Condo Hotels: The Latest Twist In Buying a Vacation Residence

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Condo Hotels: The Latest Twist
In Buying a Vacation Residence

By Michael Corkery
From The Wall Street Journal Online

Hoping to cash in on Americans' appetite for vacation properties, hotels are increasingly selling something new: a piece of the hotel.

In the past few years, developers have started aggressively marketing "condo hotels," which look and feel like regular hotels with one difference -- you can buy an individual room. Owners can use that room whenever they want, and they also share in any income when the hotel rents it out to other guests.

Properties like these aren't entirely a new concept: Real-estate mogul Donald Trump developed an early one 14 years ago. However, today the number is rising. As of December, condo-hotel rooms made up 11% of the roughly 113,170 new hotel rooms under construction in the U.S., according to Smith Travel Research, based in Hendersonville, Tenn.
-- February 28, 2006

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