Rationale for Co-ownership
Many more retirees would be able to afford a vacation home if they are willing to consider shared ownership. This is in essence a variation of timeshare or REIT. The difference is that while your investment is higher initially you have control over choice of property as well as who the co-owners are.
Diversification of assets is the name of the game. My husband and I would love to co-own a vacation property without over-leveraging ourselves. We are particularly interested in folks who are interested in properties in Alberta, Canada. We have visited Alberta repeatedly and would love to co-own a house there.
Desired Preferences
We presently have no particular property in mind. We are open to negotiation depending on who are the interested parties.
We would prefer a triple-share or quad-share. Property would probably be in the range of C$300K. Co-owners should be
able to pay up at least 30% of their share as a down payment to keep financing costs low.
Co-owners will annually put up mutually agreed amount in escrow for property taxes, insurance and maintenance regardless of whether or not they lived in the property.
Key Requirements
The key to this arrangement is that the co-owned property is to
be considered as a secondary vacation home and NOT a primary home by the co-owners.
Co-owners must sign an agreement designating the bedroom to which they are entitled.
The master bedroom co-owner would be expected to pay a
one-time premium agreed to by the other co-owners.
Action Plan
There are few better ways of hedging your bets against future inflation or devaluation of your retirement funds than by investing
in hard assets such as properties. Only problem is that it is usually too huge an investment for a single retired couple to handle.
Tom and I are trying to do what the financially well-heeled professionals are doing by co-owning instead.
Anyone interested in exploring the viability of co-owning a 3 to 4 bedroom house in Alberta should email Thomas so we can
start to email or Skype one another to explore possibilities.
A trip could be scheduled next year to view properties shortlisted by prospective co-owners. We could mix sight-seeing with house-hunting.