Open Rentals Flooding Market

BY MATTHEW MORIARTY: Staff Writer, The Pilot

A representative from a large national sports magazine called Pinehurst Realtor Jim Garrett last week want-ing to rent an eight-bedroom home in the village during the week of the U.S. Open.

It was a difficult task. Eight-bedroom homes are about as common in retirement-oriented Pinehurst as a telemarketer who says “pardon me for interrupting.”

The magazine also wanted to spend about $8,000 to set up its eight writers and photographers. An eight-bedroom home in the village probably would be more like $20,000.

The best Garrett, who is with Pinehurst Properties, said he could do is set them up in condos that run for about $2,000 apiece.

“That’s pretty cheap, I think,” Garrett said.

But it would double the magazine’s budget for the Open. So it decided to look around some more.

The magazine is scrambling to find someplace to rent because hotel rooms for media are all taken. In fact, all the hotel rooms in the area are reserved for the week of the Open.

Plenty of Rentals

That means that anyone seeking lodging in the Sandhills will have to rent someone’s home or face the prospect of commuting.

There is no shortage of people trying to rent out their homes for the week of the championship. Fueled by success stories from the 1999 U.S. Open, some of which have proven to be untrue, Pinehurst residents have flooded the market with available housing. So much so that Garrett has stopped taking on clients.

Supply is high. Demand? Not so much.

“I get more calls on people wanting to rent out their homes than people looking to rent,” Garrett said.

Take the case of Carol Reynolds. She’s a veteran of renting out her property. She did it in 1999 and had done the same thing on several other occasions before moving to the Sandhills.

“I’m real familiar doing this type of thing,” she said.

She’s an interior decorator, and her four-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home in Pine Grove Village is right beside Sandhills Community College where a shuttle will bus people to the Open every day.

Nevertheless, after some initial interest, the home has failed to attract any takers.

Originally on the market for $15,000, the house now is priced at $13,000.

“It’s negotiable,” Reynolds said.

She couldn’t remember exactly what it went for in 1999, but she said that she thinks it’s listed a little bit higher this time around.

“I think after the commission, we got about $8,000,” she said.

Reynolds knows there a lot more homes available this time around. If her home doesn’t rent, she’s not going to worry about it.

“I’ll be gone anyhow,” she said. “I’d just as soon get out of town.”

‘More Stress’ This Time

Kathryn Riffle, owner of Holly Realty, has rented out 75 homes for the Open.

She’s cutting off rentals on Friday. She admits to dealing with a lot more stress this time than in 1999, when she was one of two major Realtors trying to rent homes.

There is more that goes into it than simply signing a contract and cashing the check, Riffle points out. She coordinates maid service, assembles golf packages and has maps of the area printed out. It’s the details, she said, that are going to impress visitors to the area.

With all due respect, she wishes that some homeowners could be more concerned with being ambassadors for the area and less concerned with their wallets. The thinks the early emphasis on large dollar amounts may have scared away some corporate customers.

“Some of them (homeowners) were expecting a lot more than is possible,” Riffle said. “A lot of things have happened since 1999: 9/11 and corporate fraud. … It’s a little bit different now. They have to answer to their stockholders.”

Things haven’t been all bad, she said. She’s had houses go for up to $70,000.

“It’s strange,” Riffle said. “The people that are going to be paying top dollar are still paying. It’s the three-bedroom, two-bath homes that are not going well.”

Calls Picking Up

The good news for those offering property is that as the days until the Open dwindle, the calls from corporate types are beginning to pick up.

Reynolds has listed her home with Charlotte Hagan with Hagan and Hagan GMAC Real Estate in Pinehurst. Hagan has noticed a pickup in rentals lately (especially since the media hotel filled up).

“It’s good,” she said. “It’s as busy as it can be.”

Only homes in the right location with certain features can fetch that kind of money, Hagan said. She too has noticed that there is more supply than demand.

“There is a huge amount of supply,” she said. “They all jumped on the bandwagon. There’s probably double (the number for rent in 1999) just in Pinehurst alone.”

Most of her renters have been corporate clients so far, she said, and they seem to have lower budgets than in 1999. The players have just begun to look to rent, she added.

Debbie Neubauer of Tin Cup Golf and Travel concurs. Depending on the size and location of the home, it can go for anything from $4,000 to $20,000, she said. Renters apparently would rather wait to see if the price would come down, she added.

“(Renting) has picked up some for homes,” she said, “but they don’t want to pay the price.”

One home she has managed to rent out is her own. She rented her home and her neighbor’s to a legal conglomerate out of Dallas. The homes, on N.C. 73, are right across from one of the satellite parking facilities for the Open She declined to discuss the price.

Though she didn’t rent her home in 1999, she said that she wanted to this time to give herself a reward “for all the hard work I’ve done.”

Stephanie Hill took on a small number of homes (only seven, all in the village) and some condos to rent for the Open. She has only two of each left. Price was a determining factor, she said.

“My people all priced theirs properly,” she said.

She thinks that renters were looking for a lower price this time around. Though she would not say what her homes were going for, she said that they were “priced reasonably.”

Her three-bedroom condos are $6,000, and the two-bedrooms are $4,000. The homes were about the same price, she said.

But renters were still slow to commit.

“The activity has been nowhere near as great,” she said.

Garrett thinks that even though the economy is recovering, the days of the booming 1990s are long gone, especially for corporate America.

“The world has changed,” he said. “The dot coms are gone. ... Everybody is trying to jump on the bandwagon. It’s just not going to happen.”

He bristled at the suggestion that Pinehurst residents might be price-gouging.

“They’re not gouging anybody,” he said. “The prices may be a little bit higher (than in 1999).”

Corporate entertainment budgets are smaller, he said.

“I don’t think it’s as busy as people would like it to be,” Garrett said. “It’s a sign of the times. ... Somebody is watching the budget.”

Another problem is that rumors of players paying huge amounts in 1999 fueled the fire, he said. One rumor had it that Tiger Woods paid $80,000 for a home. In actuality, he shared an $8,000 home in Pinewild with Mark O’Mera, another golfer.

“These guys are not stupid,” he said. “They split the eight grand.”