 |
 |
|
| Greetings! Welcome to yours2share's March 2008 newsletter. In this edition:
Fractional renting a second home I had some tremendous positive feedback about one of yours2share's services that is closest to my heart: fractional renting. I started yours2share because I wanted to rent my second home every other weekend and couldn't find anyone offering this service. Fractional renting involves letting a property for some of the time on a recurring basis, such as every third weekend, weekdays only, or for three months of every year. Weekday only rentals are the most well established form of fractional renting. I had been speaking to Country Life about an article explaining fractional renting some months ago, and a few weeks ago they came back and asked for some more information. This gave me a good excuse to call one of yours2share's earliest advertisers, Caroline Hawkins of Sheldon Manor in Wiltshire to find out how fractional renting was working for her. Caroline has a three bedroom cottage which she wanted to rent out for part of the year, retaining access to it for about twelve weekends a year to support the weddings she holds at the manor. Ideally she wanted two or three families or couples who would use it as a second home. She is delighted with the fifteen responses so far, all of which are serious. She expects to set up an arrangement for two families to share the cottage with her over the next couple of months. She is currently renovating a further cottage with a view to letting this to two or three families on a fractional basis. Caroline: "Many of the people contacting me say this is exactly the arrangement they were looking for." For landlords, fractional renting generates income from a second home, without the inconvenience of holiday letting. For the tenant it offers a regular holiday home that will feel more like their own, without the cost and commitment of purchasing the property themselves. Country Life reckoned it is a great idea as you can see from their article. Learn to fly This promotion landed in my inbox earlier this week. It looked good so I thought I'd let you know. LOOP, a specialist flying magazine, has teamed up with the Sunday Times to help get people interested in learning to fly. They've arranged a deal with many flying schools in the UK to help get the 'newbies' through the door and into an aircraft. Follow this link and it's just £79 with a microlight school and £99 with a group A school for an hour's flying lesson. There are rules. You can't be learning already or have a licence - it's purely to get new people flying. You can buy one for someone else though, provided they're not learning already etc... Happy flying! Sharing is environmentally friendly I've had some serious debates recently with a few friends who get terribly twitchy about the fact that I might be promoting the use of environmentally unfriendly things like second homes, big yachts, supercars and, heaven forbid, aircraft. My argument is that as people's wealth and knowledge grows, they increasingly want more and more of the good things in life. This is human nature. Sharing mitigates the impact on the environment through:
Many valuable assets take up considerable space. The effect on the environment depends upon the asset. For property less land is required. The demand for second homes in some areas means that more new homes are required for local people. In densely populated areas this can lead to development in less environmentally friendly places such as floodplains, or it can cause people to have to travel further. In cities and towns there is often a shortage of garages and parking spaces on or off the road. Shared car ownership through car clubs helps reduce this demand. For boats, many marinas are full and there is considerable demand for more marinas in many parts of the world. Building new marinas often has a severe impact on the coastal environment. Maintaining some assets to the highest environmental standards sometimes requires higher initial investment and/or higher maintenance costs even if this reduces running costs over the life of the asset. Syndicates are more willing to consider this higher investment than individuals because the cost is split between several people. It is common to find fractionally owned properties, boats, cars maintained to particularly high standards. And finally, here are a few of yours2share's recent ads that I really like:
We are always delighted to receive feedback. Kind regards Sophie Garrett yours2share share valuable assets with like-minded people |
