233-acre Serenoa Golf Club latest to sell in Southwest Florida

The lakeside, 17,000-square-foot clubhouse at Serenoa Golf Club.

HERALD-TRIBUNE ARCHIVE / 2010

Published: Monday, December 17, 2012 at 4:19 p.m.

Last Modified: Monday, December 17, 2012 at 4:19 p.m.

SARASOTA - The drowsy developer interest in operating golf courses during the housing slide has awakened in recent months, with investors buying up courses at large discounts.

Facts

ON THE LINKS

Recent golf course activity in Southwest Florida:

Serenoa: A Texas company specializing in golf course operations bought the 233-acre Serenoa golf course and its 17,000-square-foot club house in Sarasota for $2 million. Serenoa Golf Club, a subsidiary of OnCourse Strategies managed by J. Michael Ussery, financed the deal with a $1.5 million loan from BB&T.

Greenfield Plantation: Greenfield Golf LLC, a Tampa company managed by Anthony Soletti, paid $850,000 in September for the 70-acre golf course and 5,000-square-foot clubhouse at the Greenfield Plantation development on State Road 64 in Bradenton. The property at 10325 Greenfield Blvd. was owned by Myakka Valley Safaris and Bruce Williams Farm Associates.

Boca Royale Golf & Country Club: In May, Lakewood Ranch-based Neal Communities bought the 800-acre Boca Royale Golf & Country Club off State Road 776 in north Englewood. The deal included 500 home lots, a clubroom, restaurant, tennis club, and 400 acres of wetlands and undeveloped home sites.

Esplanade: This fall, homebuilder Taylor Morrison announced plans to develop an 18-hole golf course as part of its expansion at Esplanade. With construction to begin early next year, the 400-acre course would be the region's first since 2008.

The revival has been led by the acquisitions of three popular golf clubs since the spring and plans by homebuilder Taylor Morrison to develop a new 18-hole golf course at its Esplanade community in Lakewood Ranch.

At a time when fewer homes are selling on the fairway and interest in the sport is fading, developers are still betting millions of dollars on the idea that all could change when a new breed of retirees migrates to Southwest Florida.

"If you can't buy on the water, then the next thing you look at is the golf community with a nice view," said Jack McCabe, a housing analyst based in Deerfield Beach. "But only a small fraction of people who live on a golf course play and support it. That's why so many golf courses opened their membership to the public or just went belly up altogether."

The latest course to change hands was the 233-acre Serenoa Golf Club and its 17,000-square-foot club house in Sarasota. General Electric Credit Equities sold the properties for $2 million this month to an Austin, Texas, company that specializes in golf course operations.

Serenoa Golf Club -- a subsidiary of OnCourse Strategies that is managed by J. Michael Ussery -- financed the deal with a $1.5 million loan from BB&T. The Serenoa purchase becomes the company's first in Florida.

The course's previous owners lost a $4.3 million foreclosure judgment in May 2010 and transferred the property to General Electric a month later -- largely the result of struggling membership numbers and waning revenues from golf rounds, records show.

The Serenoa transaction comes just three months after a Tampa company paid $850,000 for the 70-acre course and 5,000-square-foot clubhouse at the Greenfield Plantation development on State Road 64 in Bradenton, records show.

In May, Lakewood Ranch-based Neal Communities bought the 800-acre Boca Royale Golf & Country Club in Englewood. The deal included 500 home lots, a clubhouse, restaurant, tennis club and 400 acres of wetlands and undeveloped home sites.

Gobbling up courses

Industry analysts attribute the recent uptick in golf course acquisitions to a surging home market in Southwest Florida that once again has more buyers considering golf course communities.

The courses also sold for a fraction of their cost to build new or of their value during the industry's brighter days, leaving fewer risks for the new owners to absorb.

Since the market began its climb, investment groups have been gobbling up courses across Florida -- many of them foreclosures -- at a discount, said Ussery, the president and CEO of OnCourse Strategies.

"We just saw good value, with a price that had potential to be a good investment for us," Ussery said. "The whole deal with being able to make a golf course profitable is first getting it at the right price, then having the expertise to operate it efficiently and effectively."

Developers have even seen enough promise in Southwest Florida's golf rebound to begin building new product.

Next year, Taylor Morrison expects to develop an 18-hole golf course as part of its expansion at Esplanade. The 400-acre private course would be the region's first to be built since 2008, when a trio of high-profile courses debuted, including the Founders Club, the Concession and Ritz-Carlton in Lakewood Ranch.

After struggling to find members and new revenue for nearly a decade, the recession has started to loosen its grip on some of those clubs, with significant increases in new membership during the past year.

The gains run parallel with improvements in the housing market that saw sales this year from Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties post their best totals since the downturn, with 18,761 residential properties changing hands in the three-county area through October.

More new homebuyers and tourists means larger crowds on the golf course, Ussery said.

Retirees from areas like Georgia and New York moved to Florida at an increased pace in 2012, and real estate experts expect that trend to continue as some of America's 78 million baby boomers enter retirement.

Although baby boomers do not golf quite like their retirement predecessors, Realtors believe demand for the game will rise -- as will golf course-related real estate.

Many home buyers are attracted to communities anchored by an 18-hole course because of the other amenities those neighborhoods offer.

And prices in many of those communities are now just half of what they were in 2005, said Nicole Hammons-Dovgopolyi, a Realtor with regional brokerage Michael Saunders & Co. in Palmer Ranch.

"After the housing downturn and stock market crash, people reassessed how they were willing to spend their money," Hammons-Dovgopolyi said. "We went through several years where inventories in golf-course communities were so high and clubs had closed while others were on the brink.

"Now that people are feeling a little better about the economy, we're seeing a real renewed interest in country clubs."

Staff writer Michael Braga contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121217/article/121219641

Alan Turing brave Stephanie Rice Meet the Pyro Karen Klein Colorado fires supreme court