An astonishing 3,851 new golf courses have been opened in North America since 1990 – a 27% increase in golf supply. A survey of every new development that has occurred including course expansions and renovations. A complete inventory of a multi-billion dollar golf development boom.


 
 
Executive Summary 3
Key Trends, Current Threats and Major Opportunities 3
US Golf Development 6
How Many New Golf Courses Are There? 6
The Leading States and Regional Trends 7
Major Movement towards Nine Hole Construction And Expansion 14
Failure - Where? Why? And How Many? 20
Performance of the Golf Architects 25
Listing the Leading Architects 26
Comparing Projects - Signature, Local Architect, Non-Architect 27
Rankings - How the Top Architects Perform Commercially 28
Financial Modeling Assesses the Value Of Each Architect 30
Daily Fee Golf Market 33
Green Fee Pricing - Key Price Points and Yield Management 34
Premiums for Weekend Play 38
Green Fees by State 39
Proportion of New Courses Open for Public Golf 40
Cart Policy - How Many New Courses Require Carts 41
Membership Market 44
Price Analysis of Initiation Fees - Private and Semi-Private 44
Initiation Fees by State 47
Price Analysis of Dues - Private and Semi-Private 48
Annual Dues by State 50
Memberships - Levels, Sales Curves and Life Cycles 52
Price Change Trends 57
State and Regional Analysis of Market Trends 57
Trends in Private and Semi-Private Initiation Fees 60
Trends in Private and Semi-Private Dues 61
Trends in Green Fee Pricing 62
Real Estate 64
The Location and Size of Real Estate Development 64
Total Golf Course Community Lots Announced Each Year 65
State Table Benchmarking Eleven Key Real Estate Indices 67
Master plan Sizes, House Prices, House Sizes 70
Real Estate Sales Curves and Sales Cycles 74
Gated Communities - A Profile 77
Directory of Definitions 82
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Openings have been running steady at around 240 per year in the 1990’s with a small upward step in 1991 and a peak in 1995.

While this research surveyed 202 new courses for 1996 it is estimated that around 260 courses opened in that year. Recent year openings are difficult to locate and survey, a proportion are not picked up until the survey is repeated in the succeeding year.

 
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Expansions as a proportion of all development have doubled rising from 9% of development in 1989 to 18% in 1996.

A key reason for the rise in expansion activity is that it is easier to raise finance for an expansion than a virgin build. Financiers are more comfortable lending to a business with a few years operating figures than a greenfield start up.

Note: The above graph includes eighteen hole expansions the preceding graph only includes nine hole expansions.

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