Imagine being a homeowner in a golf community with no golf course.
That is a reality for residents of Stoneybrook West, a 1,200-home gated community in Winter Garden, Florida. The Drew Rogers-designed golf course that opened in 2000 was the magnet that attracted homebuyers to the development in suburban Orlando during golf's boom. Fast forward to a recession that led to golf's bust, and the course that has struggled financially throughout most of its existence closed without warning in December 2018, setting off a period of uncertainty for homeowners that continues today.
After three years of strife, the homeowners association eventually bought the golf course last October, but it still has not reopened, and its future remains in doubt.
More than 2,100 golf courses have closed since 2016, so it is no surprise when another one closes its doors. Although data on shuttered municipal, military, daily fee and private club facilities are easily tracked, gated residential golf courses are another animal. Many closed golf courses eventually are repurposed for residential and commercial real estate, and in some cases are converted for agricultural use. It is not so easy, however, to build apartments or retail outlets behind a guard gate where homeowners call many of the shots.
"I don't think there is any one answer," said Larry Hirsh, owner of Golf Property Analysts, a golf course appraiser in the Philadelphia area. "The bottom line, for the most part, is either they go fallow and become a mess, or they continue to operate as a golf course."
Hirsh recently recorded a podcast on the importance of conducting due diligence to identify the status of a golf facility economically, culturally, politically and from a facilities perspective, where its stakeholders want it to be and how to get there.
The Drew Rogers-designed golf course that opened in 2000 was the magnet that attracted homebuyers to the development in suburban Orlando during golf's boom. Fast forward to a recession that led to golf's bust, and the course that has struggled financially throughout most of its existence closed without warning in December 2018, setting off a period of uncertainty for homeowners that continues today.
In the case of a semi-private course joined at the hip with more than 1,000 single family homes, the answer is simple.
"If the HOAs are smart, they will buy them and run them as a golf course, even if they lose money," he said. "They have to protect their property values."
Stoneybrook West has been on a long road to that goal, but with the golf course closed for more than three years, its comeback remains in a state of limbo.
Kitson and Partners, a real estate development firm from West Palm Beach, owned the course from 2007 to 2010. K&P sold the property to Stoneybrook West LLC, then a newly formed real estate firm with headquarters 220 miles south of Orlando in Fort Lauderdale, for $2.4 million in 2010. The real estate start-up never was able to get the course reopened, and sold it for just $416,000 in March 2019 to Orlando Legends Golf LLC. That transaction came four months after the golf course closed.
Stoneybrook was not being maintained as a golf course after closing, and soon was carpeted in weeds, according to homeowners. An examination of tax appraiser records showed that residential property values had dropped by as much as 11 percent in 2019 - the year the course closed.
Property values in Stoneybrook West recovered somewhat over the next two years, and appreciated by 5.6 percent, while homes throughout the rest of Winter Garden rose in value by an average of 11 percent during the same time frame.
The golf course has been sold four times during the height of the golf industry's decline. Each new owner was hailed by homeowners as a savior as other golf courses around Orlando, throughout Florida and across the country were closing at an alarming clip. So far, each successive owner has failed.
The property eventually was sold at auction in April 2021. The City of Winter Garden entered a bid of $2.85 million, well short of the high bid of $3 million. A judge approved the city's bid, saying it was in the best interest of the community for the city to own the property.
Six months later, the city sold the course in October 2021 to the Stoneybrook HOA. There is no sale price listed on the property appraiser's web site, but published reports put the sale price at $2 million. Every homeowner in the community will come through an extra , which will come through a tax assessment on each homeowner of $85 per year for 20 years.
Golf was riding a high 20 years ago when the Stoneybrook development opened in Winter Garden, and homebuyers saw an investment opportunity in one of the country's hottest golf markets.
When the recession of 2008 hit, the golf industry already had been in decline for two years, and no sector of the market was hit harder than new residential golf communities. Opened in 2000, Stoneybrook West, the golf course, did not yet have the chops to survive the recession. It has been sold four times during the height of the golf industry's decline, according to the Orange County Property Appraiser. Each new owner was hailed by homeowners as a savior as other golf courses around Orlando, throughout Florida and across the country were closing at an alarming clip. So far, each successive owner has failed.
Stoneybrook West has been on a long road to that goal, but with the golf course closed for more than three years, its comeback remains in a state of limbo.
When the city and the HOA reached a deal on the sale of the golf course, the homeowners association voted 745-47 to lease the operation to KemperSports, according to published reports. That deal inexplicably fell through, and the HOA declined to comment on the status of any future plans for the course. A receptionist did say a company has been hired to maintain the property as a golf course.
"As appraisers, we operate in this realm of highest and best use. And you have a property there that really only has one highest and best use, and that is to be continually operated as a golf course," Hirsh said. "What HOAs don't understand is that the golf course is the life blood for their home values.
Hirsh said Stoneybrook's plight is not uncommon when real estate golf courses struggle, or worse fail.
"Then you have conflict within the community where 25 percent are golfers and the rest of them don't play golf and don't want to pay for a golf course. They all want to move in there because it is a manicured back yard, but they don't want to pay for it."