High Life. Next door to the golfing green

Imagine this. You are surrounded by lush greenery on all sides, with velvety grass carpeting a landscape dotted with trees, shrubs and ponds. And as you spot the serene villas cozily tucked away here and there, it hits you — a golf ball. Welcome to the new trend of homes situated within putting distance of a golfing green.

Increasingly, affluent and sports-loving home buyers are being attracted to communities built around golf courses. Take the case of P Ranganath Nayak, Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at Vikram Hospital, Bangalore. Nayak bought a villa in a project with an 18-hole championship golf course. “The game can be taken up at any age and you use a lot of body muscles when you play,” he notes. By the time you finish a round of 18-hole golf, you have walked a good seven km distance, he adds.

But why must you live near a golf course? Can’t you drive down to one? Well, good golf courses are quite difficult to find. And it is not easy to get new membership. “Finding a spot to play is becoming difficult on many courses, even during the weekdays,” laments Nayak. So, living in a community with a golf course can help you get a time slot that works for you.

Interest in golf as a sport too is alive and thriving in India. New championship tournaments are being organised by professional golf leagues such as the Louis Philippe Cup, launched three years ago. Thanks to growing interest, the Ministry of Tourism is organising the first-ever golf tourism summit in October 2014, with the support of the India Golf Tourism Association.

Properties come in multiple formats — from sprawling plots where you can build your home to well-appointed luxury villas.

For instance, Eagleton Golf Village in Bidadi near Bangalore, offers plots ranging from 2,000-10,000 sq ft. You can choose from three sizes of villas that come fitted with luxurious interiors. Prestige Golfshire at Devanahalli near Bangalore comes with a choice of eight types of mansions, each with its own private swimming pool. They range in size between 6,000 sq ft and 10,000 sq ft and are priced between ₹5.5 crore and ₹11 crore.

Developing a golf course takes time, so if you want to move in quickly and are particular about the course, consider projects that are springing up in the proximity of established golf courses.

You will also find large integrated development projects with new golf courses coming up alongside. For instance, Rakindo is developing an 850-acre township near Coimbatore with an 18-hole golf course.

The project also includes senior housing, multiple residential communities and commercial space.

Even a golf aficionado should consider a few things to ensure that the home purchase turns out to be a hole-in-one shot. For one, golf courses need a huge parcel of land, so these developments tend to be in peripheral locations. So, it is important to check out the infrastructure and amenities. Also, if you are a serious player, you will want to check out the course. A lot of thought goes into the design of a golf course. Maintenance of the course is important for day-to-day operations. All the greenery in the golf course needs a lot of blue — water.

Getting adequate water supplies can be difficult, even if you don’t mind paying a high price for it. Developers typically add water treatment plants, where they take in municipal waste water and use the brown water output to water the golfing green.

But should you worry about golf balls denting your parked car or cracking your French window? If the layout is well designed, natural barriers such as trees and water bodies in the course will ensure that even a terrible drive does not send the ball flying into your living room. Still, you need to look at the course and where your property is located to ensure that you are out of harm’s way. Check the roads in the layout are also well shielded for safety when you drive by. Golf course properties come at premium of over 20 per cent compared to other projects that offer similar amenities.

But as a golfer, you get to enjoy benefits such as membership, low or no green fee and the everyday pleasure of living in the company of fellow golf enthusiasts.

The golf home communities also boast world-class club houses and alternative recreational facilities to cater to the needs of the whole family. “We keep in mind the fact that every member of the family may not be a golf enthusiast,” notes Irfan Razack, CMD of Prestige Group, a Bangalore-based developer.

The properties are also drawing the interest of NRIs, who are using the homes for holiday stay. “In future, as awareness about these projects spread, demand will likely increase,” says Anshuman Magazine, MD, CBRE South Asia, a real estate consultancy. The success of the Golfshire project has inspired Prestige to launch another golf-based condo and villa project in Bangalore.