Limited-edition communities

South Florida houses and club memberships are in high demand. What’s luring the growth?

By: Robert J. Vasilak – Golf Inc.
March/April 2024
Read Full Article on Golf Inc. Here

Just six years ago, Builder magazine asked, “Are Golf Communities a Thing of the Past?” But in South Florida today — and in other states as well — golf communities are indisputably a thing of the present.

In the Sunshine State, it’s déjà vu all over again, a flashback to the 1980s and early 1990s, when home builders were mass producing McMansions and selling them with courses designed by PGA Tour stars.

Much of that star power is still working. A few months ago in Palm Beach Gardens, Jack Nicklaus unveiled Panther National Golf Club, and Greg Norman’s signature is on the new course at Shell Bay Club in Hallandale Beach.

Next year, Paul Azinger expects to open Miakka Golf Club in Myakka City, on the eastern fringe of Sarasota.

Other comfort-zone architects — designers who provide what Nicklaus Design calls “enhanced real estate value” — are also busy in South Florida.

Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner are putting the finishing touches on Kinsale Golf Club in Naples, and they’ve launched the first course at Apogee Club in Hobe Sound.

Just minutes from Apogee, Discovery Land Co. has commissioned its go-to designer, Tom Fazio, to create the centerpiece for Atlantic Fields, while The Ranch hopes to build a pair of courses with the trio of Rod Whitman, Dave Axland and Keith Cutten.

These communities are among the most expensive, most exclusive, most amenityrich golf communities ever built. Most of them have six-figure initiation fees and multimillion-dollar housing, and they’ve all been exquisitely tailored for buyers with an itch for luxurious lifestyles and the scratch to pay for them.

“The model for golf communities has been elevated,” said Johnny DelPrete of Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Jupiter, Florida. “It’s like everything else: Everyone always wants to move the needle and be better.”

And “better” costs more. Panther National has identified its target market as “high-demand people who are high performers in their professional fields who like to have the best of the best.” The price: $400,000 to join the club and $4 to $15 million for a house.

Shell Bay, which boasts “an unparalleled new luxury living experience unlike anything else in South Florida,” charges $1 million or more for club memberships and $3 to $11 million for condos.

Homesites at Atlantic Fields cost $6 to $15 million, and property owners can add club memberships for $200,000.

The other high-end clubs also charge top dollar. Soleta’s initiation fee is $100,000, Kinsale’s is $250,000, and Apogee’s reportedly runs up to $650,000.

“The price of golf and lifestyle communities is certainly high these days,” said Jason Becker of Golf Life Navigators, a South Florida-based matchmaking service for individuals in search of their ideal golf communities. “But the price is expensive because people are willing to pay it. There are a lot of folks who are ready for retirement and the snowbird life.”

As in decades past, many of those folks have moved to Florida. The relocation has been massive — 675,000 people in 2021, a million-plus in 2022, and 300,000 in 2023 — and it’s triggered an equally massive transfer of wealth. Forbes estimates that $100 billion in financial assets flowed into Florida in 2020 and 2021.

Not all of the newcomers can afford to move into South Florida’s cachet communities. Becker said his clients typically aim to spend $50,000 to $75,000 on initiation fees and roughly $750,000 on housing — amounts that align with the area’s averages.

Nonetheless, a critical mass of newcomers and their money, combined with a reinvigorated post-pandemic golf business, have made South Florida ground zero for the development of commercially supercharged golf communities. The marriage between golf and high-priced housing, which had been on the rocks for decades, is on again. The parties have kissed and made up, and they’ve got a bright future.

Status-symbol sanctuaries

South Florida’s limited-edition communities are borrowing from swanky digs such as Yellowstone Club in Montana and Madison Club in La Quinta — statussymbol sanctuaries that have attracted Bill Gates, Tom Brady, Cindy Crawford, Phil Mickelson, Annika Sorenstam, Justin Timberlake, the Kardashians and other one-percenters. They’re hubs of money and power, and membership opens the door to more of both.

By no means, however, will Jeff Bezos or Ivanka Trump be trading their mansions on Biscayne Bay for even the most elegant condos at Shell Bay, and the descendants of the landed gentry who put Florida on the map — the Vanderbilts, the Pulitzers, the Huttons, the Merriweather Posts — are definitely remaining in their Old Money haunts in Palm Beach, thank you very much.

Instead, South Florida’s crème de la crème golf communities are luring America’s nouveau rich — the freshly minted CEOs, venture capitalists, hedge fund managers and private equity partners who are just beginning to flex their financial muscle.Life behind the gates of such communities provides them with security, privacy and prestige. They value Florida’s warm winters, low taxes and limp corporate regulation, and they can retreat to their other homes during hurricane season.

Stephen Ross, one of the wealthy New Yorkers building Apogee Club, was among the first to see the New Money coming to South Florida. He has a unique vantage point: He’s the principal owner of the Miami Dolphins and chairman of Related Cos., the development giant often credited with turning West Palm Beach into the boomtown colloquially known as “Wall Street South.”

“We noticed all these businesses and companies coming to town,” Ross told the Palm Beach Post, “and we knew there was going to be tremendous demand for world class golf.”

So Ross and Dominic Pascucci, the developer of Sebonack Golf Club on New York’s Long Island, set out to create what they call “a true six-star experience.” With Rory McIlroy and Ernie Els whispering in their ears, they master-planned Apogee to include three courses: the Hanse/Wagner track, plus forthcoming layouts by Kyle Phillips and the team of Tommy Fazio and Mike Davis.

Other amenities will include a spacious practice center, a Himalayas-style putting green, par-3 and short courses, two clubhouses, a spa, a fitness center, restaurants, swimming pools, a fishing lake, hiking trails and, last but not least, a heliport.

Apogee’s competitors are similarly bursting with amenities because developers know today’s most successful clubs are jam-packed with first-class attractions and are pampering members with familyfriendly programming and all manner of health and wellness offerings.

As club industry consultants often note, nowadays golf courses are regarded primarily as attention-getters, while amenities close the sale.

The “amazing amenity” model is the dominant trend in club development because elite venues are setting standards that competitors down the food chain will inevitably try to match.

The model has surfaced in other desirable U.S. locations, three of which stand out:

• In the Hill Country outside Austin, Texas, Loraloma is marketing itself as “the most amenitized master-planned development” in Texas and a place where homeowners will enjoy not only a David McLay Kidd-designed course but “an uncompromised way of living.”
• Outside Ogden, Utah, Wasatch Peaks Ranch is attracting the “One Percent of the One Percent” with a private ski area, a mountain village and a Tom Fazio course.
• South of Park City, Utah, Tiger Woods is overseeing course construction at Marcella Club, which aims to deliver “an unprecedented luxury experience.”

“Clubs will need to add or enhance their amenities in order to capture future club members,” Becker said. “They might not need the top amenities like the ultra-exclusive communities have, but they need some version of it. It’s the only way to attract new members and prevent existing members from leaving for other clubs.”

Building bankable courses

The homebuilders that blanketed Florida with golf communities three decades ago never asked what they could do for golf. They asked what golf could do for them.

Which question is the current generation of developers asking?

When it comes to golf, they’re building bankable courses, not great courses. Not one developer has stated a desire to build, say, a top-100 layout.

Although some of their courses will undoubtedly be named to best-of lists, the bar for quality golf in Florida is very low. As GolfPass recently noted, “Florida is full of forgettable, boring courses.”

Moreover, while the courses may be naturalistic, they aren’t naturally springing from landscapes divinely ordained for golf. At Panther National, 3 million cubic yards of dreary flatlands were reportedly unearthed to fabricate a “links-style” course. A similar amount is being rearranged to create course No. 2 at Apogee because of a “lack of interesting terrain.”

For context, Tom Fazio moved 2.8 million cubic yards of Nevada desert — an amount that stirred controversy and blew many minds — to create Shadow Creek Golf Club.

“These people are investing tens of millions of dollars,” a golf architect familiar with the new courses in South Florida grumbled to Golf Digest, “and none of the sites are any good.”

Likewise, the housing at primo golf communities isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. The units may be priced at the
top of the golf market, but they aren’t priced anywhere near the top of the overall residential market.

Today, homes costing $5 million are a dime a dozen. Billy Joel’s waterfront estate south of Palm Beach can be yours for $55 million. In Dubai last year, more than 430 houses sold for more than $10 million each. Since 2020, according to The Wall Street Journal, at least 24 U.S. houses have sold for $100 million or more, and six of them were in and around Palm Beach.

That being said, South Florida’s houses and club memberships are in high demand. Since 2021, Becker said, home prices in South Florida have increased by 30% and initiation fees have increased by 80% to 90%.

And there appears to be no end in sight.

“The luxury housing market in South Florida is very strong,” DelPrete said. “We’re still seeing an excess of buyers from out of state, primarily from the Northeast and California, and I don’t see that changing in the near future.”

In other words, the top-of-the-market golf communities in South Florida are still priced within reach. At least for now.