How do vacation home co-owners allocate usage?
Deciding how the vacation home will be used is usually the first step in structuring the co-ownership arrangement. Focusing on usage first usually makes the rest of the organizational process easier. This is because a co-owner’s right to use the home, or his/her right to earn rental income, are the most important and valuable benefits of ownership. There are two basic models for allocating usage rights. In the “Usage Assignment Approach”, each owner is assigned the exclusive right to use the home during a specified number of days, weeks or months each year. The usage periods can be fixed (such as “the month of February” or “the first two weeks of February and July”) or variable (meaning they are selected each year based on a rotation system adjusted for holidays and seasonal variations). During each co-owner’s assigned usage period, he/she can live in the home, allow family and friends to use it, rent it out (and keep the rental income), swap it, or leave it empty. When the Usage Assig
