Developers Eye Cape Cod for Condo Conversion

(To read more on the multifamily market, click here.)

HYANNIS, MA-The quintessential Cape Cod cottage, long a haven for summer beach-goers, is quickly disappearing. So are the roadside hotels along busy Route 6. Both are being replaced by condominiums that have turned this sandy strip of land into one of the hottest condo development spots in the Bay State.

No one has an exact count as to how many hotels and cottage communities are morphing into upscale units but Cape Cod real estate brokers tell GlobeSt.com that the influx of new projects is changing the face of this summertime resort.

“Anything that has several units is being condo-ized,” says Jeff Cusack, with Century 21 Beach Road Real Estate in Orleans. “It’s very hard for someone who has owned a hotel on the beach for 30 years to say ‘No’ when someone offers $3 million for it.”

Developers have scooped up hotels along Shore Road in Truro, grabbed deeds to old cottage communities in Eastham and even acquired a children’s camp in Brewster in the condo conversion frenzy, Cusack says.

Here newly created development districts, which were designed to preserve the Cape’s fragile environment and limit development to the town’s center, have sparked a condo boom along Hyannis’ busy Main Street that is enveloping restaurants and office buildings as well.

“The new redistricting and rezoning of Hyannis has really opened a lot of opportunities for developers,” Margo Pisacano, with Seaport Village Realty, tells GlobeSt.com.

One of the first projects to be built under the new regulations will be located on the Centre Street site of the Storyland miniature golf course, which will be turned into a 36,000-sf mixed-use development, including 12,000 sf of ground-floor retail and 16 condominium units. Two more projects are also planned for Main Street. One calls for 22 condos to be built atop the single-story Hibel Museum. Another will be a mixed-use project that will include 29 units.

Along Craigsville Beach in Centerville, the 46-room Trade Winds Inn has already been converted into luxury beachfront units that are selling for between $500,000 and $1 million, Pisacano notes.

Whether all those units will find buyers anytime soon remains unclear but Cusack and Pisacano are optimistic. They say both the lower-end hotel conversions, which start in the $200,000s, and the higher-end luxury units, are selling briskly.