Document text
Mountain Meadows to offer rentals By JOHN DARLING Daily Tidings Correspondent To meet the needs of a more cautious, post 9/11 senior housing market, Mountain Meadows is moving into the rental business. The retirement community on N. Mountain Ave. is offering seven units for rent - one, two and three bedroom condos on a month-to-month basis - to give prospective home buyers the chance to tryout the town and lifestyle for a number of months before possibly buying a condo or single family home, said Mountain Meadows president Madeline Hill. The rentals would also accommodate seniors who want to spend brief periods here to visit their adult children, to vacation in a temperate climate or to avoid the repairs, property taxes and other chores of home ownership, she said. In renting, Hill is also testing the waters to determine whether to construct the community's last building, the 40-to-45 unit Hilltop Apartments, as an all-rental building, she said. She said she expects the rentals to move well because most senior housing communities in the area are full, near-full or have waiting lists. The rentals are competitively priced for the area, she said, at $1,600 to $3,000 a month. Six of the seven units are in the Pavilion building, which was finished in January and has 26 empty units. Hill said the shift to rentals was not a move to fill empty condos. "We wish they were selling faster but senior housing doesn't sell overnight. They're selling about on schedule. We're offering rentals because people are cautious these days," said Hill. "When I talk to people in the industry, I hear sales have slowed down in all senior housing communities." In a down economy, with interest rates low and investment returns lagging, seniors are not adding to their retirement portfolios and don't have the buying power of a few years ago, she added. Buyers simply are "more hesitant" about making the buying decision. Since it opened a decade ago, Mountain Meadows has offered home ownership with no buy-in fee. Owners pay a sizeable monthly fee for spa, fitness center, garden, clubhouse and meals privileges. So that renters can have the same privileges, this fee will be folded into monthly rents. Mountain Meadows suffered a severe economic dip last winter - losing two-thirds of sales for three to four months - with headline-making news reports of excess copper in the community's water, Hill said. "It was never a problem here. It was a problem in the way the city treated water and they fixed it. We're doing fine now. We've paid off the clubhouse, fitness center and park and handed the deed over to the Home Owners Association." LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -