I am making like a Parisian and taking a breather from writing a totally original article this month for our free Home On The Course newsletter. I have “repurposed,” as they like to say in the business world, an article I wrote months ago at this site, about how some golf community marketing insults our intelligence when it lays on the adjectives and adverbs much too thickly, and describe themselves as “unique” (aren’t they all?).

        However, the newsletter also features some totally new material, a comparison of the cost of living in selected cities in the northern U.S. with the fascinating area around Savannah, GA.  I think you will be surprised at some of the numbers.

        By the way, I published an entire newsletter a few years ago that was dedicated to Savannah and its golf communities.  I would be happy to email it to anyone who sends me a request for it (click here to contact me).

        Enjoy the August issue of Home On The Course.

FordPlantationHouseTrees

Ford Plantation, like the nearby city of Savannah, is dripping with atmosphere.  The August Home On The Course features a cost of living assessment for Savannah.

        A bit of altitude sickness may have affected the judgment of those who paid seven-figures for mountain properties at Laurelmor, the ill-fated golf community in the Blue Ridge Mountains that Developer Bobby Ginn was forced to abandon in the wake of a $675 million loan default.  The average price of the Ginn lots once sold for $600,000 but now comes word that the new developers have reset prices between $125,000 and $175,000 for those same lots.  As the Winston-Salem Journal puts it, “That means [a] buyer could purchase the land and build a home for less than $500,000, less than the cost of the lot alone in Laurelmor.”

        A subsidiary of Reynolds Plantation has taken over the 6,200-acre property near Blowing Rock, NC, and renamed it Reynolds Blue Ridge.  Work on the golf course, which was partially begun under Ginn, will recommence next year; Rees Jones is the designer.  Only 10 homes are built in Reynolds Blue Ridge so far; after his lavish launch party in 2006, Ginn announced the sale of 240 lots.  Given the new price levels and Reynolds' fine reputation for its signature Georgia golf community, Reynolds Blue Ridge is worthy of consideration for those with some patient capital and modest risk tolerance.

        You can read the Winston-Salem Journal article by clicking here.