If one wants to ascertain the state of the green building industry, shared vacation condos – also known as “fractionals” – are a good place to start. While many will settle for an uninspiring exurb lot near a convenient highway entrance for their home, their vacation homes reflect more of their aspirations and ideals. When purchasing vacation homes, pristine landscapes and plenty of “green” features have attracted the educated, affluent buyers who are the bread and butter of this market. But in the face of the current lengthy recession, how are green features holding up? Are they still the must-have amenity or feature that can command a premium price?

“The green movement was gaining a lot of momentum until last fall (2008). I think it’s still there, but it’s not the primary [buying] decision factor that it was,” says Perry Williams, developer of the fractional Maine Resort Club in the Sebago Lakes region of that state.

Williams expresses a growing realization among green developers – that while green features are still important, they have been overtaken by price considerations by those weighing vacation condo purchases.

A survey of shared vacation condo marketing from around the Americas illustrates how this new reality is settling in.

Partnered with Audubon

The developers of Spruce Peak at Stowe Mountain Resort in Stowe, Vermont, have assiduously polished the project’s green credentials. They have partnered with the Audubon Society on various aspects of the resort and picked up a number of environmental awards for the 35-acre, 500-unit development that sits in the middle of thousands of acres of conservation land.

“We’ve worked with dozens of groups in the permitting process, to understand the (area) stakeholders’ goal of keeping the rivers clean and minimizing the sprawl,” says Walter Frame, vice president and director of development at Spruce Peak.

Numerous aspects of the development reflect the green development and planning process. The slopes of Spruce Peak’s golf course were designed to work with the existing land’s contours, and there is a buffer between it and the conservation land – the space serves as a bear migration route. Instead of conventional granular fertilizer, the golf course distributes liquid fertilizer through its irrigation system, minimizing leakage into the area’s ground water. The project’s homes – a mix of duplex townhouses, single-family homes and one eighth-share fractionals starting at $359,000 for a 1,975-square-foot two-bedroom – feature a variety of green features. All the homes have low-E windows and have been carefully sited for maximum solar heat gain.

Heat recovery systems take energy normally emitted from mechanical rooms and recycle it for use in living areas. Waterless urinals are used in the golf clubhouse and base lodge, and the electric systems were designed with input from the non-profit Efficiency Vermont to exceed local building codesin energy savings.

In talking about the cost of incorporating green design at Spruce Peak, Frame expresses a theme that has beenpushed to the front these days: being green isn’t anywhere near as expensive as people think.

Differentiating between month-to-month operating costs and upfront building costs, Frame says, “There’s two parts, the first costs and the operating cost. By building efficient and sustainable buildings,” says Frame, “you minimize operating costs for the owner.”

On the upfront side of Spruce Peak, Frame says “building smarter” helped bring down its green construction costs.

For example, he says they used Vermont Eastern white pine wood for trim and flooring instead of Western Red Cedar, benefiting local tree growers and sparing cross-county truck delivery costs. The golf course clubhouse was milled and farmed from trees harvested from clearing the golf course.

All of the houses were sited to face south, and the living areas that residents frequent were placed on the south side of the building, resulting in a windfall of passive solar energy. “It doesn’t cost anything to rotate the building before you put it in the ground,” says Frame, who notes the placement of the community swimming pool was also carefully analyzed to maximize solar heat.

“We found it’s really not costing more[to build green], we’re just building smarter,” he says.

Green Materials in Stock

Green real estate consultant Michael Masters says green building costs are dipping due to a number of factors. “I’ve seen the price for green coming down. I’m shocked by how much it’s coming down,” says Masters, who works with developers in Southern Oregon.

A recent 1,600-square-foot green house on a quarter-acre lot in Grants Pass, Oregon, recently was listed for $270,000 – only $10,000 more than a similar non-green home in the same area, Masters says.

The reason for the narrowing gap between green and non-green? Masters says, “This [green] home would have been $20,000 more two years ago because everything was special-order then.” Today, he notes, green caulking, paint, Energy Star appliances and green building materials are now readily in stock at local supply houses and are “becoming the norm.”

The drop in the cost of green, says Masters, has coincided with a shift in which buyers are still looking for green features but they’re not as important as before the recession.

“What they aren’t doing now is going out shopping and saying, ‘I want to buy a green house and I’ll pay any price,’ says Masters. “But if you have people who have a higher green consciousness and offer them two like projects, but one is being touted as being green and they (the buyer) can support the environment, then that’s where they’re going to buy,” he says.

Builders for their part are saying, “‘Well, maybe I can’t win in the bidding war (with non-green houses), I’m too invested in my land. I’m going to have to turn out a competitively-priced product.’ But to make sure it sells, they want it to have green features,” says Masters.

The competitive advantage of green homes is now so compelling that “builders seem to be more willing to build a green home for speculation than a conventional home,” he says.

Construction Costs Near Zero

At Maine Lakefront Club in the Sebago Lakes Region, construction costs are near zero because this fractional resident club buys existing premium lakefront residences and retrofits, or recycles, them into eighth-share fractionals.

“The real green concept of this is one home satisfies eight families, instead of building eight homes that would sit empty three-quarters of the time,” says Williams.

As of this summer, the Maine Lake-front Club has purchased its first home, a 5 ½ bedroom, 4,550-square-foot log home with lakefront access and sandy beach. Shares go for $275,000 and allow the owner pre-planned long-term reservations along with short-notice stays.

Williams is now scouring the SebagoLakes region for additional homes that will allow members full use of 20 homes in total when the club is fully built out. When a potential property becomes available in the Sebago Lakes region, Williams, a pilot, takes his seaplane up for a good look at its proximity to the water and layout. If it looks promising, he’ll return by car for a closer inspection of the property.

The green concept for the Maine Lakefront Club was born out of necessity, says Williams. Land around Sebago Lake is in extremely short supply and “most of the best spots were built on long ago,” he says.

But buyers are still interested in a premium lakefront residence, despite a down economy and less cash to purchase these getaway properties, he says. That interest led Williams to adopt the fractional business plan – which he says is new to the region.

“The go-go days are behind us and this is a new economy, a new way of thinking about your second-home experience,” he says.

Eco-tourism Belt

In Costa Rica, a new 104-unit quarter-share fractional on the Pacific coast has been designed to appeal to the carbon-consciousness of the greenest buyers. Called Tranquilo, which means tranquil in Spanish, the development sits next to an oxygen-rich tropical rain forest, a top-shelf draw for eco-tourists.

Green features in the units start with floor-to-ceiling glass with louvered windows that allow cross breezes, minimizing air conditioning use. Solar water heaters make the most of the tropical sun which beats down on the development, which is within a 750-acre private nature reserve, Punta Leona.

The landscaping utilizes all native plants and plants displaced during construction have been replanted on site. Rainwater is collected for use in the Tranquilo swimming pool, and is mixed with onsite “gray water” for irrigation purposes.

Finally, the developer is throwing in an electric vehicle with each purchase, for owners to use during their stays.

Despite the sterling green credentials, developer Rick Valentine is mostly talking about the bang for the buck that buyers can find at Tranquilo, where per-square-foot prices range from $350 to $450 for the studio and one-, two-, and three-bedroom units.

Among its best values, says Valentine, is that Tranquilo purchasers get automatic bargain-basement membership in The Registry Collection, a high-end international timeshare exchange with a huge portfolio of luxury properties. “We are, by a very high margin – probably by a factor of four – the most affordable passport into The Registry Collection. Our most inexpensive units start at around $60,000 for a studio, and the least expensive property in the Registry Collection is $250,000," says Valentine, president of Latitude Destination Properties, based in Encinitas, California.

Prospective buyers are obviously drawn to Tranquilo by its extremely green features, but Valentine says value now competes with green in buying decisions.

“In this day and age, people have gone back to, ‘Does it make financially good sense, is it a good deal?’” he says. “In the international market, while I think green has some level of importance, it’s just as important that they’re (buyers) getting a good deal, because people are obviously still reeling from the financial crisis. We’ve really positioned this as the intelligent ownership option, given the troubled times.”

And as the times have changed, prospective shared vacation homeowners are now looking for low cost along with a low carbon footprint.

Jim Douglass is the managing editor of New England Condominium magazine.