Hello
Welcome to yours2share's February 2013 newsletter.
In this edition, we look at:
- Car sharing
- Buying a share from someone who owns the whole asset
- 40% off ads for the rest of February 2013
Car sharing
The recent purchase of the world's largest car sharing club, Zipcar, by the world’s third largest car rental company,
AVIS, for about $500 million hit the headlines in January. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next year or two: it would be fair to say that opinion is divided, some cautiously optimistic, others decidedly pessimistic.
I always find car sharing hard to explain because the term "car sharing" has four different meanings:
- Car clubs (but often called car sharing): people are grouped together by a company to share the use of a car. Usually the people live in the same street. Members of the club can often also use the club’s cars in other areas. Zipcar is the world’s largest car club.
- Car joint ownership: a few people get together to buy a car together, often a third or fourth car such as a sports car or classic car. yours2share is one way that people find partners to buy together; specialist car clubs is the other route.
- Lift sharing (but again often called car sharing): people arrange to give lifts in their car in return for a contribution to petrol costs. This can be a one-off, usually long, journey, or a regular journey such as commuting to and from work. Liftshare is a good example.
- Peer to peer car sharing: people rent their car to other people by the hour via an intermediary website that checks DVLA and insurance. Like ebay, reviews by both owner and renter maintain good behaviour. Get Around and RelayRides are the biggest players in the USA: WhipCar in the UK.
There are many collaborative consumption start-ups working on car sharing: cars are expensive and often used for only a few minutes a day, so any car sharing business model that actually works is destined to be lucrative. The tricky bit is finding the right model.
One of the most successful operators has been quietly getting on with it only a few miles from me in Norfolk. Liftshare is owned and run by Ali Clabburn, who founded the company 12 years ago in Attleborough and has just moved his offices to Norwich. Over the years we’ve spoken to several times on the phone, but we met for the first time only recently.
Initially Liftshare looks just like other liftsharing websites such as Blablacar, Carpooling and many others. But there is a lot more to Liftshare than meets the eye. Most of their business is supplying large organisations with lift sharing schemes for their employees. This enables the organisations to reduce their employees’ journey costs, reduce local congestion, reduce the number of car parking spaces they need to provide, polish their corporate social responsibilities credentials, and wide range of other benefits.
It also enables Liftshare to maximise the environmental benefit of their activities because they focus upon commuting, which generates more car journeys than anything else. Liftshare currently manages the car sharing for over 1200 organisations: it has a direct effect on an incredible number of cars, drivers and passengers.
Ali is now working on another big project to develop a new peer to peer car sharing service for the UK. Called CarLoco, it will be launched in a few weeks and I’ll tell you more then, but Ali has told me a little about the plans and I think Liftshare’s CarLoco really has wheels.
Buying a share from someone who owns the whole asset
(I'm going to use boats as my example in this article because using the word "asset" over and over again gets truly tedious, but the principles apply to holiday homes, motorhomes and other assets.)
These tricky financial times are not receding as quickly as everyone hoped and many boat owners are wondering if they can justify keeping their boat or if they need to sell to extract some equity (or reduce their debt). They will also be aware that selling their boat might take a long time.
Most owners don’t even consider selling one, two or maybe three shares. I’m not saying that finding the right partner is going to happen overnight either. But with a little patience, it can be an excellent alternative: the owner keeps their boat and gets some equity.
Most “original” owners fully understand that they need to ensure that their new partners feel equal in the syndicate, but there are some who never really accept that the boat isn’t still entirely theirs and buyers should be alert to this. As with any sharing arrangement, there needs to be extensive discussions to work out all the aspects of the sharing arrangement and this should in turn be recorded in the contract. During this process, the new partners also need to assure themselves that the owner is really willing to share!
I’ve spoken to several people who’ve sold several shares in the asset they previously owned outright and the best method I’ve seen is for each partner to be bought in one by one. For example, say the ideal is to sell three shares so the boat ends up with four owners each with a quarter. The owner finds the first partner who buys half the boat and agrees with the plan to bring in two further partners. The two partners then look for the third partner, and when this sale nets a further third of the value of the boat, this is split between the first two partners. The three partners then look for the fourth partner, and the proceeds of the sale of the quarter are split between them. The contract is amended as necessary at the sale of each share.
The advantage of this process is that at each stage all the existing partners have an equal say in all matters. If each partner simply buys a quarter share, then the original owner inevitably has more control and may be able to push through the sale of a share to a partner that isn’t acceptable to the others. The other alternative is to wait until all three new partners are available. However this might take some time and there is the risk is that the first potential partner gets fed up waiting.
Many owners think that the potential partner will be unwilling to make this greater investment and indeed some will be unable to do this. But if I was that potential partner, I’d prefer to buy the half at the outset so that I knew I had equal input on decisions down the line.
As with all sharing arrangements, there are many ways of doing things, and all require an investment in time, discussion and negotiation to discover the best solution for a particular group of partners. The pay-back is that when set up correctly the vast majority of syndicates work really well, providing much joy, very cost effectively, for many years.
40% off ads for the rest of February 2013
For the remainder of February 2013, there is a 40% discount on both new ads and the option to feature ads to make it more prominent.
To obtain the discount, simply post your ad, selected featured options if you wish, and enter FEB2013 in the Coupons box. A 40% discount will automatically be applied. The offer applies any time up to the 28th February 2013.
yours2share reserve the right to withdraw the offer at any time without notice
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Boats
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Cars
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| Horses
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Landshare
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Mobile
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| Monday
- Friday |
Property
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What
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Some great ads on yours2share.
Entirely
my choice; good pictures are a key factor. |
 1/2 share, Classic long keel Fantasia 35, Cote d’Azur, France |
 1/4 share Elegance 60, Palma, Mallorca, Spain |
 Ponies to share – St Albans, Hertfordshire |
 1/6 shares in rustic cottage set in three acres, Archidona, Andalucia, Spain |
 1/8 share available in new Hanse 345 syndicate, Suffolk |
 Horse share wanted, Loughton, Essex |
 33ft Jeaneau Levkas, Ionian, Greece (£1975 for 3 weeks) |
 Colorado mountain home – 4 bedrooms with hot tub, Frisco, Colorado, USA |
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