If you've shopped golf communities in Florida, or even in some parts of the Carolinas, you probably came away with an assumption: buy the house, and you've also bought into the club. Mandatory dues. An initiation fee due at closing. A monthly bill for a course you may or may not play.
That assumption is worth setting aside before you write an offer in Longs.
Several of the golf-adjacent neighborhoods along Highway 9 run on a different model, and the difference isn't cosmetic. It changes what you're actually paying for when you choose a lot near the fairway versus a lot two streets back, and it changes what you need to read before you sign anything.
The Course And The Neighborhood Aren't Always The Same Owner
Long Bay is the clearest example, and it's worth walking through because the structure shows up in variations across other Longs communities too.
The Long Bay Golf Club is a Jack Nicklaus Signature Course, one of two Nicklaus designs in the Myrtle Beach area, and it underwent a greens renovation in 2023. Three of its back-nine holes, numbers 10, 13, and 18, have been ranked among the top 100 in the Myrtle Beach golf scene. That's the amenity most buyers are picturing when they say they want a golf community.
But the property owners' association documentation for Long Bay states plainly that the golf club is owned and operated by Founders Group International, and that the club is not directly affiliated with either of the community's POAs. The club owns the clubhouse, driving range, swimming pool, parking lots, and cart paths, and access to any of it is limited to club members, not automatically granted to every homeowner.
In practice, this means your HOA dues cover the neighborhood itself: streets and common areas. The golf club, including its pool and clubhouse, runs as its own membership business, and buying the house doesn't obligate you to buy in.
There's a small but telling detail buried in the same POA page: personal golf carts are permitted on community roadways, but the club does not allow them on the actual golf course. If you want to play, you use a club-owned cart. The community's original trail fee program, which once let members bring their own cart onto the course for a fee, was discontinued around 2018. It's a minor rule, but it's the kind of thing that only surfaces once you're reading governing documents rather than a listing description, and it tells you the club runs its own operation with its own logic, separate from how the neighborhood is governed.
What Golf Access Actually Costs If You Want It
Long Bay's affiliation with Founders Group International puts two published price points on its own site, and it's worth being precise about what each one buys. A $299 first-year enrollment, $199 to renew, gets you into a loyalty-style discount program with reduced greens fees and free-round perks across a network of 21 Myrtle Beach area courses that includes Long Bay. A $599 first-year enrollment, $549 to renew, with a couples rate available, buys a deeper tier of the same discount network.
Neither of those is a full country-club membership with an initiation fee and monthly dues. That kind of membership, the sort that comes with standing tee-time priority and guest privileges, is its own separate application, and the club doesn't publish that fee schedule online. You'd request it directly from the pro shop if year-round member-rate golf is what you're after.
What matters for a buyer is that none of these numbers show up on your HOA statement. They're a separate, optional cost you layer on only if you want it, not something baked into the price of the house.
What The Homes Actually Cost
The premium for a golf-course lot in Longs shows up in the list price and the lot itself, not in a mandatory bolt-on bill. Here's a rough picture of what that premium looks like across a few of the area's golf communities, based on current listings this year.
| Community | Typical Price Range | Product Type |
|---|---|---|
| Long Bay | Roughly $300,000 to nearly $800,000 | Single-family, custom and production-built, some townhomes |
| Colonial Charters | $284,900 to $540,000, averaging $357,312 | Single-family, new construction and resale, around 2,035 sq ft |
| Aberdeen | Varies by section | All-brick single-family, some on corner lots along fairways |
| Tullamore Lakes | Condo pricing | Ground-floor units backing to the course |
| Sun Colony | New construction pricing | Single-family, active builder inventory |
Colonial Charters listings this year have averaged around 114 days on the market before selling, longer than a typical starter home elsewhere in Horry County. That's not necessarily a red flag. Golf-course inventory tends to move on a different clock, since the buyer pool is narrower and more deliberate. If you're selling into that market, price and patience both matter more than they would in a faster-turning neighborhood.
Sun Colony has active new construction from builders like DRB Group, and Colonial Charters carries new-construction inventory alongside its resale stock, which is worth knowing if you'd rather buy new than take on a resale with an older roof or HVAC system.
Three Things To Verify Before You Write An Offer
The Long Bay structure isn't necessarily universal to every golf neighborhood in Longs, which is exactly why you check the documents for whichever community you're actually considering rather than assuming one model applies everywhere.
- Ask who owns the golf course itself. If it's a separate operating company, like Founders Group International at Long Bay, your HOA dues are largely insulated from the club's financial health. If the HOA owns the course directly, your dues carry more exposure to how well that course is doing.
- Ask specifically about cart rules if that matters to your daily routine, since community-road privileges and course privileges aren't always the same thing.
- If you're buying as a rental or second home, ask whether golf access extends to tenants or guests, or whether it's tied strictly to the deed holder. Membership structures vary enough that this isn't safe to assume either way.
None of this shows up on a portal listing. It shows up in the POA's own governing documents, which are public and worth requesting before you're deep into a contract.
The Takeaway For Buyers Comparing Longs To Other Markets
The instinct to budget for a mandatory country club bill when you see "golf community" in a listing isn't wrong everywhere. It's just not automatically right in Longs. The premium you're paying here is mostly for the lot, the view, and the quieter setting a short drive from North Myrtle Beach, not for a membership you can't opt out of.
That's good news if you want the address without the dues. It's worth knowing early if you do want to play, since the club membership is a real annual line item you'll want in your budget rather than a surprise.
If you're comparing Long Bay against Colonial Charters, Aberdeen, or a new build in Sun Colony, and you want someone who's already read the POA documents for these specific communities, that's the kind of groundwork Kirk Stalvey does before a client ever tours a house. Book an appointment and bring your list of communities. We'll go through what's optional, what's not, and what the fee schedule actually looks like before you fall for a fairway view.
A Couple Of Quick Answers
Is golf club membership required to buy a home in Long Bay? No. The golf club is owned and operated by Founders Group International, separate from the community's POAs, and membership is sold independently of home ownership.
Can I use my own golf cart at Long Bay? Personal carts are allowed on community roadways, but the golf club does not permit them on the course itself. Members use club-owned carts to play.
