In Whistler, BC, such fractional ownership is common. And it’s true ownership on title, rather than a form of rental like a time share.
500K for basically an airbnb, where i have to pack all my stuff, to go there for a week, then pack stuff, to go home is pretty useless to me.
People have been doing informal versions of this for a long time.
ie, a well off family will have a second home, but it's actually shared between 6 families in the family (second generation) who use it in various ways. Grandparents go up, kids visit with grandkids, then kids and grandkids stay etc.
Boats are often bought in a partnership - and frankly it's more fun becuase your budget for ownership is literally 4x - so you can do / pay for whatever, cleaning, maintenance etc.
Various forms of fractional aircraft ownership.
Folks with money are not total idiots. A fixed asset sitting is a waste.
In the house case, you want a place that becomes a regular part of your routine, a place your kids know, a place your friends start to know. 1/4 ownership is not 1 week a year. It is months in the year. You know the local restaurants, the hikes and bike rides etc.
I've independently been sent hey, look at this place, from two different people now who are on this app. You can get a MUCH nicer place than you can get alone for $400K. A place you could have a big group over to visit etc, a place for families to get together.
Do you pay $3M or $500K. That is the question you need to ask. Is it worth $2.5M to have more than your standard locker of crap at the vacation house?
Even family houses - generally you need to keep your personal crap to a minimum, everything is shared. You can buy a bogie board for everyone, but the folks on here talking about how they need to fill a $3M 6 bedroom house with their personal crap - this is not for you. Most of us can get buy much more simply.
This is why I'm glad we can let market decide not folks on HN. Almost every neat thing, from iphone to this would just be poo poo'ed away.
Alternatively, renting or staying in a hotel/resort is _significantly_ cheaper than $500k, even amortized over 10 years. TBD how much you can sell your timeshare back for at the end, but I'd argue the risk + the significant upfront capital + not getting to put your crap in your expensive rental™ makes it a tough sell for all but a small niche.
>let market decide not folks on HN
I'd point out that a number of the threads on this are more upset that this seems to be a timeshare system that dodges regulations around timeshares, just as Uber is a cab system that dodges cab regulations and AirBnB is a BnB/home rental. It's more anger that these startups raise massive cash to distort the markets in ways that have some advantages but aren't always long-term positive, and it takes regulation too long to catch up. Comparing regulation dodging timeshares to iPhones feels disingenuous.
You can also get a very nice place for 44 days in a year (the offer discussed in the article is 44 days, no more than 14 consecutively, first come first serve for timeslots) for $4k on a vacation rental site, have approximately as much say in how it's run, and have more choice over which days you spend there, and whether you spend more time there next year or not. Of course, you don't get a theoretical opportunity to sell appreciating property on at a profit which I'm sure the Pacaso sales team talks about a lot, but how real is that opportunity when most property investors and wealthy homebuyers are looking for whole houses, not a timeshare (and people who want timeshares are going to Pacaso.com to buy the new properties it takes a ~14% fee to subdivide and sell, not whoever's willing to shift the share you want rid of)
Sure, there's a real market for it, but there's a real market for other types of timeshare that sound like better (or less worse) deals...