Your Second Home: Utah & Colorado
May 3, 2004
Rick Guerin had one condition when shopping for a vacation home: It had to have
it all.
“I wanted a house that I could ski from in winter and fly-fish,
mountain bike and ride my horses from in summer,” says the 74-year-old investor.
It also had to be easy for family and friends to get to, yet private enough so
it would balance his hectic life in Beverly Hills.
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Condos at Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, Utah. (Click image to enlarge)He found the perfect spot
at the Colony at White Pine Canyon, a collection of single-family homesites in
Park City, Utah. The large lot size allowed Guerin to build a 13,000-square-foot
home as well as a six-stall horse barn that also has private guest
accommodations. He can gear up in his ski room, step out the door and, with a
few pole plants, be on the trails of the Canyons, the country’s fifth-largest
ski resort. In the summer he can saddle up or ride his mountain bike on a
22-mile loop that winds through private forests and meadows.
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The Colony in Park City, Utah, is offering ski-in/ski-out homesites from 4 to
113 acres and custom houses that start at $5.9 million. (Click image to enlarge)“It’s nice to
have one house do it all,” says Guerin. Many like-minded second home buyers want
their vacations to be immediate and hassle-free. They want to get away without
taking too long to get there, and when they arrive they want everything taken
care of—seamless airport transfers, refrigerators stocked, sidewalks shoveled,
and dinner and tee times reserved. Guerin sees his vacation property as an
extension of his Beverly Hills home. He spends several weekends during the ski season and weeks at a time during the summer there
entertaining his family of 10 and numerous friends. When his private plane lands
in Salt Lake City, he has a 40-minute drive to his home.
“The proximity to
the airport is the biggest selling point for us by far,” says Steve Chin of Deer
Valley Real Estate, where the second home market is rebounding after a building
spurt that occurred prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics. “A soft market, the war
and the overall economy brought our market to a standing halt in 2002,” says
Chin. “But now consumer confidence is building, and people are taking the
plunge.” They are snapping up an array of vacation home opportunities, from
turnkey condo hotels to sprawling mountain ranches. “Values have dropped and
created buying opportunities that we have not seen in Park City in more than
eight years,” says Chin.
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