[biker1]

Don't quote me on this but I believe I recall that about 40% of the amenity fee goes to paying off the amenities bought from The Developer. I have seen the budget but I don't recall exactly where.

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

How about the third option that most Villagers take: Pay the amenity and trail fees and enjoy your golf.

Now for some remedial math:

Cost of maintaining a golf course, according to the CSGA, varies from $80,000 to close to $ 2 million/year depending on location and the course. The average is $500,000/year for a full 18 hole championship course in very good condition, or $250,000 for a 9 hole course. Our 9 hole exec courses are less than 1/2 of the length of nine holes on those courses, but the most expensive parts of a course to maintain are bunkers and greens, so let's go high and say it costs $200,000/ year to maintain each of our execs. So, 44 execs x $200,000/year = $8.8 million/year.

On the income side-----approx. 65,000 homes in TV paying about $170/MONTH amenity fees: 65,000 x 170 x 12 = $ 132.6 million/year. 8.8/132.6 = 6.6% of the amenity fee going to golf (far from 100%). We can debate these numbers a little, but they are certainly well in the ballpark, so I doubt more than 10% of the amenity fee goes for exec golf.

So.....$170/month x 6.6% = $11.22/month or $134.64/year, then add $144 trail fee (if using cart) for $278.86/year divided by 104 rounds = $2.68/round , or only $1.29/round if walking and playing twice a week-----this is the real cost of "free" golf, far from $24/round. Play 4x/ week and those costs go to $1.34 and $0.65 respectively.

(mike drop)