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...matter of the taxpayers we were already losing." Tena Constas is one of those prodigal Michiganders, a location scout for Betty Anne Waters who recently moved back after five years in Chicago. One of the draws? "Everything costs less here," she says. Constas bought a three-unit house and rents out two of the flats to visiting crew members. She even made some extra money when the director of an HBO pilot set some scenes in her apartment. But she says Michigan's appeal as a location goes beyond the dollar value. "It can double for almost anything...
When 67-year-old Gary Furbee and his wife Rose decided to go shopping for a time-share vacation home in Hawaii, they couldn't believe the bargains. The couple had rented a two-bedroom ocean-view penthouse unit at Marriott's Ko Olina Beach Club on Oahu in 2007, liked it and resolved to watch for resales. The Furbees thought the recession might flush out some distressed sellers, but they were stunned by how far prices had plunged. "At Marriott, it was [listed] for between $50,000 and $60,000, but we paid $18,400," Gary says. He bought...
...decline has been," says Scott Berman, U.S. leader of hospitality and leisure consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even time-shares at top lodging companies are taking hits: Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide reported a 48% decline in revenues from its vacation-ownership business in the fourth quarter, with the average price per unit plunging 31%. Similarly, Marriott International posted a 32% revenue drop in time-share sales. David Loeb, a senior analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., sees more pain ahead. He projects Starwood's vacation-ownership sales revenues to fall an additional 27% and Marriott's an additional...
...temptingly inexpensive, experts warn they should be vacation plays, not investment plays. "Don't buy it to flip it," cautions Howard Nusbaum, president of the American Resort Development Association. Buyers need to be cautious and carefully read all the fine print in the contracts, especially when purchasing a resale unit. State laws regulate sales of new time-shares but not resales...
...Frederick, a former editor atTIME, is writing a book about Green's unit, titled Black Hearts: One Platoon's Disintegration in the Triangle of Death and the American Ordeal in Iraq, which is to be published in spring 2010 by Harmony Books...