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| The Private Resort Home Market: An Investment Outlook |
A Winter Retreat
John Ferry
06/01/2005
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“Our place looks right onto the Sea of Cortez, which is absolutely
phenomenal,” says Heyliger Blair. The Denver man often trades his views of the
Rockies for vistas of Baja at the Paraiso del Mar development in La Paz. The
Blairs also own resort properties—although not in any specific developments—in
Vail Valley and on the Maine coast.
“This is a lifestyle choice, so I don’t
think of these in terms of investment performance,” explains Blair, an oil and
gas executive. He purchased at Paraiso del Mar to have a warm destination to
escape to during the winter.
Blair has a strict preference for developments
that are relatively self-contained so the family does not have to rely on a car
to get around. “I like to be fairly close to the golf course, the beach, tennis,
things like that. And as I have four children, it’s nice to be able to have some
autonomy for the kids, so they can get around on their own. I have a 20-year-old
who is a sophomore at college. He likes to go down on his
vacations.”
Before buying in Mexico, Blair considered properties in Florida,
the Caribbean and Arizona. “Travel time was a factor, but the thing that put me
off the other properties was the fact that we would need a car once we got
there,” he says.
While he decided on the property based on its lifestyle
value, Blair assiduously monitors the values of his other homes. He bought his
house in Maine in 1998 and his Vail property in 1992. He says the value of the
former has increased five-fold (on paper), while the latter has more than
doubled. He thus remains upbeat about the long-term investment outlook for his
Mexico home. “I’ve had a lot of luck with the two houses that I’ve owned, which
are basically just like resort houses,” in high-end developments, he notes. Back to Main Article: The
Private Resort Home Market: An Investment Outlook
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