A membership is not an amenity. It is the reason the house was bought.
Buyers at this level rarely describe themselves as golfers first. They describe themselves as busy — and then they tell you, unprompted, how long it takes to get from the front door to the first tee. On the peninsula that number is usually under fifteen minutes, and it is doing more work in the decision than square footage is.
What that means for a seller is specific rather than sentimental. A home inside a club's orbit is competing against a much shorter list than the comparables suggest, and it is being seen by people who already pay annual dues to be in the area. The campaign for a house like that is aimed at the membership before it is aimed at the market.
Twenty gates, and the waiting lists behind them.
Sharon Heights, Menlo Country Club, Stanford, the Olympic Club an easy run up the peninsula. Each has its own character, its own waiting list, and its own quiet relationship with the streets around it.
We keep track of which memberships are actually attainable and which are years out, because a buyer relocating for work will ask on the first call and the answer changes which houses they agree to see.
Fifteen minutes is the number that decides it.
Ask a golfing buyer what they want and they say a good house. Ask them what they will not accept and you get a drive time. Under fifteen minutes and a club is part of the week; over thirty and it becomes a weekend outing they stop making.
Every home we market in this category is measured from the door to the gate, at the hour the buyer would actually make the trip, and the figure goes on the page whether or not it flatters the address.
Aimed at the membership before the market.
A home near a course is not sold by adding the word golf to the listing. It is sold to people who already pay to be in the area — through the clubs, through the members who have friends looking, and through the agents who represent them.
That is a smaller and better audience than any portal produces, and it is why homes in this category are so often placed privately before anything goes public.
