Golf’s unprecedented growth in recent years has created a seller’s market for courses and facilities, and investors are paying top dollar to get in on the action in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona.
The average sale price of golf courses tracked and catalogued by Leisure Investment Properties Group reached more than $6.87 million last year, up 38% from an average of just under $5 million in 2023. The last time the average price reached that level was 2007, shortly before the financial crisis and Great Recession.
“The golf industry is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth, with increased participation, higher revenues and strong investor interest,” the report noted.
The same growth goes for courses’ median sale price — up nearly 23% to more than $3 million compared to $2.5 million in 2023.
The surge in prices comes as investors shift away from core commercial real estate sectors such as apartments, industrial, retail and office buildings, said Steven Ekovich, executive managing director and partner at Leisure Investment Properties Group, which helps buy and sell country clubs and other hospitality-related properties.
He added that the shift has meant a surge in interest from both public and private equity companies.
“The major buyers are cold calling clubs to buy that fit their criteria,” Ekovich said in an email. “Golf is back and healthy. It took 18 years for golf prices to come back up to where they were.”
The National Golf Foundation shows record golf participation, with 28.1 million Americans taking to a golf course in 2024 — the most since 2008. Golf is more diverse than it has been in years past, as well, with 28% of golfers women and 25% Black, Asian or Hispanic, the highest respective percentages recorded, according to the foundation.
The foundation also reports that after decades of shrinking, the number of courses in the United States is on the rise, adding six facilities and 17 courses since 2022. While those numbers aren’t large, the gains mark a huge reversal since the Great Recession and after, a time when more than 2,000 facilities closed.
Even so, supply is limited when it comes to golf courses, as the properties carry high construction costs, stringent regulations and require access to an affordable water source.
A number of cities and other local governments have spent the last decade or so closing and shedding unwanted golf courses that cost taxpayers money, with those public dollars going instead to facilities and activities deemed to have a broader appeal, Ekovich said.
He added that while golf courses across the country have largely rebounded in recent years with the sport’s renewed interest, recouping the cost of building a new course works best when it’s based on a private subscription model.
“So most everything we see coming on line are high-end private courses,” Ekovich said. “Another reason this is happening is because so many private courses have waiting lists, so the demand is there for new course development.”
Dues and fees at courses increase
Club Benchmarking, a provider of private club-specific tools and services to assess business operations, surveyed clubs with golf about their plans for 2025. It found the median planned dues increase for the year was 5% — lower than the 9% seen in 2023 but still above the 3% of 2019 and other years prior to the pandemic.
Initiation fees are on the rise, as well, according to data gathered by Club Benchmarking — up to a median of $50,000 last year compared to $45,000 in 2023. In 2019, the median initiation fee was $25,000.
The data also suggests waitlists won’t be thinning anytime soon. In 2019, about 25% of clubs had a waitlist. That number soared to 49% in 2022 and rose further, to 51%, in 2024. The increase comes with the surge in golf’s popularity, pushing clubs to their capacity.
“We think that, for the foreseeable future, that’s going to be the norm,” said Chris Davis, director of data analytics and capital planning at Club Benchmarking.
By Andy Medici – Senior Reporter, The Playbook, The Business Journals
Mar 23, 2025
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