You own a vacation home, and it’s amazing, but the costs involved, and your usage of the home, has you wondering if it’s time to sell.

The good news is that you can have your cake and eat it, too.  By leveraging co-ownership, you can sell one share or a group of shares of your home to well-vetted co-owners, freeing up precious capital while being able to continue enjoying your vacation home.

Best Practices for Fractionalizing Your Home

Plum has invested hundreds of hours in research and direct client engagement, and we’re happy to share a few best practices.

1. Explore Your Own Usage

It’s important to start by understanding how much you are truly using your vacation home.  If you’re like most vacation home owners, your home is sitting empty 10 months out of the year.  If that is true, then you’re not really giving anything up to sell shares to other well-vetted co-owners.

In fact, you’ll probably gain some peace of mind and time back because many hands make light work, right?

2. Capture Your Own Preferences, First

As you shift into co-ownership, the home will truly become the property of the Group, and the Group will need to come to agreement about rules, preferences and amenities.  That said, you are in a great position to state those preferences upfront, and seek out co-owners who align with those preferences.

Don’t like dogs?  It’s cool…  don’t seek out dog-owners.

Imagine adding a nice boat to the lake house along with a party dock?  Very cool…  find partners who are also excited about that vision.

By capturing your preferences first, you’re able to assemble a group that you’ll really get along with.

3. Get a Professional Appraisal

Just to say it…  everyone thinks that their vacation home is worth more than it is.  It’s ok.  You love the house, and we all want to protect our financial standing.  You can do yourself a favor by just spending the $500 it takes to get an objective appraisal.

It also helps with attracting co-owners because they can feel a degree of comfort with the fact that an appraisal has been done, and that it’s not just you stating what the property and the shares are worth.

4. Get PlumCertified, and Insist on it with Your Co-owners

It can be a little awkward to ask people to show you their bank accounts. It’s helpful to have an objective third party do that work.  Our PlumCertified background check process includes a background check, a soft credit pull (740+), and a validation of liquid assets.

The best way to do this is get PlumCertified yourself, first.  It puts you in a great position to ask others to do the same.  That way, you know of your potential partners that they meet the same criteria that you do.

Plum has platformed all of these services and can guide you and your closest people. Get in touch with us and we’re more than happy to help.

Get Help with Co-Ownership

Plum’s friendly concierges are here to answer questions about co-ownership. Drop us a line and let us help you on your co-ownership journey!