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Article: Trouble on the links: for all their country-club glamour, immaculately groomed greens and undulating fairways, golf courses in America are overbuilt and being sold at deep discounts. Lenders are being much more conservative, and developers are advised to include houses on the courses.(COMMERCIAL)
- Article from:
- Mortgage Banking
- Article date:
- October 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Mortgage Bankers Association of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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DEPENDING ON WHOM YOU ASK ABOUT THE STATE OF THE golf-course industry in the United States, it is (a) terrible, (b) in bad shape but poised for a slow recovery or (c) not doing as poorly as believed. [??] Colin Hegarty, for example, painted quite a bleak picture during a recent interview with Mortgage Banking. He is president of Golf Research Group, Dallas, an international consultancy that reports and interprets the results of its research--good or bad. Objectivity is the company's currency. [??] "Golf courses are suffering an enormous amount of pain," Hegarty says. "Annual revenues have dropped by 25 [percent] to 30 percent, and in a fixed [operational] cost business ...