The Links Homes keeps a small portfolio of houses and cottages beside seaside courses — places where the mower at dawn is the alarm clock and the walk to golf is measured in slippers, not miles.
View the PortfolioWe are golfers who sell houses, not the reverse. Three things decide whether a property earns a place in the portfolio.
Before the first tee time there is an hour when the course belongs to nobody, and the kitchen window belongs to you. We visit every house at 6 a.m. before we list it, and we've turned down fine ones that failed the hour.
Ten minutes on foot, clubs on the shoulder, is our outer limit. A links home you have to drive to is just a house with a nice view. The walk — past the practice green, nodding to the greenkeeper — is the point.
Salt wind is honest but hard on a house. We favour stone walls, deep porches, boot rooms that expect wet spikes, and gardens planted with what the sea allows — marram, sea thrift, and not much lawn.
We list a handful at a time and know every one by its creaks. Full particulars by enquiry.
A single-storey stone cottage whose garden wall doubles as the boundary of the seventeenth. Evening putts are audible from the kitchen; approach shots occasionally arrive uninvited, which the sellers regard as a feature.
A two-storey former coastguard house with the Atlantic on three sides and the links on the fourth. From the upstairs study you can read the wind off the whitecaps before deciding whether today is a golfing day or a fireside one.
A whitewashed longhouse with a converted bothy that sleeps visiting fourballs — or repels them, depending on your hospitality. South light all day, and a gate in the garden fence that opens straight onto the second.
“We don't sell houses near golf. We sell mornings.” — The Links Homes