Buying a luxury vacation condo in Snowmass, Colo., might cost $650,000. For $2.5 million, you can get a well-equipped house near the slopes. Or, for $250,000, you can invest in an ownership share of a Snowmass vacation home, plus a piece of three other vacation properties in Maui, Lake Tahoe and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

A group of four Des Moines investors, each of whom have owned second homes, decided the third option made a lot of sense. About six months ago, Jeff Bartling and David Abbott, along with two other investors, bought four vacation homes and formed International Retreats LLC. The corporation is now marketing fractional ownership shares in the houses, which include ownership in a concierge service that will handle all arrangements associated with weeklong vacation stays, from dinner reservations to a vehicle waiting in each garage.

The group is marketing 50 investment shares, priced at $250,000 each, as a smart alternative to individual ownership of a vacation home, with the added luxury of having a choice of exotic locations.

“With (individual) second-home ownership, you’ve got a lot of your capital tied up in one asset, just so you can use it for three weeks a year,” said Bartling, who is a partner with LWBJ LLP, a West Des Moines-based accounting firm. “We each felt if we wanted to go on vacation, we wanted to go home.We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have four houses to go to, and (to do it) so that we would be owners using the home?’

Abbott, an Urbandale resident in the medical equipment sales business, is another principal of International Retreats and serves as its chief operating officer. Bartling declined to identify the other two investors.

A May 2003 national survery by Ragatz Associates, a research and consulting arm of Resort Condominiums International, identified more than 138 fractional interest resorts, with an additional 31 resorts identified that were in various stages of planning. The greatest number of fractional resorts are located in ski locations, followed by beach locations, then golf and urban areas, according to the report. The median income for luxury fractional home investors was $241,000.

The concept of fractional ownership of vacation homes has been popular among investors on both coasts, but hasn’t yet caught on among investors in the Midwest, Bartling said. Unlike time share arrangements or vacation membership organizations, International Retreats differs in being a true ownership group, he said.

“Once we started investigating it over the Web, we found this industry is really taking off,” he said. The investor group hopes to sell half the shares in Iowa and the remainder to investors across the country, by marketing the offering in upscale magazines such as Robb Report and through real estate agents in the areas in which the houses are located.

Investors will pay $8,500 in annual duesto cover the estimated cost of taxes, insurance and maintenance required for the homes, which in total Bartling said are valued at more than $7 million.

“You compare (the dues) to what it would cost to rent one of these houses for a week, and it’s far less,” he said.

With the exception of the “golden weeks” of Thanksgiving, Christmas and spring break, each week of the year is available through an online reservation system on a first-come, first-served basis. The three prime holiday weeks will be allocated through a lottery.

Once the group sells its first 50 shares, it plans to open up a second offering with four additional houses and eventually arrange for sharing of all eight houses to broaden the choices. Rome is among the next locations being considered, Bartling said.

So far, three outside investors have signed quarter-million-dollar checks to invest, and more than 20 prospective investors were invited to an informational event held last week at Glen Oaks Country Club. As an incentive for investors to get in early, the $250,000 investment fee will increase to $275,000 later in the offering, he said.

“The concept has been received well,” Bartling said.”The biggest hurdle is writing out a check for $250,000, which is due at signing.”