I can't say on the ownership side but I have rented a lot of ski condos, and I would say it depends. I have had rentals through Air B&B/VRBO where I only dealt with the owner and they were a bit more time consuming and some where even though the property was owned the rentals were all handled by the resort. The Air B&B still likely only took about an hour of my time and I would think about the same for the owner. The biggest thing is what you do for cleaning and allowing access. Lastly remember your renters won't be as nice to your property as you are so expect it to age much faster than if you lived in it. I was in a condo that was maybe 6 or 8 years old this year and the dings on the walls and what have you made the condo look 15+ years.
Ben

I've had an apartment in cham for 5.5 years.

Its a poor return, in part yield is lacking, but more so due to costs associated with renting; commission, meet and greet, laundry, cleaning, syndic (HOA) fees, taxes and insurance

We never had people wreck it but its a fairly high end apt and the management firms good

Then it burnt down - that was irritating

Now we are moving to the south of france - provence - and i'm 45 mins from closest skiing, 2 hours from good skiing and 5 hours from cham we will sell it

Even whilst i owned it we skiied in other places, i can get a 120 day season in from my house, keeping its a PITA

I don't have any regrets, its an amazing place to ski and we will always go back but its not worth keeping, if for the transaction costs alone

We've had a ski place for 15 years. We live far enough away from it (London vs Whistler) that it have to have a letting agent. Whilst expensive, having an agent removes the PITA factor significantly. If We lived an hour away I am not sure I would forego the letting agent unless one of us was not working and was prepared to be on call and willing to travel to it 24/7. Guests make odd requests at odd times of the day (a simple one being: "It's 7pm, we have just arrived and there is no gas in the bbq gas bottle. Can you fix that please?"). They also act as a filter against the nightmare guests.

I guess if you're looking at using it for 2/3 of the season you're pretty happy with the available skiing and restaurants (if food interests you). We have some friends with places in smaller French resorts and I personally would be bored to head back there after the first half dozen visits.

Buying somewhere in a resort that has a good set up in the summer is a good idea.

Be prepared to turn up to find light bulbs that have blown but haven't been replaced, glasses which are replacements for ones the guests have broken and which don't match the rest of your glasses, furniture moved around, small nicks here and there in the drywall, that sort of thing. That's pretty routine. Keep some filler and some touch up paint for all the walls handy.

For us capital value has fluctuated but right now we're pretty nicely ahead. On that front I'd say regard any capital return as a nice bonus, which it sound like you're going to do.

Anything more specific, just ask.

Yes, I can imagine that that would be tiresome...

I'm not sure thats the case. I averaged 20 wks / yr for 5.5 years and mine looked mint but it depends which end of the market you're at. We stayed in two total shit hole apartments this winter in la plagne in a 15 year old development which were awful but it was cheap and nasty

https://andrewmc36.smugmug.com/Chamonix/i-LZzpm4z


Dont know if that works


My neighbours

If you want to do it legally there is a big difference between renting 14 days or less and 15 or more in the US. I would read up on the rental tax rules and local rules- more towns are having rental licenses but it differs by town.

We have a ski condo but we don't rent it. I have been temped to do it for a week at a time once or twice a year- but we use it a lot.

I've been thinking of trying a vacation home swap site so we can trade beach for mountains. I would think people who are trading would take better care of your place.

Most people I know with have a primary rental and take leftover days (there are tax rule limits about how many days you can use an investment property - I think it's 14 as well in the US). Or they use and don't rent. If you get in the middle ground I think the taxes are complicated.

Make sure you calculate full cost of overship- we have a few friends who were really surprised by their first utility bill.

What resort? We rent in Whistler every year and if I were to consider buying a condo I would only do it at a place with good summer offerings. Whistler is an excellent summer destination. There are so many rentals there that I would imagine its fairly easy to have a good company manage your rental. If its a smaller resort that may be different.

We own a "nicer" townhouse in a Colorado ski town. I think the answer is "it all depends". Here are some of the questions we asked ourselves before making the purchase:

• how much do we have available to spend?
• are we buying it for an investment (money) or other (time with family) or both?
• what is the condition of the local real estate market? We bought in more of an up and coming ski town vs. an already inflated market like Breckendridge, etc.
• what is the local vacation rental market like? You can get a lot of info talking to brokers, other owners, cleaning companies, etc. They all have a good idea of the trends
• hiring a management co. vs. managing yourself. Being only 70 miles away I would manage yourself. Some mtn town rental co's. charge up to 40% of revenue. The VRBO ap and website makes it INCREADIBLY easy to manage the marketing, booking, finances, etc.
• We found most of the services in town (cleaning co's, hot tub cleaning, etc.) are all a huge help in getting you set up and scheduled etc.
• Calculate total costs. Costs of carrying, HOA, fees, etc.

We are glad we made the purchase and would do it again.

 
We're looking at a 1 bedroom condo at one of the two largest ski resorts in Maine. It will be ski in/ out with access to a shared pool/ hot tub. Both resorts are established and there aren't going to be any new ski areas in the north east anytime soon. We could afford it outright, but would hope to recoup some money since I don't see this as a real investment property. The rental market for similar condos is $300-$400 a night and sleep 4-6 with a pull out couch. I'd be looking to rent it for up to 20 nights days total including Christmas and February vacations, best case scenario would be two full weeks and 2-3 more weekends.. The market is generally people from greater Boston driving up Friday afternoons and returning on Sundays. I'm leaning toward managing it myself. I'd ski on Sundays anyway so I could inspect it after renters leave and just need to have it cleaned before the following Friday. Thus, barring someone trashing the place, the only real commitment would be my time. Another option for us to consider at least for the first year is renting it to friends and friends of family for a 30% discount of current rates for people we could trust to leave the place spotless. We've done similar arrangements as renters with people we know with water front property. I've reached out to a couple brokers regarding fees, restrictions, etc. (some properties require them to manage all rentals) and we'll go from there. We have plenty of time before next season. Also, while there is golf, hiking, rafting, etc., the off season demand for these properties is slow, so there could be motivated sellers.

thanks for input and I'll check out VRBO.

H

When we were buying we found it really helpful to VRBO a place in the complex we were considering for a weekend. Granted we were buying for ourselves. But talking to the neighbors gave lots of info on HOA, train noise and just gave a feel for if that was where we wanted to be. During mud season people will usually rent to you for super cheap. We enjoyed weekends away and ended up with a place we loved after test driving quite a few. I would think as a rental knowing different local properties would allow you to better sell your place.

where is your place?

Winter Park, CO

This. We looked into it, and the way the rules are set up there's not much middle ground... If it's declared as a rental, you don't get to write off any mortgage interest deduction, and if you take the deduction as a second home then I think 2 weeks total is the rental limit for the year. Of course, you could just rent to friends and such under the table, but if you want enough rental volume to actually generate regular income from it and go though all the 3rd-party cleaning and so forth then that gets to be a problem.

I would consider altitude and length of winters

I know nothing about Maine, But I'd not buy anywhere in europe without skiing over 2km simply because winters are getting shorter and lower resorts are being hammered and if you anticipate owning it over a longer period of time or passing it on, you might not want to be stuck with a property on hill with daisy's in the middle of January in a decades time.

I seriously considered this at a resort about 1.5 hrs away from me, after we rented a condo there.

In my experience:

If you can get in on the ground floor (figuratively, not literally) then you have a chance at it. If you buy when it's built it's not too bad. If you're buying from an owner already, the best I could hope for is to make back utilities/condo fees/etc. I'd be on the hook for the mortgage, but that would be it and it would allow me to use it 50-75% of the weekends in the winter and 25% of the weekends in the other 3 seasons (at not at all midweek, ever).

It doesn't add up, for me anyways. It varies by location, and how much money you have lying around to invest. If I had more money for the condo itself, I would have seriously considered it. If you grow tired of it, you would be able to make a little money at it.

 
My biggest concern is our children (9 and 4) not wanting to ski in a couple of years/ hang out with friends versus the whole weekend on the mountain with mom and dad which I suspect will be real at least to some degree in the teenage years. The prospect of buying one and not using it worries me more than not renting it out. If I could make condo fees plus 1/2 utilities, I'd consider it a steal. Even with the criteria, we're looking at ski in/ out, pool on-site, etc., there are a fair amount of properties at both resorts we are looking at. Instead of falling in love with a specific location and paying near asking price, I expect to possibly make non-concurrent low offers on multiple properties. If it works out, it works out, something I'm kicking the tires on versus something I'm committed to.

That said, I should start a post on realtors and not giving a shit. I contacted several realtors three to four days ago, all of which stand to make 5 figures from their clients and not a single one has gotten back to me. I was hoping for a day trip this weekend to look at multiple properties with quite possibly making an offer by next week won't happen as Mrs. H., made other plans for us. Also, next weekend is shot with kid sports and b-day parties.

We have noticed our neighbors show up less as kids hit about 10-12.

We bought ours when our daughter was 3 knowing it may be a short window of years before sports and friends took over. So that is a legitimate concern.

One thing to consider is can you buy a place with less amenities close to a place with nice amenities you can pay a fee to use? We have had two ski condos over the years and done this. A punch pass to the local rec center is a lot more affordable than the hoa maintaining a not as nice pool. Especially if you go through a period of time where you are not using it.

The financial state of the HOA is very important to look into as well. Many are not very well managed and end up with big assessments for unbudgeted needs. If the economy takes a down turn this is also big if a number of owners stop paying fees- there were a lot around us that had to jack up fees to the active owners in the last downturn here to cover expenses while others were not paying. Mine is outside of Winter Park, CO as well so not sure on the East coast experience.

I still remember the very first day I walked our eldest, then aged 3, from the condo to the lifts wondering whether she was going to hate skiing, and if so how much of a financial hit I'd have to take to offload our condo. This Easter just gone I walked her, aged 17, up to the lifts for the final day of her CSIA level 1 exam (which she passed). So things worked out ok.

I think the problem you raise is a real one though, for reasons that you're likely to encounter but which I never did. When our girls moved to secondary school (aged 11) their weekends during school terms were instantly turned over to homework and sports. Big big difference from life at primary school. And then the parties came later. So had we been looking to use our place as a family on weekends regularly, we would likely as not found ourselves thwarted at least during school terms.

Our set up is somewhat different though: we travel from London to Whistler each Easter during the school holidays for a skiing holiday of 10-14 days. So for us the homework/sports/friends/parties thing hasn't been an issue.

It's also helped that we've never really made any concessions to our girls in terms of the terrain, or snow conditions or visibility - keeps them learning and interested in improving.

One other option is reaching out to VRBO people or looking on craigslist about renting for a season or a month or two. Of our friends who have done a seasonal rental only about 25% went on to buy after seeing how much they actually used a place.

We did a few month long rentals before buying and what we thought we wanted and what we got are quite different.

We know people that do half rentals too where you get every other week. Which usually works out pretty well.

For us, size of development impacts longterm outlook of quality. With many apartments there is rarely consensus to spend needed money resulting in it being a pit.

do you post on snowheads? This story sounds familiar, and I spent a lot of time on that site this year because I skied in Europe.

Yep. I started a thread on there asking about L1 qualifications and how easy it would be to get a job down the line. Got a contact with the supervisor of Whistler Kids out of it, who really kindly made some time to speak to eldest daughter while we were there about things to make sure were prominent on her cv, timings and so on.