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- Amy Vail loves living in New York, but she felt buying a small apartment was beyond her budget.
- Instead, Beil opted for fractional ownership and invested in shares in five European villas.
- She spends less than she would in New York, enjoys vacations, and feels a little bit more owned.
This told essay is based on a conversation with Amy Vail, a 32-year-old who works in digital consulting, about her decision to buy a 1/21st stake in five European holiday properties in 2022. It is being August collection Instead of buying your own home in America. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I love New York and plan to stay here for the foreseeable future.
Things could change, but unless I win the lottery or have a significant financial gain, it’s a prohibitive expense for me to buy here.
I live in a one-bedroom, 650-square-foot apartment for about $2,850 a month. This is generally a pretty good amount by New York standards. But recreating it with ownership in the area where I live is way out of my price range.
In New York, what I want is a one-bedroom or two-bedroom with a study. We’re not talking McMansions here, but they’re well over $1 million.
As I was sitting excitedly in my apartment in 2020 and 2021, I started poking around. There were hundreds of articles about one-euro houses in small villages in Italy, France, and Spain, and all the people who jumped at the chance and built a house for $10,000 or so.
I thought, “Wow, maybe I can do that.” I don’t speak any language other than English. I don’t own a house here, so why would I buy or build a house on that land? Can’t speak natively?
I stumbled across August’s website through a random Google search hole and really dug into the concept. It seemed to make a lot of sense.
The abbreviation I use to explain it to friends and family is, “It’s a timeshare, not a scam because you actually own the stock and have access to the property you want.”
The collection I chose is five homes located in Tuscany, the South of France, the French Alps, the English Cotswolds, and Mallorca. The three tiers are small, medium, and large. I’m small, with 3-4 bedrooms per house.
The buy-in amount is 360,000 euros (or $394,117), which is a flat one-time fee. There is an annual fee, which includes maintenance, electricity, and taxes, and is about $10,000 a year.
Spending time abroad has always been attractive to me
I’ve always toyed with and toyed with the idea of living abroad.
I attended Colgate University in upstate New York. I took a semester to live in Stockholm and loved the experience. I know a lot of people, especially Americans, go to Europe and go to a different city every four days. “How many places can we cross?”
I did the opposite and stayed where I was. I loved how calm and familiar it felt. I took the subway. I became amazingly good at reading and speaking Swedish, but I can’t do any of it now, but I still remember that sense of place and home that I felt after just five months there. I really loved it.
When I graduated from university, I considered job opportunities overseas, but it was never the right thing to do. It did not appear, so it was not possible to move abroad completely. But the dream was always there.
That possibility opened up during the pandemic, when the reality of work completely changed for many. Maybe this can be done sooner than you think.
I don’t think we would have had these conversations if it weren’t for the pandemic. I don’t know if this would have happened to me at this point if nothing had changed in terms of being able to work remotely.
I’m very into traveling and in some cases living abroad or at least spending a significant amount of time away from my home base. It was earlier than I expected, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since I was in high school.
Co-ownership of a villa is the best so far
There are 21 households available. So I own 1/21 of this portfolio.
You get a certain sense of familiarity and connection to the place, but without the hassle of needing a property manager or having a leaky roof and being 4,000 miles away.
There is no stress or responsibility when you arrive home. There are no logistical burdens associated with owning a home. I’m a renter, but there are many things I don’t know.
I’m a typical August buyer. Most people are European, older with at least teenage children, or retired. I’m a huge outlier in many ways, but it works perfectly for me.
In August, we will break it down by points. It’s very even as everyone gets the same amount of points. You earn 36 points per year, with different weightings each week. In the peak month of summer he has 5 points, then in the weeks of the shoulder season he has 2 points. A lot will change from there.
For me, this was also a very attractive point. Since they don’t have kids in school, they have the flexibility to use their lower points weeks. Want to go for a month in October? I was able to do that because I didn’t have to worry about other people’s schedules.
I’m planning to go to the south of France with my parents next month. I’m planning to go on a trip with some of my girlfriend’s female friends from college in the fall.
It’s so much fun to always have something to look forward to. It was really, really good.
Fractional ownership worked well for me
There was no way in the world I could buy anything in New York City for that amount of money in a place I was happy with. That money isn’t going anywhere where I live. But €370,000, including one year’s annual fee, can be quite expensive in some places, such as Tuscany and France.
From a cost perspective, it wasn’t a mistake. The costs here were even greater.
I think this portfolio is worth 7 million euros (or $7,655,025). He has his 7 million euros to buy 5 properties across Europe. So what I had access to was far greater than what I could have achieved on my own.
While buying and investing in real estate is not entirely risk-free, there are certainly safer places to invest. I was pretty confident that the general public who would be interested in these properties wasn’t going to wake up one morning. And they decide they don’t like Tuscany anymore.
These are established and popular places that always appeal to a certain demographic. So I felt safe in that respect as well.
The joys of homeownership, but without the stress
New York is my home, but like some people, homeownership in the US is not a priority for me in the grand scheme of things.
Would I move to a more suburban area in New Jersey to buy a house? No, I’m not planning on moving to buy a house. Even if it’s in another city, another state, or a suburb. That’s my reality.
I remember the first time I stepped into my house in Mallorca. That was my first visit. I was the only one in this house smiling.
This is what I thought. “This is so cool. I’m standing in this beautiful house that I own. How cool is that? I’m here on the island. Who knows if I could have gotten here otherwise?” I don’t even know.”
It made me very happy and very proud. I was proud of this accomplishment and of purchasing this.
Is homeownership the indicator of economic success that we should all aspire to? That’s an open question in America, and I think everyone sees it a little differently.
Homeownership feels like we’re on a set path, for better or worse. You go to high school, you go to college, you get a job, then you find a husband, you buy a house, you have a baby, you have another kid.
Whether we want to admit it or not, there is always a bit of a path that we feel pressured to walk.
For me, homeownership feels like I’m right on the path, so this was definitely a way to feel accomplished. It ticked that box in a way that made sense to me.
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