December 6th


The reach of fractions continues to surprise me. In the past week inquiries from a Manhattan area golf and residential community, a luxe hotel in Miami expanding to CO ski and Manhattan, a fancy golf course outside of Denver, the best located of all Santa Fe deals and a couple of left-fielders from Panama! Those are just the calls I got to return.

Mac MacEwan, our marketing guru, and I are advising a nifty project in Hyannis, Cape Cod. No, it's not the windmill farm that the Kennedys are so excited about, but a full service, amenity-rich resort hotel property expanding into fractions. It's great to work with, in this case, entrepreneurs, who 'get it' and are on the move.

A new destination spa, major water park, and beach house are being added to go along with the current amenities. The beach house, right on the beach, and not inexpensive to say the least brings this project to the ocean. A shuttle will take owners to Hyannis for shopping and to the private beaches [owners only] that surround Hyannis. As this is a fee product the owners are, well, owners. Only in Hyannis, where the Kenneyds preach for the little guy can there be private beaches! So says a California guy, were we are proud to share our beaches with any bum that comes by!

15 fractional condos will be built on top of hotel wings [259 room resort hotel] and on top of the destination spa building, two and three bedrooms, lock-offs, robust rental program and fully leveraged HOA budget with all hotel personnel and services right there. The one missing spot right now is the fractional experienced sales director for a February soft opening.

Mike Bosch, our advisory team leader, and I have finished a stint in Atlantic City for a luxury condo tower that chose not to sell the top floor units so it can have a fractional project. Atlantic City? Yup. Only $11 billion going into new development on top of the $11 billion already invested. As they have seen the regional [Indian] casinos take away a lot of the day business they are transforming themselves into more of a Vegas, destination location.

Morgan Stanley's gaming company has launched a 3900-room hotel and when it is 'all in' the tab will be $2.5 billion, not to mention the new MGM Grand and a deck of others. Atlantic City is a happening place. . A new, twice-a-day train from Penn Station will begin this summer.

There are some 50 fractional condos, 1/6th shares, eventually. All amenities are in and in the building, and of course Atlantic City is the big amenity. There's a need for a sales director here, too. The good news is that the developer is very experienced in PA and well-established in Atlantic City.

Star is launching its 'Star Sales Education Center' in January. It's purpose is to inculcate the Star-way of selling to our new sales directors and sales teams, and not loose our grasp on how we have grown up with the fractional selling business.