Is it the game or the view that attracts buyers to the growing number of golf-course communities?
For Hank Wade, who can see the 10th green of Limerick Municipal Golf Course from his deck in Golf Ridge, an Iacobucci Organization community, it’s the view — and then some.
“I used to play,” Wade said, “but then I became disabled, so I had to give up the game.
“While I like to look at open and green space, I bought the house because it was cheerful, relatively maintenance-free, and all on one floor–not for the view alone.”
At Talamore, Realen Homes’ golf-course community of townhouses and single-family homes in Horsham Township, the two large windows of Brian Ginty’s study overlook the 17th hole, which is a problem for a golfer who works at home.
“I’m all right until the first golfer comes by,” said Ginty, a headhunter for major corporations. “Then I have to get out and play, even if it’s just a few holes.”
But golf is not the only reason the Gintys — Brian, wife Maureen, son Kyle, 12, and daughter Courtney, 8 — traded their 18th-century Chester County farmhouse for a new home in Montgomery County.
“We like the houses, and the way the villages (there are seven at Talamore) are set up, kind of like a gated community,” Brian Ginty said. “There’s a lot of charm in older houses, but there’s a lot of work, too, and this way, we have more time to spend with each other than working every weekend on the house.”
What is attracting buyers to these communities is not just the golf or the view, but these things and many others that can be tied up in a neat little package called “lifestyle.”
“It’s certainly more than golf,” said Ed Deisher, director of sales and marketing for Iacobucci, of Havertown. “It’s location, and the fact that, in both cases, it’s because the golf courses will remain open space, either by ordinance or deed restriction.
“That means that you will always look out your window and see open space, not the backs of houses in another development,” Deisher said.
There are more than a dozen golf-course communities in metropolitan Philadelphia, and more are being proposed each year. Some, such as Golf Ridge, are adjacent to public courses. Others, such as Talamore and Iacobucci’s Green at Penn Oaks Golf Club in Chester County, are woven in and around private country clubs.
Some qualify as luxury communities, with single-family houses ranging from $225,000 to $300,000. Others are in the more affordable range; i.e., prices for ranchers at Golf Ridge start at around $130,000.
One of the newest is Hartefeld, a $100 million community outside Kennett Square being developed by Bellevue Homes, of Wilmington. There will be 300 single-family houses in nine separate “villages” on 430 acres, with prices beginning in the low $300,000s.
The centerpiece of the community is the 180-acre Hartefeld National Golf Course, a 6,900-yard, par-71 course designed by Tom Fazio, one of the nation’s top course designers.
What Bellevue is selling is not so much the course as the lifestyle associated with a golf-course community.
“People who enjoy life will live at Hartefeld,” said company president Steve Cantera. “They love to connect with the people around them, and they love playing golf, swimming, walking or getting together with friends. And they love being part of a community that offers more amenities than your typical suburban subdivision.”
At Blue Bell Country Club in Blue Bell, one of the region’s two Toll Bros. golf-course communities, most buyers are interested in the amenity package, not just the golf, said Kira McCarron, vice president of sales and marketing for the Huntingdon Valley luxury-home builder.
At Blue Bell and at Laurel Creek Country Club in Moorestown, “the social aspects of the clubhouse and the grill are the major appeal,” McCarron said. “The ballroom space is used for weddings, bar mitzvahs and parties.”
As Wade and Ginty emphasize, and for different reasons, these communities also are attractive because they are relatively maintenance-free.
“It’s an easy life,” Wade said. “The homeowners association takes care of the common areas, and the lots are small, so there’s little work for the homeowners to do.”
The Gintys spent 11 years restoring one older house, and nine years working on their 1750 farmhouse.
“My weekends were filled with working on the house,” Brian Ginty said. “I loved doing it, but after a while, it can really wear you down.
“Here, someone else mows the grass on the golf course,” he said. “And with a new house, there’s no maintenance.”
The Gintys bought a model home and the furniture that came with it.
“We had pine furniture and antiques that went with the farmhouse but not with the new house,” Brian Ginty said. “So we auctioned all of our old furniture.”
The relaxed, maintenance-free and highly social lifestyle afforded by such communities meshes perfectly with the changing demographics of the home-buying population, the so-called aging of the baby-boom generation.
“A lot of baby boomers are beginning to do split residences, part of the year in Florida or the Southwest and the rest of the year in the Northeast,” McCarron said. “They want the same amenities year-round no matter where they are living, and golf is usually part of that package.”
Because golf appears to be growing in popularity, it makes perfect financial sense for luxury-home developers to build near a golf course.
“I don’t play golf, but I can see the attraction of spending five hours in the fresh air and sunshine getting some exercise,” McCarron said.
Part of the lifestyle issue is convenience, said Stuart Price, a principal in Granor-Price Homes, of Horsham.
“If you play golf regularly, having to get into the car every time you want to play will make it a chore,” he said. “If you live on a course, you can play as often as you want.”
In the late 1980s, Granor Price developed two communities adjacent to the Fairways public course in Warrington, Bucks County. One had 64 townhouses; the other had 48 townhouse and garden-style condominiums.
At its Kirkwood single-family-home community in Newtown, Bucks County, “the brochures advertised that we were planning to develop a golf course sometime down the road,” Price said.
“But when we went to the people who had already bought in the community with our plans to go to the township for approval for the course, they refused to let us go ahead with it,” he said.
“A lot of the objections were off the wall, but many parents were afraid that their children could be hit by misdirected golf balls from the course,” Price said. “There are certain hazards when a lot of the people on the course are hackers, but on private courses with substantial greens fees, you have golfers of higher quality.”
Such concerns don’t appear to bother buyers at Talamore. While the townhouses are attracting empty-nesters and the average age of golf-course members is 47, most single-family homes are occupied by families with children.
Demand continues to propel development of golf-course communities. In the area surrounding Montgomeryville, there are three of them — Talamore, Blue Bell Country Club and PineCrest. Together, they account for about 1,600 dwellings.
One advantage, from the developer’s point of view, is that golf courses usually meet the municipalities’ open-space requirements, which often constitute 55 percent of the tract.
“Iacobucci bought the Penn Oaks Golf Course seven years ago,” Deisher said. “When it began building its 70 townhouses, it went to Thornbury Township and had the 130-acre site deed-restricted to prevent future development.”
The drawback for the builder starting from scratch is the cost of buying the land and developing the course.
“With all the grading and drainage involved, those costs can be quite substantial,” Price said.
The other options are buying an existing course, building adjacent to a private or public course, or buying the land at bargain prices.
Iacobucci’s Penn Oaks had already been developed; Realen Homes, of Ambler, bought Talamore, originally the Oak Terrace Country Club, in 1993 from the Resolution Trust Corp., which had acquired it when the developer, Hansen Properties, of Blue Bell, had financial problems during the real estate downturn of the late 1980s.
Toll Bros., which builds in 14 states, acquired the land for Blue Bell Country Club from Hansen Properties in 1992 and developed the 18-hole golf course.
While demand remains high, the large tracts of land necessary for such communities may not be available in this fast-growing region.
“The golf component usually adds a couple of hundred acres,” McCarron said. “It’s not easy putting that together.”
For Wade, who is no longer able to play golf, the proximity of the course to the deck of his house is an unending source of entertainment for him and his guests.
“We just sit there and laugh at all the bad shots,” Wade said.
