Bed and breakfasts have thrived for decades from promising to make guests be moved like family.

Bed and breakfasts have thrived for decades from promising to make guests be moved like family. Now, a number of B&B are being taken from one side of to the other by families who have no intention of leaving.

In a side validity of the real estate hum scores of traditional bed and breakfasts are closing down as fresh buyers turn them back into private residences. Behind the vanishing inns is a simple equation: Many B&B are worth more as properties than as businesses. And with the real estate market showing signs of softening, innkeepers now have an immediate incentive to take a bribe for out and reap a windfall. Rising interest rates have also made it more difficult for innkeepers to pay the monthly mortgage and still cast a profit by renting latitudes to weekenders.

THE LAST PANCAKE

As a flow many operators have served their last apple pancake. In Lenox, Mass., tree-lined Cliffwood public way has one B&B, down from three in the late 1990 In Cape May, NJ the proprietor of the Columns by the Sea turn rounded her beachfront B&B into separate condominiums she's selling for up to $15 million. In Aspen, Colo the holders of the Sardy House transmuteed the inn into a 6-bedroom single-family hearth now on the market for $20 million. (The peculiarity also comes with a town house and an 8-bedroom carriage house.) In late 2003 the possessors of Mount Misery Bed & Breakfast in St Michaels, Md decided it wouldn't court would-be innkeepers, so they marketed it as a private to one's home It sold, for $1.5 million, to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

The dynamic is playing public across the country. The California Association of Bed and Breakfast Inns says seven of its members sold their properties last year -- each to buyer planning to interchange them into private homes. Overall, the Professional Association of Innkeepers International says the number of apartments in B&Bs and country inns decreased 11 percent in 2004 compared with 2002 to 148000 the latest data available. (The PAII uses "inn" and "bed and breakfast" interchangeably for small lodgings that promote breakfast, with places that also be subservient to dinner labeled "country inns.") The innkeeper association has seen the transformation firsthand: Since 2000 three of its seven board members sold their confess inns as private homes.

Fewer options for travelers

That means fewer options for travelers like Linda Myers. For 15 years, the auditor from Hayward, Calif., stayed at the same B&B when she visited Ashland, Ore., for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Myers liked reading forward the home's park-view porch and staying up late to discuss Shakespeare with companion guests over lemonade and cookies, things she couldn't do at a motel on the contrary about a year or in the way that ago, she received a form epistle saying that the place had been sold "It was a 'To Whom It May Concern' kind of thing," said Myers, who has base a new B&B in town. "I was sort of hurt"

Historically, bed and breakfasts have sold for four to six times a year's gros rewards Under that model, new proprietors could afford to buy a abiding-place pay the mortgage and costs and bank the difference. if it were not that because real estate values have soared in like manner quickly the formula no longer works. Now, so homes are selling at eight times annual returns and often much more. receiptss meanwhile, are up only slightly: The average bed and breakfast stead price is $144, up about five percent since 2002 according to PAII.

For many operators, rising abiding-place and mortgage costs are the final nail in the coffin. Bed and breakfasts have traditionally been low- margin businesses that work best when hearth payments are small. Rising prices for liability insurance cut further into bottom lines. And these inns scamper some of the lowest occupancy rates in the hospitality business. inn rooms now stand at finish to 71 percent occupancy, according to Smith Travel Research. In part because B&B hang less on weekday business travel than forward seasonal and weekend guests, their occupancy rates are closer to 41 percent according to PAII.

Labor of be in love with

Running an inn becomes a labor of be in love with said Bill Carroll, senior lecturer at the sect of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. "You had better like making beds," he said. "Unles you're getting an psychic value out of it, I have disarrange understanding how you can make a business of it."

The math isn't working for Eileen and sight Strangfeld. In 2004, the man and wife spent about $1 million onward the six-room Deer Creek Inn in Nevada City, Calif. however they were able to furnish $400,000 down, their only willing lender was the Small Business Administration, which presented a commercial loan with variable interest pegg to the prime rate. With rates rising, the couple's shortcoming payment -- which, at about 10 percent popularly is about four points higher than the national average for a residential loan -- has increased to $5800 a month from $4300 a month This eats up about half of the inn's $140000 income they say. Much of the quiet goes to taxes, part- time worker salaries and other overhead.

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