The new equity destination club is seeing some good initial success as it adds investors and homes. The two newest home locations are Longboat Key, Florida and Deer Valley, Utah. The fund is planning to close its charter member round and raise investment rates for new members.
Longboat Key
The 4 bedroom waterfront home (pictured above) was acquired over the summer and underwent a full remodel prior to opening for members. Now that it's refurbished, the first investment partner just stayed there over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Located in the Country Club Shores, this home offers coastal access with its own dock, an enclosed pool overlooking the waterfront, beach cruisers, stand up paddle boards, a new gourmet kitchen, and plenty of space for beach and waterfront fun.
Investors staying at this home can take one of the stand up paddle boards and paddle a few minutes over to the Old Salty Dog for lunch.
Deer Valley/Park City
The 5 bedroom, over 5,000 sqft home in Park City is on the edge of old town. It has large spacious rooms, a game room and great mountain views. The fund is currently remodeling and refurbishing this residence and expects the home to be ready for members to catch the end of the ski season. The fund also owns the neighboring 3 bedroom residence.
Equity Residences launched two funds earlier this year but has subsequently decided to combine the two, since the villa fund was getting more interest from investors than the condo fund.
The Fund has now built a portfolio of 6 residences with homes in Maui, Palm Springs, and Mammoth Mountain as well as the two new locations above.
Fund Director Greg Salley told me that future target locations, which take a lot of input from investor/partner requests, are South Florida and South Carolina on the East coast and Hawaii and Lake Tahoe in the west.
The fund will be ending its charter period at the end of the year, when unit pricing will rise from $96,000. The most common share purchases so far have been for 1.5 units with some investors buying 1 unit and some buying 2 units. A unit entitles an investor to about two weeks usage a year. Greg mentioned that investors had come from all over the USA, plus London, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Equity Residences has a slight difference in its model to many of the destination clubs, in that it rents out time at its homes to third party renters. Overall the fund investors occupy the homes about 35% of the time and third party renters use them for another 35%. This rental income offsets the operating costs for the homes and means that there are no annual dues for investors.
