Want to enjoy never-to-be-built-out views? It may be time to tee off
You don’t need to be a golfer to enjoy the benefits of living adjacent to a golf course in Australia
3 min
From the Spring 2024 issue of Kanebridge Quarterly. Order your copy here.
W hile water views are usually considered most desirable for property buyers, golf course vistas are snapping at their proverbial heels. This past quarter century has witnessed a golden age in Australian golf course living, with dozens — if not hundreds— of residential courses built around our major cities and tourist towns. These days, there’s a buoyant market for established large golf homes alongside off-the-plan apartments being retro built to take advantage of existing golf course views. So what’s the appeal?
Green dreams
Barbara Wolveridge is a director at Sotheby’s International Realty. She has worked with many of Australia’s most prestigious golf course developments including The National in Cape Schanck Vic, Moonah Links on the Mornington Peninsula, Macquarie Links International Golf Club in Sydney’s West and the Mirage Country Club in Port Douglas where she currently lives. (She was also married to the late renowned golf course designer and former US Tour player Michael Wolveridge.)
“People like to live on golf courses,” she says. “You can walk out of your house onto a beautiful course. But what you’re really buying is the extended view. You have acres and acres in front of you, but you’re paying for a small block of land.”
And while you can’t run across the greens in your bare feet, as soon as the golf is finished for the day, there are tracks and cart paths where you can walk and bike, enjoying the natural surrounds of lush greenery and wildlife.
“Some courses are a haven for wallabies and kangaroos,” says Wolveridge. “Here in Port Douglas the pristine ponds attract the magpie geese. There are the most beautiful birds everywhere — and the odd croc as well.”
Who’s buying?
While you might expect golfing real estate to be the exclusive domain of well-heeled golf-mad retirees, that’s only a part of the story. Golfing homes appeal to a broad section of the community, especially in the post-COVID era, when home often also serves as an office.
“Probably 50 to 60 percent of my buyers are golfers,” says Wolveridge. “But in some areas people skew younger, in their 40s — not necessarily golfers, but those who want that lovely view. A lot of people like to come up here for the winter and when they’re not here, they rent out their properties.
“My very wealthy clients don’t do that, but the middle bracket come and use it when they like, and then it goes into the letting pool for the rest of the year.”
A cautionary tale
For most golf course adjacent dwellers, the only potential negative is the odd Titleist Pro V1 ball shattering the serenity as it sails through the bedroom window. But that’s not the worst thing that can happen.
Built in 1990 on the edge of the Great Dividing Range, Paradise Palms in Cairns lived up to its name with pristine rainforest providing a backdrop to rolling fairways and man-made lakes. Home to professional events including the Skins Game and Ladies’ Masters, it climbed to number nine ranking in Golf Magazine’s list of the nation’s Best Public Access Courses.
In 2016, the signature 7th hole was sacrificed to make way for an access road into a residential development of 585 luxury units. Then, horror. The course declined under new owners, was sold again, and a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan was revealed that would close the 18-hole course and transform it into a new housing estate.
Those who dreamed of seeing out their days overlooking manicured greens are now facing the prospect of a sea of roofs.
“Once a development is established, it has to make money,” says Wolveridge. “The developer has to put in somebody who knows how to run a golf course — and that is the hard part.
“If the developer isn’t making any money, it won’t necessarily devalue the properties, but if the course does so badly it goes broke, that is the danger.”
Happily, cases like Paradise Palms are few and far between.
“I can think of so many golf course developments in Australia that are very successful, and probably only three or four that aren’t,” says Wolveridge.
As always with property, to avoid a triple bogey, it’s a case of buyer beware.
How green is your view?
A commonly held belief is that golf courses use vast amounts of water, chemical pesticides and fertilisers to keep those greens pristine. In reality, golf course management in Australia claims to be at the forefront of environmental sustainability, pioneering the use of grey water and efficient irrigation techniques as well as new drought- and disease-resistant grasses.
Following the release of the landmark GC2030 report by The Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) in Scotland in 2018, Australia has joined a dozen or so other countries globally answering the call to action on topics such as climate change, resources, water conservation, pesticides, labour and land.
While golf courses have historically relied on a cocktail of pesticides and herbicides, many are today transitioning to organic maintenance practices, using natural means to control pests and promote healthy turf.
KDV Sport golf course (12 holes) on the Gold Coast and Kabi Organic Golf Club (27 holes) at Boreen Point in the Sunshine Coast hinterland are Australia’s only two organic golf courses to date. But there is no accommodation — yet — at either.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
The 250-year-old structure in the South Street Seaport District had a colorful past before a developer converted it to apartments in the 1990s
3 min
An apartment atop the third oldest building still standing in Manhattan has hit the market for $1.825 million.
The two-bedroom duplex occupies the top two floors of the Captain Joseph Rose house in the South Street Seaport District, the third oldest building in Manhattan after the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights and St. Paul’s Chapel near the World Trade Center. In 1773 it was a fashionable two-story home for Rose, a successful lumber merchant, but its more colourful history came a century later, during the Civil War era, when it was the site an infamous saloon known as “Kit Burns’ Rat Pit,” run by one of the founders of the Dead Rabbits gang.
Today, the 1,424-square-foot unit shows few signs of its unsavoury past. Located on a cobblestoned side street, the building still retains its brick facade and original Georgian-style, but the upper floors were added after a fire in 1904, and the interiors were completely restored by architect Oliver Lundquist when the building was converted to condos in 1997.
The sellers, who purchased the unit for $1.575 million in 2022, listed the property with Lindsey Stokes and Allison Venditti of Compass on Tuesday.
When Rose built the home on Water Street, the isle of Manhattan was smaller, and the home had direct access to the East River where he docked his merchant ship, Industry . By the turn of the century the ground floor had been converted to commercial use, and it was used as an apothecary, a cobbler shop, a watchmakers’ shop and a grocery.
Library of Congress
By the 1860s, the bustling South Street Seaport had begun to decline as shipping lines moved to larger ports along the Hudson River, and the neighbourhood deteriorated. The Joseph Rose building was purchased by Christopher “Kit” Burns, who opened a saloon called Sportsman’s Hall, a den of vice most notable for its rat pit—the largest in the city—where Burns staged “rat baiting” events, in which caged dogs compete to kill rats while spectators bet on the outcome.
Journalist James W. Buel described Sportsman’s Hall in a book on American cities published in 1883. “This place was once an eating cancer on the body municipal,” he wrote. “Within its crime begrimed walls have been enacted so many villainies, that the world has wondered why the wrath of vengeance did not consume it.”
In 1870, the saloon was shut down by the authorities, and Burns leased the building to the Williamsburg Methodist Church, which used it as a refuge for women. Burns, meanwhile, opened a rat pit down the block at 388 Water St.
As the years progressed, the building suffered fires in 1904 and again in 1976, after which it fell into disrepair and was seized for unpaid taxes. In 1997, the city sold the neglected building to developer Frank Sciame Jr. for just $1, who restored it and converted it to luxury condos.
The upper unit has traded hands several times in the decades since. Currently, the unit begins with a foyer that leads to an open plan living and dining area on the main level, with a staircase leading to two bedrooms on the upper level, and a private rooftop.
After purchasing the unit, the sellers worked with designer Lauryn Stone to renovate the upper level, reconfiguring the floor plan and remodelling the primary bathroom, according to Stokes. The interiors feature finished white oak floors and painted brick walls, with built-in shelves and a ventless fireplace in the living room, stone counters in the kitchen, a walk-in closet off the primary bedroom, and two rows of six-over-six panelled windows adding light and air.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
