The best laid plans.

• Position: North Carolina

Before selecting Treyburn in Durham County as their new home two years ago, Barbara and Tom Nolan did their homework -- or, more precisely, their roadwork. The Nolans embarked upon a four-month road trip that would be the envy of Jack Kerouac. San Francisco, San Diego, Denver, Dallas and Kansas City were a few of the stops on their nationwide tour to find the perfect place to retire.

The Nolans, who had split the year between their winter home on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii and summer house in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, had grown tired of their semiannual migration across six time zones. After crisscrossing the country, they concluded that year-round living somewhere in North Carolina was the life for them.

They focused their search on golf-course communities because they figured golf would be a good way to make friends and get involved in the neighborhood. In Treyburn and the Triangle, they found a temperate climate, geographical diversity, excellent medical care, friendly people and great golf.

"We saw Treyburn, and there was nothing that could stack up with it. We thought, 'How can you beat it?'" says Tom, a former marketing executive with Johnson & Johnson Inc. "They have every base covered. We just couldn't believe that we could have all this for what it costs. We didn't see one golf-course community that was a better value than this."

The Nolans weren't the only ones to fall for Treyburn's 5,300 rolling acres. Last year, 36 houses and 32 lots sold for $15 million. The average selling price for a house was $400,000. The Tom Fazio signature golf course, whose 18th hole was dubbed the best finishing hole in the Southeast by Southern Links magazine, attracted the Nolans to Treyburn. But it was the development's pastoral setting and serene atmosphere that sold them.

The Nolans bought a whole lot more than just a one-shot lot in rural Durham County. They bought a lifestyle. Developers all across North Carolina -- from Corolla Light on the Outer Banks to the Cullasaja Club in the Great Smoky Mountains -- have discovered that nothing sells like lifestyle. By blending desirable amenities with quality home building, these developers have concocted a soothing elixir for recession-weary consumers -- a real-estate investment that promises to hold its value.

"Golf-course communities offer home buyers a lot more than a large back yard," says Jerry Matthews, president of the Chicago-based American Society of Golf Course Architects. "They offer privacy through planned open space and the added bonus that golf properties will maintain their value even during a recession."

Though planned-unit developments -- PUDs, in real-estate vernacular -- provide buyers with a sturdy shelter from the economy's ever-shifting winds, the real return on investment is the extras they offer. More and more, it appears that the fate of North Carolina's planned communities is inextricably bound to the popularity of chasing that little white ball across thousands of acres of manicured fairways.

Golf is a nice coattail to hang onto these days. The sport is experiencing an unprecedented boom. The growth in the number of golf courses can barely keep pace with the growth in the number of golfers, says Royce Hough of Southern National Bank in Winston-Salem, which has financed several of these developments. According to the Jupiter, Fla.-based National Golf Foundation, there are 24.8 million golfers in the country and only 14,000 courses for them to play. That's nearly 1,800 golfers per course. In North Carolina, the number of courses shot up 18% between 1987 and 1992. The state now claims 491 courses -- not including 23 under construction.

Access to courses, especially on weekends, is difficult at best, hell at worst and always expensive. So by making this commodity convenient, developers have found and filled a lucrative niche...