Published June 2002
Living
on links appeals
to nongolfers, too
By
Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
You don’t have to
tee up to enjoy living on a golf course.
In fact, fewer than
a third of the residents of any given golf course community are actually
golfers.
Most bought their
homes more for the attraction of living in a master-planned environment
with ever-increasing amenities such as tennis, swimming pools, hiking
trails, soccer fields and more, said Jon Peterson with Economics Research
Associates, a national real estate consulting firm specializing in golf-course
economics.
And, of course, they
were lured by the draw of open space.
That’s why Bob Penny,
the principal at Arlington High School, bought a brand-new townhouse on
the 14th fairway at the Gleneagle Golf Course three years ago. He and
his wife, Sam, do play golf, but their busy schedules haven’t left them
much time to take advantage of the course in their back yard.
The couple used to
live on three and a half acres in Sedro Woolley, Penny said, so they chose
the golf course site to replicate that open-space feeling without all
the yard work.
“With the back yard
adjoining the golf course, it makes it seem like you have a much larger
area because it’s all green back there,” he said, adding that they also
enjoy the wildlife at the course, including ducks, geese, herons and eagles.
“It’s kind of the best of a lot of different worlds.”
There are only three
planned golf-course communities in Snohomish County, and the rest are
instances where the housing grew up around the course, said Mike Pattison
with the Snohomish County-Camano Association of Realtors.
Prices at those three
communities vary depending on how close the homes are to the course and
what the view is, Pattison said. The Gleneagle Golf Course in Arlington
is the most affordable, with condominiums in the $160,000 range and single-family
homes from $225,000 to $250,000. Houses in the Echo Falls Country Club
community in Snohomish range from $200,000 to $1 million, and homes in
the Harbour Pointe Golf Course community in Mukilteo are going for $225,000
to $1.5 million, the latter for a home on the course with a view of the
Puget Sound.
“The closer to the
tee box, the more expensive it’s going to be, and especially if you have
a view of the water,” Pattison said.
About 27 million
Americans play golf, said Judy Thompson, spokeswoman for the National
Golf Foundation. The golfing rate has been staying fairly flat, only going
up 1 percent to 2 percent every year, she said, but golf course development
has been pretty active.
“There’s been a massive
boom in golf course construction across the country, and most of that
has been driven by residential communities,” Peterson agreed.
In 2000, there were
2,659 golf courses with residential communities across the country, with
55 of those in Washington, Thompson said. There were another 13,047 “just
golf” courses at that point, with 277 of those in this state.
“Probably 46 or 47
percent of golf courses under construction have some kind of a real estate
feature to them,” she said. Percentage-wise, that hasn’t changed much
over the last two decades, she added, but the total number of golf courses
has increased.
Washington has been
bucking that residential trend, however. Most of the golf courses built
here before 1994 were residential projects, Peterson said, but since then,
the courses have mostly been “pure golf” ones constructed by wealthy dot-commers.
There is a definite
trend toward building and buying in golfing communities in places like
Denver and Dallas, where land is cheap and permits are easy, he said.
But here in Washington, developers have to contend with high land prices,
a cumbersome permitting process and lots of competition from Mother Nature
in the form of waterfront property and mountain views — two things buyers
are more willing to splurge on than the joy of living on a golf course.
Another hurdle here
is that “golf is a lightning rod for environmental groups” who are worried
about water and dirt runoff during construction and fertilizer runoff
afterward, Peterson said. That makes it tough to get approval for courses
in environmentally sensitive Washington.
And life on a course
isn’t all a bowl of cherries.
There are the errant
golf balls, of course, and also the possible fish-bowl feeling of having
strangers walk past the back yard all day long.
But Penny said that
hasn’t been a problem for him.
“We don’t feel infringed
upon at all,” he said. “Golfers are a pretty courteous bunch. They seem
to be pretty well mannered.”
Related:
Real estate Web site markets homes on the fairways
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