The Week That Was, march 20, 2016

     In 2015, for the third consecutive year, U.S. golf properties increased in value. Marcus & Millichap has crunched the numbers, and it’s determined that last year golf courses sold for 7.5 percent more than they did in 2014, with the average sales price breaking $5 million for the first time since 2009. “It’s becoming more and more clear that the golf market is stabilizing,” M&M’s Leisure Investment Properties Group writes in its 2015 year in review. More importantly, the group predicts that “a healthy U.S. economy” will “continue to affect golf in positive ways.” The message, in a nutshell: “Expanding payrolls, solid consumption growth, and housing-market momentum all set the stage for higher consumer spending, meaning more money can and will be spent on golf.” When the transactions of 2015 are fully accounted for, M&M expects that between 145 and 181 golf courses will have changed hands.

     Has Pacific Links International decided that owning golf courses isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? The Chinese/Canadian company has sold two of its golf properties in recent weeks, and now it’s looking to sell another one: Pete Dye Golf Club in Bridgeport, West Virginia. The club is among the most prominent in PLI’s portfolio, for its Pete Dye-designed track checks in at #53 on Golf Digest’s current list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses. Over the past year, PLI has found buyers for three of its U.S. golf properties. In March 2015, it parted with Kapolei Golf Course, on O’ahu in Hawaii, and so far this year it’s sold (or agreed to sell) Olomana Golf Links, also on O’ahu, and DragonRidge Country Club, in Henderson, Nevada. PLI is an international network of more than 450 limited-access clubs, a few of them company owned but most of them merely affiliates. Seeing as how a spokesman for PLI has acknowledged that the affiliate program has become the network’s “primary focus,” it’s easy to conclude that the company is eager to lighten its ownership load. In fact, the spokesman told Nevada Business that he hopes the new owner of Pete Dye Golf Club will “maintain a relationship with Pacific Links through the affiliate program.”

     ClubCorp has begun “Building Relationships and Enriching Lives” -- its trademarked motto -- at a former member-owned private club in Northern California. The publicly traded, Dallas, Texas-based company has acquired Santa Rosa Golf & Country Club, a venue that dates to either 1914 or 1916, depending on which source you believe. The club moved to its current location, in the city of Santa Rosa, in the late 1950s, with an 18-hole golf course that was co-designed by Jack Fleming and Ben Harmon. (The track was reportedly redesigned by Robert Trent Jones, Jr. in 1979 and by Fred Bliss in 1991.) In a press release, ClubCorp’s CEO called Santa Rosa “a perfect complement” to the company’s portfolio, which includes, by my count, 19 other golf properties in the state. ClubCorp’s nearby venues include Teal Bend Golf Club in Sacramento, Turkey Creek Golf Club in Lincoln, Empire Ranch Golf Club in Folsom, and Crow Canyon Country Club in Danville.

     The European Tour’s real-estate division has made its way into the Czech Republic. Albatross Golf Resort, a community in suburban Prague, has become the 19th link in the fast-growing chain of European Tour Properties, a group that includes high-priced, supposedly exclusive spreads in Austria, England, France, Germany, Spain, and other nations. Albatross, which opened in 2009, hosted an event on the Ladies European Tour in 2011 and 2012 and is now the home of the D+D REAL Czech Masters. It features a championship-worthy course that was designed by Keith Preston, an Austrian architect whose portfolio consists of a half-dozen new 18-hole tracks in Austria and others in Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. The tour added four communities to its properties network last year, and Albatross is the second to join this year, after Lighthouse Golf & Spa Resort in Balchik, Bulgaria.

     If you’re looking for the world’s ultra-high net-worth individuals -- people who are worth $30 million or more -- you’ll find them at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January, the Masters in April, the Monaco Grand Prix in May, the Aspen Ideas Festival in late June, and Art Basel in Miami Beach in December. But you may need to look harder, because Knight Frank has determined that the number of UHNWIs fell by almost 6,000 last year. “This downward shift,” the British real-estate consultancy writes in the Wealth Report 2016, “reflected slower economic growth and the more volatile financial climate.” Citing data provided by an “intelligence company” called New World Wealth, Knight Frank has determined that the global population of UHNWIs increased by 61 percent, from 116,800 to 193,115, between 2005 and 2014. Last year, however, the number dropped to 187,468, a decline of 3 percent. Over the next decade Knight Frank expects the rich to keep getting richer, but it predicts that the pace of growth will be “significantly slower” than it was between 2005 and 2014. By 2025, it forecasts the number of UHNWIs across the planet to grow by 41 percent, to 263,500.

     One other note about the Wealth Report 2016: Knight Frank has plenty of nice things to say about India, Vietnam, China, Australia, and other nations, but it reserves its nicest comment for the United States. “Since the global financial crisis,” the firm writes, “the U.S. has led the developed world’s economic recovery and demonstrated an enviable ability to convert innovation into enterprise.” If you’re among those who dream about making America great again, read that sentence again.