I don't wish to hijack the thread. I reacted to what I see as a political talking point, a commonly held belief that I think is wrong.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's charter is to purchase loans from the banks, thereby freeing more bank capital for home loans. By 2006 or so, FM and FM were buying lots of sub-prime loans, since home loan originators were lowering standards to compete, and gouging unsuspecting, less sophisticated buyers when possible. Ultimately, the unsavory lending was for one purpose - to feed the demand for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), issued by big banks as a high interest yielding investment.
I see Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well down the list of blame. Let's put key governmental deregulation at the top. I see this housing/pricing reset problem as being half over, maybe. Maybe in ten more years homes will have returned to historical values, but there's a problem with the nation's changing wage structure, with less middle-class jobs, and more minimum wage jobs. Ultimately, the price of houses has to match up with the wage structure of the people.
Now, where were we? Ah yes, golf course sales. After all, golf courses are built with construction loans, and I would argue their value is mostly separate from the homes that surround them. On the other hand, a course surrounded by abandoned homes has no chance. A few stories I've heard place the value of bankrupt courses at 15-20 cents on the dollar.
You may tell I'm bitter about the explosion of golf development at the expense of the following twenty years. Maybe it will always be a boom and bust business, but the way it went down, it hurt my favorite architects' future opportunities here in the States.