There’s a stranger in the house. They’re walking up your stairs. They’re in your bedroom! But we’re not in the 1980s, and this isn’t a knock-off version of that old “the call’s coming from inside the home” urban legend. Rather, this is the world of second home sharing, where holidaymakers pool their resources in order to make the most of an otherwise empty holiday house, be it for cash or time in kind spent at someone else’s second home. The stranger, in this case, is a co-owner of your holiday getaway, or else they’re staying there, because you’re staying at theirs.
Recent years have seen criticism levelled at second homes and buy-to-let holiday rentals in areas where these proliferate, prompting everything from planned stamp duty increases on UK second homes to protesters spraying holidaymakers with water pistols in Barcelona’s touristy Ramblas district. As such, the time to make second homes more efficient has rarely seemed riper – and there are broadly two ways that sharing can happen.
The first, perhaps more traditional method, is through shared ownership. In other words, you band together with a group of like-minded people to buy a house – or indeed several – in a place where you otherwise couldn’t afford to own a second home.
Taken to its logical example, this can mean buying into anything up to half a dozen villas, apartments or other properties around the world. August, for example, is a shared home company founded in 2018 which allows families or individuals to buy into several tiers or “Collections” of four or five second homes, depending on their lifestyle and desired price point. So, if you drop €700,000 for access to their Premium Collection, you gain access to second homes in the south of France, Tuscany, Mallorca, the French Alps and the Cotswolds – but you share along with 20 other co-owners. August’s Pied à Terre Collection is their most (relatively) financial accessible: €365,000 will buy you a share in five two-bedroom apartments in London, Paris, Rome, Cannes and Barcelona, also shared between 21 owners. Prime, their latest and most expensive set, costs a cool €1.48 million to buy into and encompasses four homes in – you can probably guess by now – the south of France, Tuscany, Mallorca and the French Alps. This time, you’ll only co-own with 15 other investors, and August says that these boast “exclusive interior elements, amenities and region-specific features”, such as inclusive invitations to Wimbledon and other local events.
These houses and flats are undeniably beautiful, all rustic whitewashed stone and cool plaster where rural, and chic and sleek where urban. In Tuscany, a four-bedroom farmhouse overlooks a private pool and terrace below, while the Cotswolds bolthole embodies Aga-heated comfort and The Holiday quaintness. The catch, of course, is that these aren’t entirely your own houses – they are shared, and therefore decisions about their decoration and upkeep are also shared. Or, more accurately, they are delegated, to an in-house design team who appear from August’s promotional imagery to do their best to cater to inoffensive but luxurious taste. This makes sense; you’ll never manage to reach a consensus among 21 different owners as to how to decorate a house, after all. But it also seems like you miss out on one of the joys of owning a second home, which is stuffing it full of all the weird, old and embarrassing possessions that don’t quite fit in your first, real home. August partners with several high-end interiors brands, including Schumacher 1889, Ginori and Frette, the latter of which is touted in publicity materials as “the textile brand behind some of the most celebrated hotel experiences, including the Ritz-Carlton”. Whether or not resembling a luxury hotel is a design strength is something we’ll leave you to decide.
The second typical way to share second homes is through home exchanges – in which you swap unused time in your already-existing second home for time in other people’s. It’s basically a very big, very luxurious lending club that leverages the same idea that a company like August does: that many of these amazing houses are unoccupied for much of the year, and that a broker can fix that inefficiency.
