Resort-Area Land
Gets Another Lift
As skiers rush to buy homes and condos at the base of their favorite mountain, prices for land around the resorts are rising. That will give resort operator Intrawest Corp. a boost when it sells off 44 acres of land at Keystone Resort in Colorado.
Intrawest, which is a public company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, operates resorts ranging from Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia to Stratton Mountain in Vermont to Mountain Creek in New Jersey. It came to own the land a little more than a year ago when it dissolved its development partnership with rival ski-resort operator Vail Resorts Inc. at Keystone.
When the two companies parted ways, each received land within the resort, and Vail Resorts assumed control of the existing commercial property at Keystone. A Vail Resorts spokeswoman says the company hasn't yet decided whether it will bid on the property.
The property, which is being subdivided into four parcels, has received local approvals for either 303 condominium units or about 120 single-family homes.
Selling off the property "is a prudent move" for Intrawest, says Will Marks, an analyst at JMP Securities in San Francisco. Selling the land allows Intrawest to quickly generate cash and likely achieve a solid profit, given the high prices being paid for resort real estate, he said. "It's unbelievable what people have been paying," Mr. Marks said.
A Bit o' the Irish
Irish investors have been making pricey moves into the U.S. real-estate market in the past year.
Last week, Sloane Capital, an investment firm backed by Irish horse-racing magnates John Magnier and J.P. McManus, purchased the Rhinelander Mansion at 867 Madison Ave. in New York for about $75 million, nearly $2,700 a square foot, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc., a real-estate research firm in New York. The property, which dates to the 1890s, was renovated by Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. in the 1980s and now houses the retailer's flagship store.
That acquisition comes on the heels of a buying spree by Anglo Irish Bank Corp. of Dublin. Last month, the bank's North American unit snapped up Marketplace Center, a retail development in Boston, for $52 million, or $980 a square foot. Anglo Irish Bank made its first U.S. acquisition five months ago, paying more than $210 million for 222 East 41st St., a 372,000-square-foot office building in New York.
Tony Campbell, the chief executive of Boston-based Anglo Irish Bank North America, says the purchases were made on behalf of the bank's high-net-worth clients in Ireland and Britain, who want to diversify their investments into U.S. real estate. "Interest rates are low here, the currency is weak and some of the European markets are expensive," says Mr. Campbell.
Easier Evictions
The new bankruptcy bill that the House of Representatives approved last week, and which President Bush is expected to sign, is a boon not only for credit-card companies and lenders, but residential landlords as well.
The measure closes a loophole that allows delinquent residents, who are facing eviction, to get a court-ordered halt to those proceedings and live in the unit without paying rent for at least a month by filing for bankruptcy, says Malcolm Bennett, president of International Realty & Investments Inc., a residential brokerage and property-management firm based in Los Angeles.
Building Block
EBay has nothing to worry about. Roger Kellogg's attempt to auction off space in his company's office park was something of a bust. Kellogg Development Co. leased only 14,982 square feet of space in its Jacksonville, Fla., office park, below the 15,000 square feet of space it said it would auction off, regardless of price. Mr. Kellogg had hoped to auction off 30,000 square feet of space. The real winners were the five top bidders, who will pay between $4.95 and $11.50 a square foot, below the market rate of about $13.50 a square foot. Still, Mr. Kellogg says he was happy with the results and plans to hold another lease auction next year.
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