Here is an excellent article from Inman.com about the rise in fractional ownership.  Fractional ownership is better known along the Outer Banks as co-ownerships.  While it has remained steadily popular in the OBX, this article made me wonder if we will see any Outer Banks homeowners consider the possibility of selling their home as a co-ownership rather than as a whole. 

I would have to imagine in this market, it would be most worthwhile for someone who was having trouble selling their oceanfront home to give it a try. 

Real estate 'by the slice'

By Mary Umberger

Can't find a buyer for your luxurious beachfront villa? Maybe you could sell it by the slice.

That's an evolving strategy among homeowners in resort areas who have given up on finding a buyer in the usual way and are turning to the concept of fractional ownership.

"Who wouldn't want to live in a $3 million house for four weeks a year for $300,000 -- and own it?" asks Evelyn Bernet, an agent with Wagner Realty in Sarasota, Fla., who recently began marketing a home on nearby Anna Maria Island through fractional ownership.

Bernet said the owner (fellow agent and co-lister Suzanne Van Gundy) had tried to sell the fully furnished two-bedroom, three-bath home for $3.25 million for more than a year. Recently, however, they decided to go the fractional route, and are asking $169,000 for a two-week slice of the beachfront house, $299,000 for four weeks, etc.

This type of arrangement isn't a timeshare. In simplest terms, timeshares sell the right to a certain amount of usage -- or time -- in a property each year; in a fractional, the buyers own a portion of the property itself.

"It's deeded and fee-simple," Bernet said. "The owners own their part, and they can sell it, rent it, pass it on to their kids."

It's not a widely understood concept in the United States, though it's gaining popularity in some resort areas, according to Andy Sirkin, an attorney who specializes in shared-ownership properties. He estimates his firm, Sirkin Fractional Lawyers, with offices in San Francisco, Evergreen, Colo., and Paris, has handled 5,000 fractional ownership agreements since 1985.

Sirkin said fractional ownership is most likely to be found not among single-family homes or condos but at larger resort complexes. However, in this slow real estate market he's seeing an increasing number of situations like Van Gundy's. In the fractional business, such individual homes are known as "one-offs," he said.

"(Fractionals in the United States) took off five or six years ago, and they're gaining traction," Sirkin said. "The economic crisis slowed the momentum of the overall market, but the future is very bright for this type of ownership."

He said the real estate downturn here has potential buyers taking a serious look at the traditional concept of vacation-home ownership.

"Many people don't want the responsibility, the headaches and cost of owning the whole property that they're going to use maybe one month a year," he said.

Further, he said, fractionals are now appealing to well-heeled buyers who want diversified vacation locales -- they might buy fractionals in several places so that they aren't tied to a single location. ... CONTINUED