Leisure activities have long influenced where people live. Ask anyone who ever owned a little cabin on a lake or a condo at a ski resort.

But some home buyers take that to the next level. We’re talking about people who love flying so much they live on a private airfield, love water skiing so much they live on a manmade ski lake, or love horseback riding so much they live in a community where riding trails snake through the common areas.

“I guess the best analogy is with a golf community, except in a golf community you probably have to go farther to tee off,” says John Schroeder, who lives at Lake Norman Airpark, a Mooresville, N.C., neighborhood built around a private airfield that the homeowners own and operate.

Schroeder shares ownership in a four-seat plane that he and a friend built in his backyard hangar. A lot of aviation enthusiasts would like to build a plane but don’t have anywhere at home big enough to assemble it, he says. The noise doesn’t really bother anyone because it’s short-lived and generally confined to daylight hours, he says.

Residents pay homeowners’ association dues that help maintain the airfield. Schroeder reckons the cost is less than if he paid to keep his plane at another airfield – and it wouldn’t be right outside his back door.

The plane makes it easy for Schroeder and his wife to visit their grandchildren in suburban Washington, D.C., without having to face a long drive. “We figure we can get up to the grandkids a lot more often without a lot of wear and tear on our butts,” the retired Air Force fighter pilot jokes.

Because flying is an expensive hobby, most of the residents of the 47-home development are older empty-nesters, he says. But there are a few young families, and even a couple of families who don’t fly but like the neighborhood.

About half the initial buyers in the new water-ski community of Lake Magnolia near Smithfield, N.C., don’t ski, says developer Dave Harris. But the buyers also include two professional skiers and families like his who love to water-ski together.

Competition skiers need smooth water, and the wakes from heavy boat traffic make most lakes unsuitable for practice, Harris says. Ski clubs started building private lakes to practice on a number of years ago. The ski lakes are often built in a U-shape for competition training.

Ten or 15 years ago neighborhoods began to develop around private ski lakes, he says. “In the last five years it really took off with real estate in general.”

Harris says water-ski communities are especially popular in Florida, Texas, California and the upper Midwest, and are starting to pop up in other Southeastern states. Lake Magnolia plans to have a community boat that the skiers will jointly operate and maintain, Harris says. There’s only room for one boat at a time on the lake anyway, he says, adding that skiers are accustomed to waiting their turn.