Private golf communities are beautiful places, and never more so than in
those magical early days when the developer is emptying his bottomless pockets,
lavishing money and love on the courses, the clubhouse, the marina and just
about everything else. “[Developers] landscape like you’ve never seen,” says
Doug Coupe, a retired high school principal from Vermont who owns a house at
Belfair, near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. “Most people who are building
a home get small shrubs and wait 10 years for them to grow. Here, everything
comes in 10- or 20-quart bales. They’re mature plants, so it looks like the
place has been here forever.
“And this [level of expectation] affects the
staff too. They made sure the shoeshine guy knew your name even if you hadn’t
been here in six months. They’ve gotten used to the developer mentality, so our
greens guy had a virtually unlimited budget. He could hire people and trim
around every little bush and make the place look like Augusta National.”
But
after the developer has sold most of the available homesites, control of the
community shifts from the developers to the property owners. After that
transition, for residents and members, the money they’re spending on the club
and community is their own.
“All of a sudden, we’re running it and we’ve got
to watch our pennies,” says Coupe, who served as the club’s acting general
manager this spring and summer. “We can’t afford to have five staff members
standing around in anticipation that we might require some service. So the staff
has to be told that, on the one hand, we want the same level of service as when
the developer was running the place, but we’re not necessarily going to provide
the resources for you to do that.”
The transition can be tricky, potentially
burdening unsuspecting residents with unplanned responsibilities and costs. It’s
nearly a given that dues will be higher, but the key is to avoid nasty
surprises.
“There is a disconnect in purposes there,” says Frank Vain,
president of the McMahon Group, a St. Louis-based consulting firm that has
assisted more than 50 private golf communities in making this transition. “The
developer has a time horizon that’s governed by his desire to exit the property
as soon as the lots are sold. At the other end of the scale is the homeowner,
who’s going to be there forever. I don’t think the average buyer is thinking in
those terms.”
Once the developer turns the property over to the homeowners,
he or she no longer has to pay for the marketing expenses—landscaping, fancy
parties, staff—that make the “product” look as seductive as possible. That cost,
which can run into the millions annually, now becomes the homeowners’
responsibility if they want to maintain the same level of solicitude.
Still,
the transition doesn’t need to be unpleasant or shocking. There are three basic
rules savvy homeowners should remember: Get help. Ask questions. Start early.
These might sound like nothing more than good old common sense, but a lot of
people who have been successful enough to be able to buy into a private golf
community fail to perform the due diligence.
“A lot of people don’t even
know the questions to ask and then they are committed and it’s too late,”
cautions Terra Waldron, general manager and vice president at Desert Highlands
in Scottsdale, Arizona. She advises homeowners to look carefully behind all the
glitz, at “the operational costs, their financial statement, and what the
developer’s past history has been.”
