Ski Lease Primer

What is a ski lease?

In Lake Tahoe parlance, a ski lease typically refers to a group of people who get together and lease a home for the winter. Ski leases usually are for 4 or 5 months (Dec. 1 or Jan. 1 Through May 1). The people in the lease share the costs of the house and everyone can use the house throughout the term of the lease. Its a great way to have a guaranteed place to stay in Tahoe without spending a fortune.

Who participates in Ski Leases?

Members range in age from young children through grandparents. In most cases, people look for ski leases with compatible members so in many cases you'll find leases populated by people of similar ages, marital status and sometimes even sexual persuasion. Its up to you. I doubt there's much law telling you that you can't exclude someone from a ski lease. If you're the organizer, exclude people you don't feel comfortable with, if you want. You need to live with them every weekend for 5 months. I'm sure some lawyer will chime in and tell me that the same laws apply as apply for renting out apartments, but I've been told before that wasn't welcome in a ski lease because I had kids – it didn't bother me. If I wasn't welcome, I didn't want to be there. Anyway, back to the question at hand. In most cases, people look for compatible arrangements. I've seen ski leases for couples, singles, families, etc.

Where do you find a ski lease to join?

Just before the season starts there's usually a flury of postings on Craiglist, looking for additional members of a house.  If you want to organize the ski lease yourself, then you'll want to look on Craigslist, plus at the various leasing agencies (see list at the bottom). Keep in mind that there's the SF Bay Area Craigslist as well as the Reno one. Sometimes things are listed on the Reno one but not on the SF one. If you are looking to be the organizer and do this, the dates to go look vary. This year I had to change places so I started looking in August. Different places have different dates when they start listing things / make them available. Usually they have a date by which the previous renter has to make a commitment or they'll free up the lease for the coming year.

What's the financial commitment?

I've heard of ski leases with lots of members that are as cheap as $500/season and others where each member has their own bed and they pay as much as $6000 for the season (that's for a whole family and is nearly ½ the total cost of the ski lease). Houses in Tahoe rent for anywhere from $1200/month up to $4-5000/month, depending on size, location, amenities, age, décor, etc. In general, if you are single you can expect to pay anywhere from $600-$1800 for the season and for a couple its typically $1200-$2800. There are usually two components to the cost. The lease cost plus a deposit. The deposit covers damage, excess cleaning, etc. It is often also used by the organizer as a way to deal with the variable expenses like heat, water, TV, phone, plowing, wood, etc. In most cases I've heard of, people usually get most or all of their deposit back at the end of the season.

What if I want to organize the ski lease?

Then you have a lot of things to consider. If you've never been in a ski lease before, I'm not sure I'd recommend taking on this responsibility. Keep in mind that it will be your name on the lease (therefore your responsibility if something bad happens). Also, you'll probably have to put the phone, tv, water, electric, etc. in your name for the winter. That said, its not very hard to do. Plan on contacting a bunch of leasing agencies in June and July and probably going to look in August. Make sure to find out when their ski leases become available. Unfortunately it varies from one agency to another so you can't just plan to spend one weekend in tahoe at the beginning of August (for example) and see everything and make a choice. Things you'll want to know before you go up:. How many beds / bedrooms to you want? Do you need a hot tub? Do you need a garage? Parking for how many cars? What location (see location stuff below). What's your hard ceiling on cost? What dates/term do you want? Bring your checkbook with you when you go looking. The best houses get rented quickly. Plan to write a check for the amount of the deposit, which is usually one month's rent. The balance will be due in October, November or December (plenty of time for you to find members through CL or SkiPal). There are ski leases where you deal directly with the owner of the cabin, but those are not too common. I leased the same house for 5 years in a row. For the first 3 seasons, we dealt with an agency. For the last two, we started dealing directly with the owner. He saved the percentage he'd have paid to the agency and we got slightly lower rent. However, if something broke, I was responsible for finding a plumber or electrician to fix it (yes, he'd still pay if it wasn't something I"d broken). With an agency, you just call them and they either send their handyman or find a service person. They also help point you to plow service and give you all the contact info for other utility transfers, etc. What do you get out of being the organizer? Not much really. I suppose you could jigger the costs so that you pay less than the other members, but that's about it. You do get to write the rules though. There are a bunch of other things to think about. Feel free to email me with questions.

Do I get my own bed?

It depends. Most ski leases guarantee that if you are a member there will be a bed for you any weekend you come up. However, its not likely to be the same bed in the same bedroom every weekend. That's part of what you give up by being in a ski lease. The cheaper ski leases sometimes offer no guarantee (you get what you pay for). Its not uncommon for a ski lease to have 12-16 members for a house that sleeps 10. It may surprise some, but in most cases that's never a problem. Are there ski leases where each member has their own bed? Yes. I've done ski leases like that for years now. But I pay a lot for that privilege. Our last ski house had beds for 11 and we had 10 members (counting kids and adults). But in most group ski leases you will need to strip your bed (or roll up your sleeping bag) every Sunday and re-make it on Friday when you arrive. Keep in mind that there are always members who rarely come up and a few who come up a lot. Many ski leases work out some sort of reservation system and/or priority system for who gets a bed or their choice of bed. Another Snowpals member recently created a web site called http://www.ubashare.com/ which has a free system for managing your ski lease occupancy. If you have a lot of people in your ski lease, I urge you to come up with some system if for no other reason than to avoid conflict. It is much easier to bend whatever rules you make than to make rules after the fact because a member is perceived as abusing their privileges. You also need to decide what to do about storing your gear/bedding/etc up there.

Are there rules?

There should be. You have a bunch of strangers living together for the winter. If you organize a ski lease, you should absolutely come up with a set of rules. Its easy enough to agree later that some can get broken than it is to make them up as you go along. Plus if you have WRITTEN rules, there will be less acrimony and fewer hurt feelings when you have to enforce them. Some SkiPal user must have a set of the rules from their ski lease that they can post as a reply to this thread. Important things to decide relate to smoking, quiet hours, bathroom/shower/laundry use, garage use, cleaning, pets, bed selection & priority, guests & guest fees, drugs, parking (you WILL be ticketed if you park your car on the street at night in Tahoe), etc.

What about food?

You should discuss this with your other members. Some people love to cook. Some love pizza. In my experience its usually not too hard to work out and most people are happy. You do need some rules about food in the fridge and clean-up responsibilities since a sink full of dirty dishes is a big PITA to some people.

Can I bring a guest?

In most cases, yes. This should be part of the rules you set. Can someone bring a guest? How often can they bring the same guest (big issue if someone joins as a single when in fact they intend to come as a couple nearly every weekend)? Typical guest fees are $20-$40/night and guest fees are usually applied to offset utilities costs so you maximize the deposit you get back at the end of the season. I heard from
someone at a SkiPal mixer recently of a clever way to avoid the abuse of the guest privilege. Essentially he was going to create a ramped cost schedule for guests. For instance lets say you bring a guest named Sue. The first 4 nights that Sue stays, she pays $25/night. Nights 5-7 cost $40/night. Nights 8+ cost $70/night. However, if you bring your friend Kim, she starts back at the $20/night rate. The idea is to discourage the couples issue mentioned above. If someone is going to come up that frequently, they should be a member.

Can I go any time?

Usually yes. And usually you can stay for as long as you want. One of the great things about having a ski lease is being able to spend a vacation week in Tahoe. If that happens to be Christmas week, you'll have paid for your ski lease in one week. The only time this becomes an issue is if someone becomes a permanent resident of the ski lease. Most ski leases have rules against this for obvious reasons (way higher heating bills, other members resenting this person who always has their own bed/room and takes over, etc.). Some ski leases have two classes of member. Weekday-only members and full members. Weekday members are not allowed on Friday/Saturday nights plus holidays – think of it like a limited season pass. This can be a way to keep the costs down for everyone while limiting conflict for weekend beds.

Can I do laundry there?

This should be part of the rules. If the place has a washer/dryer I think you should be able to wash your ski clothes and a few other things. It becomes a problem when members bring their giant laundry basket up from the bay area and wash their entire wardrobe. Again, make some rules about it.

Online Resources:

http://www.ubashare.com/
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/vac/
http://reno.craigslist.org/vac/