When a resort community opens a third golf course, most buyers make the same assumption without ever stating it out loud: somewhere near that new course, fresh home sites are about to come to market. That has been the standard playbook for golf development for the better part of fifty years, and it was the playbook Palmetto Bluff itself followed in 2005, when the Jack Nicklaus designed May River Golf Course opened ringed by the May River Forest neighborhoods.
Anson Point, which opened in February 2026 as Palmetto Bluff's third course, breaks that pattern on purpose. Designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw across roughly 500 acres on the community's east end, only about 80 of those acres carry a fairway, green, or bunker. The rest was left wild by design, and no home site touches the routing anywhere along it. For a buyer trying to read what South Street Partners is signaling with the investment, that absence is the actual story.
The Playbook Most Golf Communities Follow
Nationally, the tie between new golf construction and new residential inventory is close to a default setting. Forbes has reported that roughly 42 percent of new golf course projects carry a real estate connection, meaning the course exists in large part to create and price a ring of home sites around it. Palmetto Bluff followed that exact model in 2005: the Nicklaus course anchored May River Forest East and West, and golf frontage there has carried a premium in the years since.
Crossroads, the reversible nine hole course from King-Collins Golf Course Design that opened in January 2024, sits inside the Moreland area, where nearby Moreland Forest home sites gained trail and amenity proximity once the course arrived. It was not built as a pure real estate play, but location still mattered to the parcels closest to it.
What Coore and Crenshaw Built Instead
Anson Point had a false start almost two decades long. Coore and Crenshaw first scouted the site in 2007, and the original plans fell apart when the housing downturn hit that year. South Street Partners, which took ownership of Palmetto Bluff in 2021, revived the project in 2024 with one condition attached to the commission: the routing would not be dictated by a land plan. The designers got the land first and the golf second, the same principle that shaped their restoration of Pinehurst No. 2.
The course threads through four distinct ecosystems on its way from upland pine to maritime forest to live oak groves to open salt marsh along the New River, and it carries the name of Admiral George Anson, the eighteenth century British naval officer who once invested in real estate in this same area himself. What it does not carry is a single lot line. South Street's Managing Partner, Chris Randolph, has described the goal from the outset as building something that would feel a century old rather than something built to justify a subdivision.
| Course | Opened | Designer | Home sites on the routing |
|---|---|---|---|
| May River Golf Course | 2005 | Jack Nicklaus | Yes, May River Forest East and West |
| Crossroads | January 2024 | King-Collins Golf Course Design | None directly, though nearby Moreland Forest gained proximity |
| Anson Point | February 2026 | Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw | None, by design |
Why an Empty Fairway Tightens Everything Else
This is the part a buyer comparing villages should sit with for a minute. Palmetto Bluff's own year end figures for 2025, reported in early 2026, describe a market that was already narrow before Anson Point opened at all. The community closed 143 properties in 2025 for $322.1 million combined: 91 homes for $268.9 million at an average resale price of $2.95 million, and 52 home sites for $53.2 million at an average of $1.08 million per site. Average home values have climbed more than $850,000 since 2021, and average home site values have climbed more than $490,000 over that same stretch.
The tighter number sits in how rarely anything comes up at all. At any given point, only 4.7 percent of privately owned homes in Palmetto Bluff are listed for sale, meaning better than 95 percent of owners are holding rather than selling. As of that same report, just 12 home sites were actively listed community wide, alongside 45 resale homes carrying an average asking price of $3.52 million.
A course built to need nothing from real estate still manages to make real estate scarcer. That is not a contradiction. It is the strategy.
Anson Point adds prestige, a third distinct golf identity, and by South Street's own description a step toward positioning Palmetto Bluff as a genuine destination inside the broader Hilton Head golf market. None of that widens the supply of fairway lots. The course sits on the outside of an already thin inventory, and if anything it raises the appeal of the community as a whole while leaving the two neighborhoods that do carry golf addresses exactly as small as they were before.
What This Means If You Are Comparing Villages
If direct golf frontage is the priority, the search stays where it has always been: May River Forest East and West along the Nicklaus course, or the smaller set of Moreland Forest parcels with proximity to Crossroads. Waiting for Anson Village to release comparable lots misreads the plan. The second phase there brings a dedicated practice facility, a clubhouse, and additional gathering space, not fairway home sites, because the course was built specifically to avoid that outcome.
If access to Anson Point itself matters more than an address on it, the relevant fact is that entry runs through Palmetto Bluff Club membership, not through a deed. A cottage in Wilson Village carries the same playing privileges as a home site backing onto the 8th hole at May River, provided the membership is in place. That distinction changes how a developer or a second home buyer should weigh a given parcel. Proximity to a course you cannot build against is a lifestyle preference. Proximity to May River or Crossroads is a genuinely limited resource, bounded by geography rather than by club policy.
Will Anson Village eventually include new homes?
Yes. South Street's own announcement describes a second phase with a practice facility, a clubhouse, and communal space, and Anson Village is expected to grow around that point of arrival over time. What has been confirmed publicly is that the course routing itself will not carry residential frontage, so any future Anson Village home sites would sit apart from the fairways rather than along them.
Can someone play Anson Point without owning property nearby?
Access runs through Palmetto Bluff Club membership rather than through address. Anson Point is exclusive to members and their guests, which means where a buyer lives inside the community affects convenience but not eligibility to play.
Does this no-homesite pattern hold for the other two courses?
Not evenly. May River Golf Course was built with residential frontage as part of its original plan in 2005, and those lots remain some of the most identifiable golf addresses in the community. Crossroads did not add direct frontage lots when it opened in 2024, but its location inside Moreland Village did put the nearest home sites closer to that amenity than they had been before.
For a buyer weighing where the next stretch of Palmetto Bluff's growth actually lands, a detail like this is worth talking through with someone who tracks the community day to day rather than reading it off a listing sheet. Dr. Lori Whatley lives in Palmetto Bluff full time and can walk you through which villages carry genuine golf frontage, which carry Club access alone, and what that difference is worth to your particular search. Request a private consultation to start that conversation.
