September 2010 Blog

Just back from England. Among the meetings I had: Nick Turner of Registry Collection, Piers Brown of Fractional Life and James Dawson former operating officer of Premier Resorts.

England is in the trough as is the US, so very little action. But, a couple of bright spots: Pier's Miami conference was very well attended especially with delegates from the Caribbean and Central and South America. He has a Middle East conference coming up in November, so that participation will be interesting to follow. Lastly, Piers has his annual London-based conference in February and his numbers will be key to addressing the economic revival 'over there'.

Nick Turner's approach is to go out and bring the message to the market; country-by-country beginning December in Ireland and then in 2011 in Portugal, Spain and Italy plus other countries. These daylong meetings will feature a primer on fractions in the AM and then face to face contacts with practitioners in the afternoon. This is a kick-start for the local developers to get going with their planned projects.

From the trenches, so to speak, James Dawson is laying low [he bought a country inn in Wales] until he sees movement in the marketplace. One of his past sales execs is still doing very well working the high-income folk to buy sun-country homes at the current lower prices. His concern, as well as others, as well as us here in the US, is with prices for second homes; will they go lower than they now are?

Back here in America I am awaiting the mid-term elections, which will dictate the 2011 market. If the Republicans win back one of the Houses of Congress then I expect the market to open up a bit as there will be gridlock which we love to hate.

Progress on our deals? Slow but sure. We continue to be buffeted by buyers offering low-ball prices for our fractions. As those of us in the business for some time know this just did not happen 'back in the day'. Now, it's a free-for-all. The buyer expects to offer and get a price break not necessarily taking into account the inherent price break in the fraction itself.

So, Whitefish moves along. Interesting that Canadians, long-time buyers of Montana real estate, are now lecturing us on how lousy our economy is being managed compared to theirs as a reason for not buying.

At Dye Villas we are making sales while ramping up our marketing programs and our mini-vac lead generation programs. No home run numbers yet, but if there is any market in the Southeast we'll get it at Dye; the product, amenities and pricing are just too good for the buyer not to act -- if our sales team correctly handles the buyer.

ULI's semi annual meeting coming up in a few weeks, so more reports from the front line. And, keep a lookout for the Kelsey-Norden research report on buyers and non-buyers that they will be shortly previewing…I head it got some really good info in it.