Where you live can affect your health. That is probably no big surprise to most of us. But as many who have lived in areas with heavy traffic on the roadways, the consequent air pollution and the financial stress that comes of high income and property taxes, living out our retirements an hour or more away from a big city has its appeal. But think twice, especially if you have pre-existing health conditions that make having a hospital and specialized healthcare services nearby more must-have than nice-to-have. On the other hand, if you are young or young at heart, living in a major city a short walk from great entertainment and services, urban living can be exciting. A friend of Home On The Course has a beautiful condo for sale in Charlotte, NC. We love it and list it. That, and more, in this month’s Home On The Course.
After a life in a suburb close to a city, or in a city itself, many couples who are fed up with traffic and the other consequences of living in a high-density area are ready for retirement to a golf community located hours from anywhere. But they should be careful what they wish for, especially if they have health issues, or expect to.
Some of the highest quality communities I have visited are located a good hour’s drive from quality hospitals – quality as defined by those who rate such things, for example, USNews & World Report. These communities are certainly traffic-free, pretty much pollution free, and largely free of high property taxes and overall high costs of living associated more with locations at some remove from cities. Many of these remote communities are located adjacent to large, clean lakes and are amenity rich, with sleek golf courses – some with multiple layouts – that most of us would be happy to play a few times a week.
At Savannah Lakes Village in McCormick, SC, one annual HOA dues payment covers most amenities except for the indoor bowling alley (pay per game), tennis and pickleball (one reasonable annual payment for those) and access to two excellent golf courses. Located on beautiful and clean Lake Thurmond in McCormick, those two Savannah Lakes’ golf courses are quite different – one hilly, one more classic – with an optional membership available that, if you intend to play three rounds a week, is much cheaper than the already low daily green fees. It is one of the great bargains in golf community club membership.
Another such remotely located community is Rumbling Bald on Lake Lure, which is home to hundreds of retired couples, many who live in Florida half the year, as well as a summer sanctuary for couples and families looking to take advantage of lake activities and a quiet vacation. Rumbling Bald has its own 36 holes of golf, one a classic Dan Maples layout called Bald Mountain that is inside the gates of the resort, the other Apple Valley, just a mile down the road from the resort community’s front gate (and with Rumbling Bald real estate surrounding it as well). Maples also designed Apple Valley. The resort offers a full roster of amenities, including a comfortable 300-yard-long beach on the lake, indoor and outdoor pools, a terrific playground for grandkid visits, tennis and, of course, lots of lake activities that include easy to drive pontoon boats to explore the coves created when the valley was flooded to create the lake in 1927.
Both these communities are terrific choices for folks who are healthy and intend to stay that way for the foreseeable future. But McCormick is a good hour from Aiken and its well-rated regional hospital, and Rumbling Bald is over an hour from Asheville and its own high-quality hospitals. For those of us with health issues that require constant follow-up appointments, as well as the comfort of having a full-service hospital with round-the-clock emergency rooms, proximity to an urban area, pollution and traffic notwithstanding, is likely to provide the most stress-free retirement.
For listings of current homes for sale, click here.
I have visited some communities that feel like they are remote but are a relatively short drive to top-quality hospitals typically associated with a big city. One obvious choice is The Landings on Skidaway Island, located just over the bridge from Savannah, GA, a 20-minute drive away. Six hospitals are within that drive time, two of them recognized nationally for their quality of care. The Landings offers six outstanding golf courses, lots of other recreational activities, hundreds of social clubs, and the feeling of being disconnected from any urban influences once you cross that bridge from Savannah city. The Landings may be home to 8,000 residents, but the community is divided into discreet neighborhoods, and the only time the place feels densely populated is just prior to a weekend shotgun golf event, when an army of golf carts comes rolling down the community’s streets headed for battle on one of The Landings golf courses.
Cypress Landing in Chocowinity, NC, qualifies as “remotely located.” It is just a 20-minute drive to the town of Greenville, population approximately 90,000, not exactly the kind of large urban area you would associate with a major medical center. But Greenville is home to Eastern Carolina University and its notable medical center, which stretches over an unusually large campus. The hospital has been recognized as one of the 100 best in the nation, and Cypress Landing, which is located on the Pamlico River, an extension of the Albemarle Sound, is one of the best bargains in golf community real estate I have encountered in 20 years.
For those of us lucky enough to be in good physical shape and without any nagging health issues, living remotely an hour or so from a high-quality hospital may be a fair trade for the noise, traffic jams and the other tacit stress inducers of life near a major city. A lifestyle like that just might keep us healthier in the long run. But if your health is a current concern, you might consider passing the remote to someone else.
Larry Gavrich
Founder & Editor
Home On The Course, LLC
The calculation of year-to-year home price changes is not opinion; it is data. And yet different real estate information sources do not agree on the change of home prices one year to the next.
First, recently, Realtor.com released a list of metro markets in which the Myrtle Beach/Conway, SC, market showed the biggest drop in the nation, 2.9% lower in August 2023 than the same month’s prices in 2022. That didn’t seem right because all reports I hear personally from the area are that prices have held firm. I looked at another real estate source, Redfin, an online real estate agency that collects a lot of data. Their numbers said Myrtle Beach area prices had increased 20% year over year. Say what?
To break the tie, I hoped, I checked another online company, Rocket Homes whose web site indicated that prices in Myrtle Beach were up 7.9% year over year. Finally, I consulted Zillow, which should have more data than any real estate company. Zillow’s web site indicated home prices in Myrtle Beach were up .3% year over year. The consensus, it seems, are that prices in the Myrtle Beach area were up year over year, but who knows by how much?
With that kind of diversity of data calculation, I gave up. My advice to anyone looking for a home in Myrtle Beach or anywhere else: Call a local real estate agent. They are compelled to produce accurate numbers. Don’t trust online sources. If you need help identifying a reputable, qualified and honest local agent, I am happy to help. Contact me here.
Interested in Charlotte?
Keith, a friend of this newsletter and a frequent contributor – he provides me with lots of market data that I often pass along to readers – is selling his condo in Charlotte, NC. Located in the popular “Uptown” section of the city, the building includes day/evening concierge, a luxurious lobby, fitness center, club room, billiards, pool, key-fob-operated elevators and dedicated round-the-clock security. At two bedrooms and one bath, and a total of 855 square feet, the unit would be perfect for a couple seeking an urban environment with mild winters and warm summers or for a single person looking for all the options a major American city offers.
The unit features all the latest in modern conveniences, newly painted walls and a new state-of-the-art refrigerator. A primary bedroom with a private balcony that extends across the living room area overlooks the pool; the unit’s dedicated gas line gives you the ability to fire up the grill on the balcony as you consider all the after-meal entertainment options just steps from the building’s entrance. There are plenty of private and public golf options in the Charlotte area; the unit comes with a deeded parking space (and access to a secured parking deck).
Keith has reasonably priced the unit at $399,500; compare at two to three times that for comparable places in other major American cities. If you are interested, please contact me.
Condo for sale in Charlotte.
Wind gets all the headlines but water — in the form of surge — can cause the most damage. Florida, for the last 50 years and more, has been a magnet for retirees for one major reason — its climate. But now the very thing that drove them there is driving them crazy with dramatically higher insurance premiums — if they can find an insurance company to cover them. That, and more, in the September issue of Home On The Course.
In the early 1950s, my Grandpa Max retired from his ownership of a Bronx, NY, parking garage and he and my Nana, Jennie, moved to their new home and new life in Miami Beach. The best feature of their modest house, which was located miles from the ocean, was a canal running through the backyard. As a five-year-old, I snagged a couple of eels from that canal with a fishing pole and drop line. Max and Jennie wound up making a very nice retirement life for themselves in Miami Beach over the next three decades.
Like northeast seniors today who have enough resources to move after retirement, the biggest lure for my grandparents was Florida’s climate, specifically temperatures generally in the 70s during winter. How ironic that climate issues in Florida could send other peoples’ grandparents in a different direction these days.
Florida is not having a good decade, weather-wise, and the news media has not been kind. (As I write this, Hurricane Idalia has just battered the “Big Bend” coastal area of Florida.) Hurricane-level winds make the biggest headlines, but it is water, especially in coastal areas, whose devastating consequences last longer. Television scenes of Fort Myers Beach in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian were apocalyptic. Winds, which reached 150 mph, grabbed most of the headlines but the accompanying flooding was every bit as damaging. A 15-foot storm surge can bring down a house as easily as 150 MPH winds; the combination of the two is many more magnitudes devastating.
But flooding is not easily remediated, and if a home survives the wind, it likely will not survive the punishing 15-foot wall of water. In Fort Myers Beach, population 6,000, the storm surge took a large part of one homeowner’s house and deposited it three blocks away. That owner, thinking about his neighbor’s problems as well as his own, told the local NPR station, “You can’t start to rebuild when you’ve got someone else’s house in your yard.”
Eight months after Ian, life is not close to normal yet in Fort Myers Beach, although a supermarket has reopened and a restaurant as well. But the town council is forced to hold its meetings in a makeshift building, the town hall having been wiped away by the storm. And a local resort that was severely damaged and whose business is a major benefit to the local economy won’t reopen until late this year, more than 12 months after the storm.
“Anybody that thinks [it won’t take years to recover] is just lying to themselves,” one local restaurant owner and resident told the NPR station.
The prevalence of strong hurricanes the last few years and the follow-on consequences have spooked insurance companies in the Sunshine State. Florida today has the dubious distinction of the highest average annual home insurance premiums in the nation, at $6,000, according to the Insurance Information Institute. That is an increase of 42% in just the last year and about four times the national average. Rates in Florida had already risen by as much as 30% in 2022. And reinsurance companies, to whom the property insurers sell many policies to reduce their risk, are also increasing their prices.
It is little wonder then that property insurance companies in Florida have either gone bankrupt or decided to stop selling policies in the state. Since the beginning of 2022, 15 insurers have left the state and another seven were declared insolvent. State government responded by creating its own “insurer of last resort” to cover those citizens of the state who have no private-market options. The insured pay their premiums to the state agency and, today, Florida itself is the largest single insurance provider in the state. But what if another devastating storm like Ian should generate so many claims that it exhausts the state insurance agency’s reserves? You guessed it; the state’s taxpayers would be on the hook for billions of dollars.
The insurance situation in Florida isn’t just affecting the retirees who make up a majority of the state’s population. My son and his wife, in their 30s and with a young child, own their first house in Vero Beach. They are a good five miles from the ocean and their neighborhood has no record of significant hurricane damage. Last year, however, their property insurer left the state and this year their new insurance company charged them 35% more than they were paying last year.
Their situation begs the question: How will young people be able to afford to live in Florida if insurance rates are likely to continue to skyrocket? And one can ask the same question about retirees, especially those on fixed or limited incomes.
The storm surge from Hurricane Ian lifted wooden docks near the ocean across the marsh to Pawleys Plantation Golf Course, a half-mile away.Insurance is not just a Florida problem. Up and down the east coast, insurance companies are raising premiums. For the condo my wife and I own in Pawleys Island, SC, about ¾ mile from the Atlantic Ocean across a wide marsh that tends to slow down the winds from Atlantic hurricanes, our HOA’s 2023 budget for building insurance – to protect the structural integrity of the association’s eight buildings -- rose 32%. Flood insurance, provided by FEMA, which we pay for directly, rose 11%; the flood insurance covers losses from flooding not covered by the HOA’s building insurance. Last year, after Hurricane Ian crossed Florida and entered the Atlantic Ocean, Pawleys Island was close to the storm’s re-entry point, with winds of almost 100 mph. Ian’s storm surge was estimated at five-to-seven feet yet picked up some of the boat docks on the ocean side of the marsh and deposited them on a few holes of the Pawleys Plantation golf course. (One of those docks still had a boat attached to it.) Although our condo is not adjacent to the marsh and suffered no wind or flood damage at all from Ian, it is considered nevertheless to be in a flood zone.
Eternal pessimists might ask the eternal weather question: Is it really safe anywhere? It is a fair question. In mid-August, a potentially devastating storm bore down on southern California, and San Diego, generally considered as having the best year-round weather in the nation, was directly in its path. (The San Diego Padres baseball club postponed a game two days in advance because of the impending storm.) I know from prior research that locations along the Carolinas coast are as likely to suffer a direct hit from a hurricane as those on the coast of Florida. And that reality has caused insurance companies to raise premiums up and down the entire east coast.
Yet despite the devastating hurricanes that seem to slam the east coast (and both coasts of Florida) year in and year out, builders keep building and buyers keep buying, no matter the risks. I stumbled upon a listing for a $20 million house on Kiawah Island in South Carolina. Kiawah is a barrier island – “barrier” because it takes the brunt of Atlantic storms before they typically peter out inland. Part of the attraction of this modern mansion is its location close to the ocean. But that, of course, puts the home in a risky position – both from a location standpoint and an insurance coverage standpoint.
I checked out the address on a site called RiskFactor.com which assesses a home’s risk to fire, heat, wind and flooding. The good news for the big house is that its risk factor for fire is “minimal,” with just one chance in 10 of a fire. The bad news for the house is everything else. Setting aside the heat factor, rated 10 of 10, or “extreme,” the wind and flood factors are both nine out of 10. Regarding the flood factor, RiskFactor.com indicates that this year the house could take on as much as eight feet of water, not too far off the site’s prediction of more than 10 feet at some point in the next 30 years. As far as wind goes, the site indicates the possibility of a three-second wind gust this year of 147 mph, and a possible 170 mph at some point over the next 30 years.
It is possible, even likely, that the dire predictions won’t come true this hurricane season or next, or the one after that or, for that matter, anytime in the next 30 years. But more and more, insurance companies are factoring in the potential and raising their rates or, worse, refusing to cover homes in certain areas. Those of us searching for our dream homes should at least consider thinking like an insurer.
Perhaps if a couple can afford a $20 million home, then they can afford to repair or replace it, or pay insurance premiums, if any company will write the policy, of tens of thousands of dollars a year. Good for them, but most of the rest of us would have trouble sustaining our much-more-modest properties in the wake of a 140-mph hurricane with storm surges that would put eight feet of water or more in our houses. I am not a scientist, but I for one believe there is something going on with the weather that may not be easily resolved, if at all. And if that is correct, consider all that is written above as a cautionary tale.
Caveat emptor.
Larry Gavrich Founder & Editor Home On The Course, LLC
On its website, the town of Pawleys Island describes the four-mile-long strip of land that forms Pawleys’ eastern edge as “a barrier island less than 4 miles long and mostly 1 house wide, separated from the mainland by a beautiful salt marsh and accessible by two short causeways. Generations of visitors have returned with the feeling that ‘their blood pressure goes down when they cross the causeway.’
Given the ever-present threat of hurricanes, Pawleys’ town fathers should be a little clearer about which direction across the causeway relieves stress.
That said, in 23 years of home ownership in Pawleys Island, my wife and I have never suffered significant damage of any kind to our condo, or any stress about the likelihood of damages. Yet we live close enough to reach the beautiful Pawleys Island beaches in less than 10 minutes, and our Jack Nicklaus golf course includes a view across the marsh to the homes that face the ocean. We are so close…and yet so far.
Here are three golf homes in and near Pawleys Island that might be close enough to enjoy the beaches and yet far enough to be safe from significant damages.
2 BR, 2 BA condo
End unit, view of Nicklaus golf course, fully furnished with mechanical upgrades in last few years, including HVAC, refrigerator and water heater. Neighborhood pool and clubhouse and golf course within three-minute walk. Reasonable golf membership fees or pay as you play. Rental income potential. Listed at $289,900. Click here. https://www.golfhomes.com/95-3-weehawka-way-pawleys-island-south-carolina-29585-p4127075.html
3 BR, 4 BA Condo
Open floor plan with master suite on entry level, large screened porch and patio with view of lake, and an inventive open floor plan. The golf course was designed by Greg Norman and is part of the McConnell Group of courses in the Carolinas. Membership in the private course provides access to 13 other McConnell courses. Private beach access just one mile away. Listed at $680,000. Click here. https://www.golfhomes.com/113-huntington-lake-circle-pawleys-island-south-carolina-29585-p3915967.html
2 BR, 2 BA townhome
One-level living across from the imaginatively designed Mike Strantz golf course. Spacious kitchen and formal dining room is great for entertaining, and the screened in porch and patio area is a great place to relax after tackling Strantz’s bunkers. Pawleys Island beach is less than 15 minutes away, and between the towns of Georgetown and Pawleys Island, you have access to plenty of shopping, restaurants and medical centers. Listed at $319,000. Click here. https://www.golfhomes.com/724-pinehurst-ln-pawleys-island-south-carolina-29585-p3645428.html
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