Converting Your Home Into a Fractional Shares Property

With the market so constricted for vacation homes, the idea of buying only what a family really needs is appealing to more and more shoppers. Now, along comes a company offering to do the work of converting your vacation home sale into a fractional sale.

The outfit, Fractional Retreats LLC of Boise, Idaho bills itself as a nationwide fractional ownership consulting firm. For a seller, "we take care of all the details during the fractional conversion," said founder Daniel G. Morton. He said in a phone interview that the company currently is working on three sales: a $639,000 home in San Diego, a $1.8-million Mexico home (pictured above), and a $1.8 million North Carolina home.

The company notes that according to Ragatz Associates, the leading research firm in the field, "sales of fractional ownership have risen 48.9% over the past four years," even though the broader real estate market is in a general decline.