Balsam
Mountain Preserve, NC: Up from the ashes.
via citizen-times.com SYLVA — Amid all the gloom and doom reports about the golf course/real estate development business comes word that Balsam Mountain Preserve has risen from the ashes of the Great Recession, traveling from foreclosure to re-opening in a little more than six months. Request more information.
The course, along with the entire development, shut down in Oct. 2009 and faced foreclosure proceedings when $19.8 million in loans came due, despite having sold 230 of its planned 354 homesites at an average price of $530,000.
BMP laid off nearly half of its 80 employees and was in danger of joining the long list of casualties of a severely depressed financial market. But that pitfall is now behind it.
"This is a positive story that could have been a horror story for the property owners,” said Mark Antoncic, managing partner of the Vestlyn BMP LLC, which now owns and operates the development.
“We don't have a financial partnership with the property owners, but the community support we received made it possible for us to make this work.”
Antoncic said BMP retained 120 of 150 golf memberships despite the upheaval.
“This community came together and decided there was no way we were going to fail,” home owner and property owner Harry Avant said. Request
more information.
Balsam Mountain Preserve is a 4,400-acre private community, an average of just one home for every 12 acres, in which nearly 70 percent of the community has been placed in a permanent conservation easement. Every homesite touches a portion of the 3,000 acre Preserve, offering a level of privacy and seclusion that residents in other communities can only imagine.
In addition to all the wonders of nature, club members enjoy a nationally acclaimed Arnold Palmer Signature golf course, horseback riding, a heated junior Olympic pool, soft surface tennis courts, a fitness center, fine dining, 34 miles of private trails, 38 miles of streams (including a Class “A” North Carolina trout stream for fishing), a private family campground, and a 24-hour staffed gatehouse. Request more information.
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