Would you co-own your holiday home?

Imagine dividing up your holiday time between your farmhouse in Tuscany, your villa on the French Riviera, your Mallorcan townhouse, your cottage in the Cotswolds and your apartment in Chamonix. Instead of dealing with the hassle of renting such properties, or the upkeep of owning each one of them, you just turn up and everything is ready and familiar. 

Belgians Hilde and Henrik love the concept of co-owning five holiday homes, enjoying two or three weeks in each a year. ‘Everyone treats the house as if it’s their own, and we even found the fridge half full of beer when we arrived at Soller [in Mallorca],’ says Henrik, in his late fifties. 

That’s all well and good (assuming you are not teetotal) but you do need to have deep pockets to enjoy this kind of co-ownership model – from around €380,000 (£335,000) for a collection like the above offered by August, plus management fees that can be €9,000 (£7,930) per year. 

Here in the UK we struggle to disassociate the idea of co-ownership from timeshare and its tainted reputation, so why buy into these new schemes? August alone has more than 100 owners.