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Comment by hifriends | Hacker News Reader

My family owns 1/4 of a vacation house through an LLC. Some issues that come to mind are:

- Can an owner rent out their time? Who gets the rent money? How much is reserved for maintenance because renting will incur higher maintenance costs.

- What happens if one owner can’t carry their weight on taxes or insurance? Our house is beach house so insurance is ridiculous — we rent it out during the summer to cover it and use the house during the rest of the year.

- What if there are disagreements about how much to invest in the house for upgrades, maintenance, etc?

- Is there a system through which owners can buy or trade time with other owners?

- If you need to sell, how do you do that?

- What happens if one owner passes away and their share is now owned by multiple people?

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I've always heard this is a great way to doom a friendship. Are you ever at odds with the other owners? I can imagine if you've planned your summer around a family vacation and the previous guest trashes the place (or breaks something making the place unusable) it could get ugly. Or worse yet, it is no pets and one owner starts bringing their dog.

In my case, the other owners are extended family, but it can be a bit tricky. We have some of this stuff codified in the LLC but we have the house professionally cleaned in-between owners by the same cleaning company that does the work when we are renting it.

Some of the issues that get people the angriest have been silly stuff. Like one person using more than their fair share of the storage shed, etc.

Thanks for sharing! The co-ownership model has been around for a while, but usually has been limited to friends & family. Really great feedback on some of the challenges you've faced.

- Rentals: this is property dependent. Some of our homes are located in communities that have explicit rules regarding short term rentals. For homes not governed by these rules, the owners are free to vote on whether they'd like to allow renting the home when it is not used. We leave it up to the owners for the exact reason you highlighted above - renting can lead to higher maintenance costs and other issues. Proceeds from the rental go to the owner putting their time up for rent. The income is first used to defray an owner's monthly costs, and the rest is given directly to them.

- Costs: Property costs are split amongst co-owners based on their ownership stake in the home with no markup. This tends to keep costs fairly low for each owner, but in the event an owner does not pay their portion they are in violation of the contract and subject to forfeiture of their share. Again, the fees for these homes in mexico are reasonable compared to the US and the costs are made clear and transparent to the buyer at the time of purchase.

- investments: routine maintenance is handled by Ancana using the reserve fund. For other upgrades, the owners put it up to a vote. Depending on the size of investment, there are different vote thresholds that need to be met to move forward.

- buying/trading: currently we make it easy for co-owners of the same property to trade scheduled visits. We do have plans on opening this up for all Ancana properties, but it is not something we have built out yet. Stay tuned!

- selling: An owner is free to sell at any point after owning the home for 1 year. We are happy to assist in this process and list the fraction for sale to our network of qualified leads. But if an owner prefers to use their own agent or sell it through their own network, that is great too. Once a buyer is found, we take care of the vetting and legal process for transferring ownership.

- Similar to other real estate, your ownership of an Ancana property can be passed on to beneficiaries. In this case the new owner(s) are still bound by the original investment trust and responsible for payments. We don't limit ownership in a fraction to a single person, so it is up to the new parties to decide how they want to handle ownership and using the property

> For other upgrades, the owners put it up to a vote

2 vote for, 2 vote against. What now? All of the examples you listed are even splits (2 vs. 2 or 4 vs 4). Who resolves a dispute in the case of a tie?

A majority of owners need to agree before moving forward (so 3-1 or 5-3 in the examples you gave). The threshold increases for more costly expenses

So 2 people in agreement can just gridlock everything in a 4 person unit forever? That seems broken.

If all it takes is two (out of four) to decide something, the other two could immediately rescind the decision. It has to be a majority.

In most bureaucracies gridlock is not a bug, it’s a feature. It forces wider consensus.

What if they don't put out the money for the cost of upgrade because they didn't vote for it?

Can an owner sell to anyone they like or do the other owners have a say in this?

I co-own a building and one of the partners is looking to sell his share. I have first right to purchase and a majority vote is needed to approve a new owner, so the rest of us can collectively block a purchaser we don’t like.

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