Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Golf-Home Owners Find Themselves in a Hole Lawsuits pile up and fairways fall into disrepair
Wall Street Journal ^ | Jan. 10, 2019 | By Candace Taylor

Posted on 01/13/2019 6:34:45 AM PST by dennisw

When Mitch Steller first moved into his house on a lush 117-acre golf course in Southern California, “this was like the Garden of Eden, having a golf course in my backyard,” he said.

Today, his Poway, Calif., home overlooks dry, dead grass in place of a once-verdant fairway. The golf club closed in 2017. “The fairways are brown, the greens are gone, the buildings are being vandalized,” says Mr. Steller, a 70-year-old maritime-management consultant.

Forty years after developers started blanketing the Sunbelt with housing developments built around golf, many courses are closing amid a decline in golf participation, leaving homeowners to grapple with the consequences. People often believe a course will bolster their property values. But many are discovering the opposite can now be true—and legal disputes are erupting as communities fight over how to handle the struggling courses.

“There are hundreds of other communities in this situation, and they’re trapped and they don’t know what to do,” says Peter Nanula, chief executive of Concert Golf Partners, a golf club owner-operator that owns about 20 private clubs across the U.S. One of his current projects is the rehabilitation of a recently acquired club in Florida that had shut one of its three golf courses and sued residents who had stopped paying membership fees.

(Excerpt) Read more at outline.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-112 next last

1 posted on 01/13/2019 6:34:45 AM PST by dennisw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: dennisw

Oh the horror of it all!


2 posted on 01/13/2019 6:36:18 AM PST by allendale (.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

REST OF THE STORY IN FULL >>>>>>> GO HERE>>>>>>> https://outline.com/nzwsWE

And please renew your golf club memberships!!


3 posted on 01/13/2019 6:36:40 AM PST by dennisw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

I’ve never understood the allure of wanting to move to a place where strangers are walking that close to your house all day long, hitting balls through your windows.


4 posted on 01/13/2019 6:37:47 AM PST by ShadowAce (Linux - The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

So, am I supposed to feel some emotion about this.

Outside of the fact that a gold course is the waste of a perfectly good rifle range, so what?


5 posted on 01/13/2019 6:38:11 AM PST by cyclotic ( Democrats must be politically eviscerated, disemboweled and demolished.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: cyclotic

gold=golf


6 posted on 01/13/2019 6:38:30 AM PST by cyclotic ( Democrats must be politically eviscerated, disemboweled and demolished.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: dennisw
Golf has become am expensive past-time, both in terms of money and time. Sort of like the NFL.

Or the Bob Newhart routine about Abner Doubleday on the phone with a game making company, trying to deal with the other end of the phone talking about games they want to sell are for 2 couples, that take an hour or less to play to completion. The world has changed, and the dinosaur houses on dinosaur courses have to accept that.

7 posted on 01/13/2019 6:39:09 AM PST by Bernard (We will stop calling you fake news when you stop being fake news.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

Like many of my generation I tried to take up golf because I was told it would be helpful to my career. I never really cared all that much for it but was I suppose passable on a Par 3. I couldn’t care less about playing golf now and the idea of living on a golf course just seems sort of stupid. The few people of my acquaintance who do have always had issues with strangers wandering around looking for lost balls or even broken windows. I think they should just let it revert back to nature or make a private greenway out of it and tear down the structures pertaining specifically to golf. That or develop it with more houses.


8 posted on 01/13/2019 6:40:41 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: RegulatorCountry

Just set up a migrant camp on the old golf course. Problem solved.


9 posted on 01/13/2019 6:45:10 AM PST by oldasrocks
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

Does this mean public courses are now even more crowded then ever? I haven’t golfed in 20 years, but would like to get back into it now that I’m retired....


10 posted on 01/13/2019 6:46:57 AM PST by jeffc (The U.S. media are our enemy)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

I’m the “World’s Worst Golfer”, so I could probably play that course, now that it’s in total ruin.


11 posted on 01/13/2019 6:47:28 AM PST by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: RegulatorCountry

Don’t leave out the risk of getting hit by a stray ball if you go out in your yard during daylight hours.


12 posted on 01/13/2019 6:47:56 AM PST by PAR35
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: RegulatorCountry

Had a guy I worked with that lived on a city owned golf course. The city wanted to sell it and turn the fairways into greenways as they did not promote it.

He and one other guy went to every first and second tier property owner and they turned it into a thriving private club that was owned by the members. The city got more money and their country club and course was revived. The trick was they made appointments and went and talked to every property owner face-to-face.


13 posted on 01/13/2019 6:47:57 AM PST by KC Burke (If all the world is a stage, I would like to request my lighting be adjusted.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

They should plow up the courses and build Section 8 housing. Problem solved.


14 posted on 01/13/2019 6:50:43 AM PST by Cowboy Bob ("Other People's Money" = The life blood of Liberalism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw
“The fairways are brown, the greens are gone, the buildings are being vandalized,” says Mr. Steller, a 70-year-old maritime-management consultant.

That sounds like California in general.

15 posted on 01/13/2019 6:51:02 AM PST by Baynative ("A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams." - John Barrymore)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

Golf is declining. Tennis long ago lost it’s draw. Swimming pools are liability pits. Football and soccer are too dangerous. Don’t buy near a flood zone...

Were are going to have to build communities around video games.


16 posted on 01/13/2019 6:51:33 AM PST by outofsalt (If history teaches us anything, it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: oldasrocks

“Just set up a migrant camp on the old golf course. Problem solved.”

That was the old business model not the new one - use illegal immigrant cheap labor, harvest membership fees in perpetuity.

The bottom line is that socialism never works, and collective ownership of a golf course is just another take on socialism. It might work for a few (just like socialism) but it won’t work for everyone else who are expected to pay and pay.


17 posted on 01/13/2019 6:55:21 AM PST by RFEngineer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

I have a friend who got even worse treatment. He bought a house on a golf course in South Carolina, and even paid an extra $50.000 for a membership in the club. The developer went bankrupt. The friend not only had a dry ugly brown field in front of his house, he was out the $50 grand. At last check, the disposition of what’s left of the golf course was still in doubt. It could become more houses, further reducing the value of the homes around it.


18 posted on 01/13/2019 6:56:18 AM PST by norwaypinesavage (Calm down and enjoy the ride, great things are happening for our country)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: outofsalt

Retirees continue to buy homes here at Lake of the Ozarks.
Low taxes, low cost of living, no “fees,” turkey, deer in the woods, fish year round if you want to, shoot your gun.

Did I mention low taxes ?


19 posted on 01/13/2019 6:57:30 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: dennisw
Very interesting article. It looks like the golf angle is only a small part of a much bigger issue that a lot of delusional people overlooked: They bought homes in homeowners' associations that had the legal authority to impose some ridiculously onerous regulations -- like forcing residents to join the golf club for an exorbitant monthly fee on top of all the other association expenses.

I don't know what any of these people are complaining about. If nothing else, your closed-down 117-acre golf course is 117 acres of real estate that can be sold off for something else. Many of these associations have giant assets on their hands that can make their members a lot of money, if they play their cards right.

20 posted on 01/13/2019 6:58:19 AM PST by Alberta's Child (In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-112 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson