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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