It's mid-June. My home airport now is Glacier Park
International near Kalispell, Montana. So, business trip are out of FCA versus
San Francisco or Oakland. Our 20th summer in northwest Montana!
I continue to worry about our Seahorse Beach Club
on the Texas Gulf Coast, outside of Houston. That area has been hammered with
rain, as you have read, and in general, rain aside for the moment, the weather
has been truly lousy. How the six million residents of Houston put up with the
weather is beyond me. The rain fact has impeded sales dramatically.
On our way from the SF Bay Area to Montana we spent the
night in Bend, Oregon, and had a delightful dinner with our Seahorse consultant Tiffany
Clark and her husband, Cameron.
At the end of this month, I am heading up to Wells, Maine,
to attempt a close on the Burnt Mill project. All is about ready for a
launch this fall with financing coming along on schedule. Could I get any
farther away from home in California?
Then, on the Crystal project in Marathon Key,
Florida Keys: My mentor, Marvin Rappaport, is awash in 'deals' for the
property. It seems that there's a never-ending line of qualified investors or
investment companies. Right now the concept that seems to generate the most
traction is the full condominium/whole/residential/transient/fractional program
versus the hotel and fractional cottages. The final 'winner' of the
financing will determine the build-out.
I attended the Urban Land Institute meeting in Houston in
between rainstorms. Chris Fair gave a very interesting report on his
firm's study of Millennials—how they differ, and where they don't, from Gen
Xers and the younger boomers. The bottom line is that after they marry and have
a family they are pretty much like other buyers of resort real estate. Yes,
there's the sharing philosophy and the 'why buy anything' attitude while single
that has been so widely reported.
For sure, as we have known, the Xers and Millennials want to
use the electronic media more than the boomers, they want to do their own
research, and they don't need a fancy sales center.
