Sharing the Purchase of a Vacation Home

A good policy is to rotate holiday weekends and leave hard feelings on the doorstep. Another method that works for some groups is to "weight" the calendar each year, assigning each partner a number of chips, say 100, and count holidays as 5, weekdays as 2, regular weekends as 3. Each family gets to "pay" for the days they use each year.

Finally -- do you want to get a group together to buy a place, but the friends or family in your circle aren't interested? Try telling some realtors and bank officers in your shopping area about what you're trying to do, and they may be able to help.

"I'm seeing a number of seven-figure homes being sold to fractional partnerships where the partners are strangers going into the transaction. They're just interested in getting a piece of a beautiful vacation home," says Tom Carr of Leverich & Carr Real Estate in Aspen, Colo.

"The real estate people in the area may know about groups looking for partners, so it's worth asking around."