Balsam Mountain Preserve is backed by a finished Arnold Palmer golf course, an established developer, and a good first quarter of sales.
Draw a circle about a 45-minute drive around Asheville, NC, and you find some of the nation's most breathtaking home sites and golf course views, with prices that may also take your breath away. The current economy, however, is letting the air out of many ambitious projects once considered bullet proof. Even the customarily bullish high priest of high-end mountain development, Jim Anthony, according to a local newspaper account, appears concerned about the sales trends at his vaunted Cliffs Communities, and especially at High Carolina, where he has paid Tiger Woods a design fee some reports peg at $20 million.
"In January and February this year, we were really hit hard," Anthony told John Boyle of the Asheville Citizen-Times in an article published yesterday. "In March we've seen a little bit of a turn."
A little bit of a turn may not be enough for other communities, certainly not Grey Rock in the Lake Lure area. The community did not have a golf
Other golf communities in the Carolina mountains have slowed their progress considerably. River Rock's Phil Mickelson course, his first mountain design, has been delayed to at least 2012, two years beyond its originally planned opening date. The community, as of the beginning of the year, had only two homes in construction, one that was going to be leased back to the developers. At Seven Falls Golf & River Club, near Hendersonville, developers insist the Arnold Palmer course will be finished in August, despite the filing of liens against Seven Falls by some of its contractors. The largest lien, for $2.5 million, was by the contractor engaged to build the golf course.
Not every high-end community in the mountains is operating on the edge of a cliff. Balsam Mountain Preserve, near
For those contemplating the purchase of any golf community home in the current climate, the deep pockets and track record of a developer has never been more important. There are plenty of bargains available at the moment, in the mountains and everywhere else, but avoid any communities with unproven developers and un-constructed amenities. And take everything a developer says with a grain of salt. After a splashy event that featured Tiger Woods last November, Cliffs developer Anthony announced that the High Carolina project had commitments for $40 million in property sales. Five months later, land transfer records, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times, indicate $25 million had been sold.
