So this is what it has come to. Condo-hotels, over. Condo-motels, hot enough to land a cover story in the New York Times. It seems that there may be a bright spot in the beleaguered condo-hotel industry, a segment of the real estate market now garnering an overabundance of bad press covering lawsuits, stagnant sales, financing problems, and the odd foreclosure. That’s right, condo-motels.

In the Times, reporter Bethany Lyttle writes about a handful of these projects including Malyn Resort near St. Petersburg, Fla. and the oceanfront Tides by the Sea in Seaside, Ore. While these towns are far from trendy resort meccas, they are notable for attracting a steady stream of repeat vacationers who visit say, every weekend in the summer or several weeks during the year, every year. The concept works similar to a condo-hotel development. Buyers purchase a unit and the motel management serves as the defacto property manager, handling housekeeping and renting out the unit to visitors if the owner wants to fold it into the rental pool.

At the Tides by the Sea, a 1960s motel, units start at $112,000 and go up to $449,000 for a two-bedroom condo overlooking the ocean. Wait, a nearly half-million dollar motel room? In Oregon? That’s right, motel doesn’t necessarily mean cut-rate. There’s a price for all this nostalgia.

Many of these developments have been crafted out of existing motels, so developers likely aren’t running into big time financing problems to get the doors open to owners. Also such developments tend to be smaller than the standard luxury condo-hotel project. And at the Tides, owners get 65 percent cut of the rental income, not to shabby considering that most luxury condo-hotels give owners just half of the income, and sometimes less. Of course, buyers at these projects do face some of the same problems as buyers at condo-hotels. For buyers, landing a mortgage for these units has become increasingly tough over the past year.

So are there any lessons condo-hotels can take from their motel counterparts? Perhaps, it’s simply that in a recession, less is more.