At a golf club most of the purchase price is outdoors. The clubhouse is one building on a property measured in hundreds of acres, and the course itself is a constructed asset: irrigation, drainage, cart paths, bunkers, tees and greens are all built work that someone paid for.
The signature fact: land improvements dominate here in a way they do not in any other commercial type. Irrigation systems, cart paths, bridges, drainage, retaining structures, lighting and fencing are 15-year property, and on a full 18-hole property they can exceed the clubhouse in cost. The land underneath remains non-depreciable, and the grading and earthwork that shaped it is generally inseparable from the land, so the study has to distinguish the constructed improvements from the shaping of the ground.
What reclassifies at a golf or country club
5-year personal property (Section 1245)
- Clubhouse FF&E: dining, lounge, locker-room and event furnishings
- Commercial kitchen equipment, bar and beverage systems, hoods and dedicated exhaust
- Pro-shop fixtures, display and merchandising millwork, POS and IT
- Irrigation pumps, controllers and the central control system
- Maintenance-facility equipment, fuel systems and wash-pad equipment
- Decorative and landscape lighting, sound and AV, interior signage
- Pool and tennis equipment, including pumps, filtration and court systems
15-year land improvements (Section 1250)
- Irrigation distribution: mains, laterals, heads and valve boxes
- Cart paths, bridges, culverts, retaining walls and steps
- Course drainage, catch basins, pond liners and pump-station site work
- Bunkers and their drainage, tee and green construction where separable from land
- Parking, site lighting, fencing, monument signage and landscaping
39-year structural (Section 1250)
- Clubhouse shell, structure, roof, interior partitions and finishes
- Base HVAC, electrical service, general lighting, fire protection and restrooms
- Maintenance building, cart barn and halfway-house structures
- Locker-room plumbing and permanent built-in construction
Where the engineering gets hard
Course construction records are often incomplete, especially for older clubs, and the useful distinction is between what was built and what was merely moved. Irrigation and drainage are documented systems with plans and as-builts. Bulk earthwork usually is not separable from the land. Where a club has renovated greens, rebuilt bunkers or replaced irrigation, those projects have their own placed-in-service dates and their own basis, and they are often better candidates than the original acquisition.
Illustrative, modeled
On a $9M club property with roughly $6.5M of depreciable basis after land, an accelerated share near 30% moves about $1.95M into short-life pools, with irrigation, cart paths and drainage carrying most of it. This is a modeled figure rather than a completed client study.
Cost Seg Smart scopes golf and country club studies individually with engineer review of the course improvements. Fees are published at costsegsmart.com.
FAQ
Are the greens depreciable?
The constructed elements can be, where they are separable improvements rather than shaping of the land itself: drainage, the rootzone construction and the irrigation serving them are built systems with documented cost. The land is not depreciable, and a study should be explicit about where it drew that line.
We do not have the original course construction records. Is a study still possible?
Yes. Engineering estimation from as-builts, aerials and current field measurement is the normal approach when historical records are incomplete, and it is documented as an estimate rather than presented as an invoice trail.
Is the cart fleet included?
Only if it came with the real property purchase and is not already on your schedule. Fleets are usually leased or bought separately, in which case they are outside the study entirely.