DragonRidge sale allows MacDonald to focus on residential development
Developer Rich MacDonald plans to use the recent sale of his DragonRidge Country Club in Henderson as a tax loss while focusing exclusively on selling quarter-acre lots for $360,000 to $400,000 at his MacDonald Highlands development overlooking the upscale golf course.
Canada-based Pacific Links International paid a little more than $11 million for the 186-acre golf course, adding the 7,032-yard course to a Las Vegas Valley portfolio that includes the SouthShore and Southern Highlands golf clubs.
MacDonald said the golf course is an amenity for his 900-unit, ultraupscale residential development on 2 square miles bordering the course.
“(The deal) gives me the opportunity to spend all my time on selling (lots). That’s really my business,” he said. “I got caught up with the golf course, but it’s not what brings in the bread and butter.”
The residential lots do that. Before the Great Recession hit in 2007, the lots were selling for at least $1 million, MacDonald said.
The lots provide space for high-end houses. The minimum size house in the development is 5,000 to 6,000 square feet, with some in the 10,000 to 12,000 square feet range, MacDonald said. The biggest house is a 35,000-square-foot single-story residence, which MacDonald said is one the nation’s largest one-level houses.
MacDonald said he will also use the DragonRidge golf course sale as a tax loss to help offset residential land losses during the past five years. MacDonald said he projects lot sales of $20 million in 2014 — up from $16 million in 2013.
MacDonald, 68, said he wants to spend his next few years trying to unload those lots.
“I don’t want to be doing this in my eighties,” he quipped.
Contact reporter Alan Snel at asnel@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @BicycleManSnel on Twitter.