The Daily Telegraph: Own your own Quebec hotel room
Let it snow, let it flow, let it grow: A property offer on Mont Tremblant. By David Rowan
Here's the deal. For £330 a night, you can indulge in a sumptuous, two-bedroom suite at North America's newest boutique hotel, your personal lakeside veranda nestling serenely between award-winning ski slopes and some truly glorious restaurants. But stretch to £270,000, and you get to keep the suite and all its stylishly furnished contents, which the hotel will rent out for you whenever you are away. Either way, a complimentary breakfast is included.
Welcome to holiday-home ownership Quebec-style, soon to target Britain's more affluent skiers. Intrawest, the Canadian developer of US mountain resorts such as Whistler Blackcomb and Mammoth, is busy expanding its year-round playground at Mont Tremblant in the Laurentian mountains 80 miles north-west of Montreal.
Until now, the 2,200 hotel suites, condominiums and houses so far built at Tremblant have mainly been marketed to North Americans, but Intrawest sees the UK as one of many new sources of owners. Working with the British ski specialist Erna Low, it wants to convince us that properties in this French-speaking province will make a better investment than any on Europe's slopes.
Which explains why Michel Naud, a local real-estate broker, begins his tour today wielding financial spreadsheets audited by the accountants KPMG.
Leading the way through Ermitage du Lac, the lakeside hotel nearing completion beside the weatherboard village church, M Naud explains that a basic studio room can be yours here from Can$185,000 (£77,000), or a one-bedroom suite from $300,000 (£125,000). This buys you full, deeded ownership, entitling you to check in or invite guests whenever you like.
Now that Boutique Hotels & Resorts International has started to manage the 67-suite building, your unoccupied nights can also be placed in the hotel's commercial rental pool. For each dollar the hotel earns from paying guests, 50 cents goes back to the owners of rooms made available.
"You choose when you stay, which, on average, amounts to about 14 nights a year," M Naud explains. "The revenue from the rest of the year will cover all your expenses, and a good proportion of your mortgage payment."
If you can put down half the purchase price in cash, M Naud estimates that the rental income should cover your full mortgage payments from day one. Should you need a bigger loan - and non-residents can borrow up to 75 per cent of the property price - Intrawest can arrange "favourable rates" through its partner banks, currently about 5.1 per cent on a three-year fixed term. It will even register your apartment as a rental business, allowing you to bypass Quebec's steep 15 per cent purchase and property taxes.
At first glance, the deal looks a no-brainer: a holiday home on which you effectively hold the freehold and which pays for itself through a year-round stream of hotel guests.
The small print, however, reveals a rather more complicated picture. You are liable for a vast tranche of "costs" - ranging from $1,107 for cleaning the corridors to a $1,377 "resort association membership fee". For the two-bedroom suite, it all adds up to about £7,000 in annual extras. So even if you put down a third of the purchase price in cash, and then make your suite available most nights to paying guests, you can still expect to finish the year £4,200 out of pocket.
But it is the potential for capital appreciation that Intrawest hopes will clinch its sales. Since buying the mountain at a knockdown price in 1991, the company has spent Can$500 million (£208 million) to turn Tremblant's once neglected centre into a full-blown luxury resort.
For Neil and Ava Penkower, it was the skiing that sold Tremblant. Three years ago, they paid Can$535,000 (£223,000) for a 1,530 sq ft apartment at the L'Equinoxe complex overlooking the village, which has recently been valued at Can$735,000 (£306,000). Now, the couple, from Long Island, New York, are building a 9,000 sq ft house on one of Tremblant's two golf courses, complete with a home cinema, a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, a gym, steam and sauna rooms.
"From an investment point of view, there's a change taking place," says Mr Penkower, 56, a retired "wealth management adviser" to some of America's richest families. "You're seeing a lot more wealthy people up here, building bigger homes and moving off the village. I see an influx of big money."
(The Daily Telegraph, August 14 2004)
Here's the deal. For £330 a night, you can indulge in a sumptuous, two-bedroom suite at North America's newest boutique hotel, your personal lakeside veranda nestling serenely between award-winning ski slopes and some truly glorious restaurants. But stretch to £270,000, and you get to keep the suite and all its stylishly furnished contents, which the hotel will rent out for you whenever you are away. Either way, a complimentary breakfast is included.
Welcome to holiday-home ownership Quebec-style, soon to target Britain's more affluent skiers. Intrawest, the Canadian developer of US mountain resorts such as Whistler Blackcomb and Mammoth, is busy expanding its year-round playground at Mont Tremblant in the Laurentian mountains 80 miles north-west of Montreal.
Until now, the 2,200 hotel suites, condominiums and houses so far built at Tremblant have mainly been marketed to North Americans, but Intrawest sees the UK as one of many new sources of owners. Working with the British ski specialist Erna Low, it wants to convince us that properties in this French-speaking province will make a better investment than any on Europe's slopes.
Which explains why Michel Naud, a local real-estate broker, begins his tour today wielding financial spreadsheets audited by the accountants KPMG.
Leading the way through Ermitage du Lac, the lakeside hotel nearing completion beside the weatherboard village church, M Naud explains that a basic studio room can be yours here from Can$185,000 (£77,000), or a one-bedroom suite from $300,000 (£125,000). This buys you full, deeded ownership, entitling you to check in or invite guests whenever you like.
Now that Boutique Hotels & Resorts International has started to manage the 67-suite building, your unoccupied nights can also be placed in the hotel's commercial rental pool. For each dollar the hotel earns from paying guests, 50 cents goes back to the owners of rooms made available.
"You choose when you stay, which, on average, amounts to about 14 nights a year," M Naud explains. "The revenue from the rest of the year will cover all your expenses, and a good proportion of your mortgage payment."
If you can put down half the purchase price in cash, M Naud estimates that the rental income should cover your full mortgage payments from day one. Should you need a bigger loan - and non-residents can borrow up to 75 per cent of the property price - Intrawest can arrange "favourable rates" through its partner banks, currently about 5.1 per cent on a three-year fixed term. It will even register your apartment as a rental business, allowing you to bypass Quebec's steep 15 per cent purchase and property taxes.
At first glance, the deal looks a no-brainer: a holiday home on which you effectively hold the freehold and which pays for itself through a year-round stream of hotel guests.
The small print, however, reveals a rather more complicated picture. You are liable for a vast tranche of "costs" - ranging from $1,107 for cleaning the corridors to a $1,377 "resort association membership fee". For the two-bedroom suite, it all adds up to about £7,000 in annual extras. So even if you put down a third of the purchase price in cash, and then make your suite available most nights to paying guests, you can still expect to finish the year £4,200 out of pocket.
But it is the potential for capital appreciation that Intrawest hopes will clinch its sales. Since buying the mountain at a knockdown price in 1991, the company has spent Can$500 million (£208 million) to turn Tremblant's once neglected centre into a full-blown luxury resort.
For Neil and Ava Penkower, it was the skiing that sold Tremblant. Three years ago, they paid Can$535,000 (£223,000) for a 1,530 sq ft apartment at the L'Equinoxe complex overlooking the village, which has recently been valued at Can$735,000 (£306,000). Now, the couple, from Long Island, New York, are building a 9,000 sq ft house on one of Tremblant's two golf courses, complete with a home cinema, a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, a gym, steam and sauna rooms.
"From an investment point of view, there's a change taking place," says Mr Penkower, 56, a retired "wealth management adviser" to some of America's richest families. "You're seeing a lot more wealthy people up here, building bigger homes and moving off the village. I see an influx of big money."
(The Daily Telegraph, August 14 2004)
posted by David Rowan at Saturday, August 14, 2004
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