WHISTLER, British Columbia
View All Lifestyles
Multimedia
Slide Show
Mountain Views
It was love at first schuss for Dale Geringer and his relatives when they took a ski vacation a dozen years ago in Whistler, the Canadian mountain resort town that is to be co-host of the Winter Olympics with Vancouver in 2010. Near the end of the vacation Mr. Geringer, a Los Angeles resident, started shopping for a condominium along with his parents. “We actually bought a place that week,” Mr. Geringer said.
They kept right on buying over the next few years, and now own several properties in Whistler, which is about 75 miles north of Vancouver. The jewel in their home portfolio is the log house that Mr. Geringer and his brother Robert bought in late 2005.
Unlike their other Whistler properties, this home was more about family than financials. “With the condos, it was primarily income driven,” said Mr. Geringer, who owns a gift shop in Los Angeles. “We knew we could use them when we wanted to, but they were one- and two-bedroom units, so we could never go up as a group.”
With five bedrooms and more than 4,200 square feet of living space on three levels, the log home is a place that Mr. Geringer, his two brothers, their wives and his parents can stay together as an extended family. “We thought it was someplace that everybody could use at the same time,” he said.
The other thing Mr. Geringer and his brother liked is that the house — which they bought for 3.2 million Canadian dollars (about $2.7 million at the time) — is that it feels like a home rather than a showpiece.
“What appealed to us about this property is that it’s not super fancy,” he said. “It’s very homey; it’s very warm. It’s someplace you can put your feet up on the furniture and relax.”
That feeling is evident in the living room, where a casual grouping of overstuffed sofas and chairs takes advantage of both the large river-rock fireplace and the view of the golf course and ski hills through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Mr. Geringer’s favorite room is the downstairs game space, dominated by a red-felted pool table and a large flat-screen TV. And the children’s room has five curtained bed nooks and faux rugs painted onto the floor.
The folksy touches and the furnishings came with the house; the Geringers haven’t changed much inside, apart from removing a hot tub that had created moisture problems downstairs, and replacing it with a large claw-foot tub on a raised platform. It gives bathers a bird’s-eye view of golfers on the Arnold Palmer-designed course below.
Outside, they recently expanded the deck and installed a hot tub, and are in the process of adding a two-car garage in the same style as the house.
Mr. Geringer’s parents, who live in Palm Springs, Calif., usually spend the month of August in Whistler to play golf and to hike the town’s network of walking trails. Mr. Geringer likes to visit at least twice each winter for skiing and twice in the summer for golfing, bike-riding and training for marathon runs. “If it was just a ski hill,” he said, “I would not have bought there. It has so many things going for it.”
Marshall Viner of Sutton Whistler West Coast Realty, who sold the house to the Geringers, says many American buyers prefer Whistler to resort towns like Aspen and Vail because “it’s not ostentatious here.”
He added: “If you go out for dinner, you don’t have to wear a fur coat. In fact, if you do wear a fur coat, people might look at you and think, ‘Wow, you’re in the wrong place.’ ”
According to Mr. Viner, families with young children especially appreciate the relaxed atmosphere at restaurants and shops in the town, which is home to about 9,000 year-round residents.
Pat Kelly, owner of Whistler Real Estate, agreed with this assessment, adding, “We don’t have the celebrity focus that some of the other major resorts south of the border have.”
Mr. Kelly and Mr. Viner both say the steep decline in the value of the dollar has had a substantial impact on the number of Americans buying in Whistler. The Canadian dollar, nicknamed the loonie, is now hovering around parity with the American dollar; its historic low, in 1998, was 63 cents. “Absolutely, there has been a big impact,” Mr. Viner said, noting that he is seeing at least 25 percent fewer American buyers now than he did a year or two ago.
More stringent border checks, the result of increased post-2001 security, have also contributed to putting off American buyers, Mr. Kelly said. While they once accounted for 12 to 15 percent of all Whistler real estate deals, “it’s certainly down into single-digit territory now,” he said.
But Mr. Viner said most real estate investors who hoped to cash in on Whistler’s heightened Olympic profile had most likely bought property years ago, with an eye to selling this year or in 2009.
The Geringers rent out their house when they are not using it, but say they have no plans to sell in the foreseeable future, despite the substantial profit they have made on paper.
Mr. Geringer said that he had not seen a resort town that compared with Whistler, and that he hoped Vancouver residents appreciated its presence in their own backyard. “Whistler is a little more spectacular when you come from Los Angeles or San Diego or Phoenix than it is for somebody driving up from Vancouver,” he said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “You’ve got the beauty in Vancouver — we don’t have that kind of scenery down here.”
