The practice of joining together with family and friends to share ownership of vacation property has been around for many years. But the fractional property industry started in the US in the Rocky Mountain ski resorts in the early 1990s. These first fractional developments recognized that people did not want to buy whole homes, which they would only use for a few weeks a year in the mountains. According to research firm Ragatz Associates there were over 250 fractional developments in North America in 2006 and fractional properties can now be found throughout the world.
Outside the USA a non-commercial form of fractional ownership has been in existence for several decades. In this form, otherwise unconnected individuals (rather than family or friends) form private syndicates to purchase, for example, vacation property or boats. These syndicates operate as private member groups with small numbers on a non-profit basis, generally just sharing expenses and usage. These groups can involve assets ranging from modest apartments or condominium type properties to multi-million euro / dollar properties, and leverage their ability to make collective purchases of additional assets such as boats or vehicles as additional facilities, while retaining control entirely within the membership of the group.
The popularity of the term fractional ownership has caused extensive rebranding in other industries where similar concepts, such as real estate timeshares, were already well established.
Fractional ownership divides a property into more affordable segments for individuals and also matches an individuals ownership time to their actual usage time. A fractional share gives the owners certain privileges, such as a number of days or weeks when they can use the property. Occasionally, the property is sold after a pre-determined time, distributing the relative proceeds back to the owners. A few private owner-groups have developed highly sophisticated usage allocation schemes and other features based on the principle of attempting to get as close as possible to the flexibility of individual ownership, and only compromising this to the minimum extent necessary to accommodate multiple owners. In such schemes the basic agreement is between the members themselves, whereas in most commercial fractional ownership schemes, the owner's principal relationship is with the property developer and/or promoter of the scheme.
Private residence clubs are the luxury, high end of the fractional property market. They provide the services and amenities of five star hotels, and some of the luxury hotel groups, such as Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Hyatt run their own private residence clubs. Occasionally membership in a private residence club grants to its member only the right to usage of the club properties and services, without ownership rights in the properties themselves. Note a private residence club is different from a Destination Club, although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
In addition to luxury private residence clubs, single "stand-alone" vacation homes and condos can be converted to fractional ownership. This fractional home conversion process can be accomplished by any knowledgeable seller or through a fractional consulting company. The benefit of fractional home conversion includes the ability of the home owner to keep a portion of the ownership for themselves, pay off debt and reduce expenses.
A key aspect for any fractional owner is to understand their usage rights and the reservation plans. These vary from property to property. Some offer fixed occupancy periods in which an owner uses the same time each year. Some offer "floating" periods, in which the occupancy times rotate throughout the year, and some offer a mixture of these, with some time fixed and some floating.
Another variation in the business model is what are called "destination resorts". These are typically properties, whether hotel rooms, suites, or freestanding villas, located on property owned and managed by a hotel developer, and which provide amenities typically expected of a high class hotel or resort. Some hotels are also developed as a condo-hotel, in which individual rooms are sold off to individual owners.