The asking price for WCI's golf course portfolio is $13,725,000, says Chris Karamitsos, co-founder of the National Golf and Resort Properties Group at Marcus & Millichap in Tampa which has been retained to represent the company. He says that anyone interested in buying one of these courses, or the whole portfolio, should go to the company website--nationalgolfgroup.com--for more information about the properties.

Built in the 1960s, Sun City Center is a retirement community near Tampa, which is centered around golf, says Karamitsos. Included among the courses up for sale are two 18-hole courses, Scepter Golf Club and Club Renaissance, and two 27-hole champion courses, Falcon Watch and Sandpiper.

WCI, which is now a private company, has eliminated more than $2 billion worth of debt and liabilities. Still, the company will use the cash it expects to receive from selling the golf courses to operate, says Karamitsos. He emphasizes, however, that there is no debt on any of the golf courses WCI is selling. "No one needs to be paid off," he says.

Although, in general, golf courses have fallen on hard times today, says Karamitsos, there are many which are profitable, and the WCI portfolio has a positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation). Plus, he says, the number of golf rounds being played today have not dropped dramatically. "Instead, they have remained flat from year to year."

While Karamitsos did not give any figures for the Tampa area, or for the state, according to a Miami Herald article dated March 11, 2010, "The number of rounds played on Miami and Ft. Lauderdale courses fell 5.4% from 2008 to 2009, according to the National Golf Foundation, based in Jupiter."

Golf course memberships can be expensive, and many people are cutting back on luxuries today. Although the cost of golf memberships vary wildly, says Karamitsos, at Sun City courses charge between $2,000 and $6,000 a year.

Florida has more golf courses than any other state, says Karamitsos, who adds that the fate of any one course depends a lot on what segment of the market it is in. "Private golf courses have a little problem,but public courses do pretty well," he says.

"The owners who make money do so because they own a number of courses which are close to each other, which allows them to take advantage of the economies of scale," says Karamitsos. If they own four or five golf courses, they can save money by sharing everything from maintenance staff to marketing and management, he says.