenville, NC, home to East Carolina University and a huge medical center complex, makes it less remote than the town with a name like Chocowinity might imply.
I mention Cypress Landing in my new book, and during the course of reviewing my final draft, one golf real estate insider told me he had heard of financial difficulties at the community’s golf club. I have a reliable contact at Cypress Landing, and he confirmed the financial issues but indicated members and residents were working on a solution. The heart of the issue was that the club did not have enough members to sustain it and that fees were too low to stem the cashflow issues.
Faced with the potential closure of the major asset the community has, members and residents debated the future of the club and came up with a plan to amend the community covenants that separated operation of the golf course from the homeowners’ association. Without getting into too many arcane details, by a 4 to 1 vote among the 716 homeowner association (HOA) members, it was resolved that HOA annual dues would be increased by $350 annually for the next five years; a new HOA committee, called the Golf Course Committee, will consist of five members that include a non-golfing member from the community; and the HOA would have closer coordination with Billy Casper Management Group which operates the golf course for the community. There are other wrinkles to the new agreement, but that is the gist of it.
Despite friction between the golf members and non-golfing residents in many golf communities, Cypress Landing showed that enlightened self-interest, in this case real estate values, can drive consensus. The five years of increased dues means each member of the HOA will spend a total of $1,526, or about .4% of the value of the average home in the community. (I estimate that to be $350,000.) Even if the golf club merely survives, let alone thrives, that is a good deal any way you look at it.
Letter to Editor
My Oops
In your latest e-mail article ("Covid-19's Surprising Effect of Golf and Golf Communities"), your math calculations are incorrect concerning the rates of confirmed cases of Covid-19 vs. the general population.
For example, the confirmed cases in Bluffton, SC do not represent .047%. They represent 4.7%, or .047 (1,084 divided by 23,000). The other statistics are also stated incorrectly because of the confusion between percentages vs. decimal representation. This is a common mistake, and one that I sometimes make, too.
Otherwise, a great article, as usual.
Richard A. Freeman, Esq.Miami Beach, FL
Editor’s note: Thanks, Richard, for keeping this English major’s math straight.
Now on Sale
Buy from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
If you are considering a search for a permanent or vacation home in a golf-oriented area, please contact me for a free, no-obligation consultation at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Woodside, Aiken, SC