There is a super-abundant amount of raised and pledged liquidity in a plethora of U. S. funds that's itching to be deployed. Investment options are limited today and at least from a real estate perspective are concentrated in industrial and multi-family properties with capitalization rates remaining historically low around 5.0%. That's IF you are one of the twenty lucky bidders. Office and retail have fallen out of favor and don't even mention hospitality. I might rather own a golf course 15 years from now than a vacated Dollar General store in the middle of nowhere.
So, where do you invest? A ground lease is a darned good place to start, particularly on a golf course in a decent metropolitan area. You get the benefit of a good, immediate net cash-on-cash return (all anybody's worried about today) plus some residual down the road by banking the land (not worth much on a NPV basis). The fund managers benefit from fees paid as well as getting impatient investors off their backs. The seller likely doesn't care about the rent unless it's usurious and with the 10 years treasury yield flirting with 50 basis points, a rent factor of 6 to 7% is pretty lucrative on a risk adjusted basis.
I assume the ground lease has extension options, likely out to 40 years or more at which time the current membership will be pushing up daisies. The club gets a significant amount of cash for improvements and or distributions to members/investors and can worry later, if at all about the negative impact on signing up new members as the ground lease burns off.
Than again, I might have this all wrong.
Bogey