Retired from cruise service, ship will be nice to come home to
Paul Luke
Province
Individual condo cabins on the Pacific Aurora will range from $189,000 to $599,000.
Ahoy, room-matey!
Home hunters and salty dogs with a thirst for buoyant lifestyles can dive right into a condo ship docking soon in the Vancouver area.
Waterfront Lifestyles International, a maritime-lodging company, is selling 22 condo units on a retired cruise ship being renovated at a Lower Mainland shipyard.
Individual condo cabins on the Pacific Aurora range from $189,000 for a single room to $599,000 for a larger suite that sleeps four to six people, Waterfront Lifestyles marketing manager Mark Boyd said yesterday.
The Aurora will be at an area dock five days a week and, two or three weekends a month, take short sightseeing cruises to spots along the Pacific coast such as Victoria, Campbell River or the Sunshine Coast, Boyd said.
“A guy could live on board and go to work downtown,” Boyd said. “Or it could be a home for a retired couple who want an extra bedroom when relatives or friends come to town.”
Once a year, the Aurora will take a more ambitious, two-week voyage to destinations such as San Francisco or Alaska.
Amenities for the ship’s 40 to 50 residents include three meals a day and housekeeping. Among the commonly owned facilities are a dining room, lounge and sun decks.
Waterfront Lifestyles, a unit of Florida-based Marine Growth Ventures, is hiring a local crew to operate, manage and maintain the ship.
Given the costs of onboard life, homeowners’ association annual maintenance fees are a bit steeper than many landlubbers are used to. They range from $12,000 to $32,000, depending on size and location of a unit.
For owners who want to generate an income, a management association will rent their units.
“That’s a good way to offset the annual homeowners’ association fee,” Boyd said. “If you rent it 60 days a year, you’ve basically taken care of your whole fee.”
Renovations to the Aurora — Waterfront Lifestyle is knocking out walls to create larger condo quarters — will be done in one to two months, Boyd said.
In the meantime, buyers deposit 20 per cent of the cost of a unit into an escrow account.
When the renovation is done, Waterfront will take the buyers on a walk-through of the ship they will co-own, Boyd said.
“If they change their mind, their money is fully refunded, with interest,” he said.
The Aurora is the first of five condo ships Waterfront Lifestyles wants to launch over the next 12 months in mid-sized cities.
The next port will likely Tampa, followed by Panama City, Sarasota or Jacksonville — all Florida communities — and Savannah, Ga.
“A lot of these ships are becoming available because the cruise lines are retiring their smaller inventory,” Boyd said. “They’re no longer economic to operate as cruise ships but they’re ideal for what we want to do.”
Units on a condo ship operated by an unrelated company sell for several million dollars each, Boyd said. “We’re offering something that’s far more affordable.”
© The Vancouver Province 2008
