My wife and I discussed this issue during a nice long walk with the dog this morning. She reminded me that 19 years ago, we faced this very same dilemma during a visit to Lockwood Folly, a community with a nice golf course about 35 miles north of Myrtle Beach. Connie was pregnant with our first child at the time so we were all pumped up with planning for
If you have a pioneering spirit, some tolerance for risk and want the
lowest possible price, by all means be the first one on the block.
At first, the long term won out. Lockwood Folly had a sleek golf course I had enjoyed playing, a spanking new clubhouse overlooking the marsh, a few model homes to show, and prices that seemed the most reasonable on the Grand Strand. (We had done our homework.) The salesman was enthusiastic in a non-pushy way, and as we toured what would eventually become a community, we were impressed with the combination of live oaks and marshland and the promise of a beautifully landscaped Low Country home. It seemed like a great investment. We left a deposit on a lot.
We backed out, without penalty, two weeks later, really just a simple case of cold feet. We rationalized the decision on the basis that we weren't going to build for at least a decade; in a new community, we'd basically be holding a non-appreciating asset and paying taxes to boot. We also reasoned that Lockwood Folly would be forever at the far north end of the Grand Strand and, therefore, more remote than two kids from suburbia could tolerate. Connie is a beach lover and the community was a good 20 minutes from the nearest sand. But to be honest, we were simply nervous about being one of the first to commit to the community.
Eleven years after that decision, after several vacation stays in the Pawleys Island area, which is well over an hour south of Lockwood, we bought a new condo in Pawleys Plantation. At the time, the community was about 90% built out and regarded as one of the best and most stable in the area. We opted for what we knew, not the unknown.
Over the last 19 years, we have wondered how Lockwood Folly turned out. I had liked playing the golf course, but it is rarely mentioned in the top rank of the Myrtle Beach area's 120 courses. A few years ago we were driving up Highway 17 in North Carolina and wound up outside the entrance to the community. We drove in and were pretty bummed out by what we saw. Houses were sited close together in most of the neighborhoods, many yards seemed a bit overgrown, landscaping in the common areas seemed indifferent and the entire effect was of a community that maybe hadn't been planned all that well.
We looked at each other in relief and congratulated ourselves on backing out of the deal those 19 years ago. We acknowledged, though, that the decision was more dumb luck than good sense. There are dozens of communities my wife and I visited early in our marriage that we would be the richer for having been first in - and I mean "richer" both literally and figuratively. Kiawah Island near Charleston, SC, comes to mind as having real estate that has appreciated maybe 10 times in 20 years.
But we are still happy with our decision to buy in Pawleys Plantation, mindful that luck plays a big part in making the correct purchase decision (or not making it). With apologies to the oft-quoted Yogi Berra ("It ain't over 'til it's over"), the moral of this story is that, sure, you can always make a better choice, but you can always make a worse one as well.