The concept could challenge the time-share industry, observers tell GlobeSt.com.

"We're on the threshold of substantial growth in the luxury, recreational home industry in South Florida," Lewis M. Goodkin, president of Miami-based Goodkin Consulting, a PricewaterhouseCoopers strategic partner, tells GlobeSt.com. "We're going to see more people finding this type of product as better suited to meet their needs than conventional second-home products."

It's also a trend that many experts attribute to the outgrowth in demand for second-homes in the ski resort destinations such as Aspen, CO, but is now expanding into metropolitan vacation markets in California, New York, Florida and other states.

"The concept has been around for a while; it's just being reinvigorated," Karen Valanzano, a spokesperson for the American Resort Development Association, a Washington, DC-based trade group, tells GlobeSt.com. "Part of that has to do with the high quality and the players that have got involved."

The trend involves more than just time-share and fractional ownerships, as large hotel companies are pursuing ventures in South Florida for the development of luxury condominium units adjacent to their high-end resorts and hotels.

Just over the past several months, for instance, the Miami market has seen the announcement of several new projects backed by companies such as Boston-based Sonesta International Hotels Corp., Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Dallas-based Rosewood Hotels & Resorts Inc. and Atlanta-based Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. Inc.

Those four projects along the Miami seaside particularly target wealthy homeowners who simply want full ownership in a vacation condominium with access to five-star and four-star resort accommodations.

The potential return from investment in this product also is spawning a new wave of luxury, multifamily-resort condominiums to meet the demand of an affluent segment of the society that wants all the trappings of luxury home ownership without the cost and upkeep.

Other projects are diversifying, however, by offering the same market fractional ownership in condominiums.

"You're not only buying and owning a piece of real estate that you'll probably use for only a limited time for vacations, but you also have access to all the services of a first-class hotel," Bert Blicher, president of Philadelphia-based Resort Development Advisors Inc., tells GlobeSt.com.

Resort Development is a consulting company advising Castillo Grand on the development on a mixed-use St. Regis-brand, hotel-condominium project in Fort Lauderdale. Work is about to begin on the $160 million hotel-condominium project, which will offer 20 units with fractional ownership on a site adjacent to the planned 240-room, five-star hotel.

"We're taking a condominium and selling four to six to eight shares per unit," Blicher says. "Fort Lauderdale is clearly an upcoming place for this market. There are only a couple of projects on the drawing board (in Fort Lauderdale) that are planning these high-end, resort-club fractionals as a quality place for vacation homes."

Because of the potential for success, Goodkin says, commercial real estate and hospitality companies are bound to find even newer ways to extract a profit from this concept.

"There is a movement from these primarily vertical-attached products to more imaginative type of products because of the value," Goodkin says. "When you look at a fractional share in a luxury single-family home, with all the furnishings, in the range of half a million dollars, then there are a lot of other opportunities that can be addressed."

(Part two of this series takes a more in-depth look at the recreational, second-home market in South Florida.)

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GlobeSt.com SPECIAL: Demand Fuels Spurt in Recreational Home Development

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