The main attractions for buyers are price, a share in potential appreciation, and convenience.

Fractional real estate provides both a legal and use structure that makes sharing a property easy. For example in a quarter ownership, there are four owners. Each owner would get his or her own title just for his or her legal quarter interest. They can put a mortgage on it, pay their mortgage off,or sell without having to deal with other owners.

There are a number of different programs, but the bottom line is that there is a plan so that each of the owners has absolute certainty about when they can use the home.

A third-party manager is employed to maintain the property, and all the owners contribute equally to the cost of maintenance, management, a fund for future replacement of furnishings and normalrepairs. In some cases, exchanges can be made at other resort locations.

For many buyers, fractional real estate is their only option if they want to buy into an expensive market. For instance, for $250,000 a buyer could own a quarter ownership of a three-bedroom luxury townhouse at Whistler, one of Canada's top ski resorts, which would be worth well over $1 million for full ownership. Usage arrangements vary between projects, from straight forward to extremely innovative.

Generally, if you own one quarter of a property you get to use it every fourth week. Each ¼ Share gives the owner 13 weeks of use per year. The calendar works on a rotating basis so the major holidays areexperienced by each ¼ Share owner every fourth year. If you want two or three weeks together you could see if one of the other owners wants to trade weeks. Usage for the rest of the year is basedon a rotating selection process. See attached calendar as an example