Published:
June 26, 2021

How to schedule usage of your co-owned home

Scheduling your group vacation home

So you and your best friends have all chipped in and co-bought that amazing vacation home you all wanted. You got through the hassle of finding it and buying it, and now it’s time to pack up the car and spend the weekend finally enjoying it, right? Absolutely! However, sharing a vacation home with your friends isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds.

One of the biggest hurdles your group will, inevitably, run into is scheduling. Think about it: you won’t always want to vacation as a group - we all need a little alone time - but between everyone’s hectic weekday schedule, and everyone swearing by different calendar apps, syncing up plans can get messy. Luckily, we can share some quick tips to help avoid a scheduling mess.

A simple and clear operating agreement

Perhaps the most important step in maintaining a healthy vacation-home-relationship with your group is establishing a clear and simple operating agreement early on. Making sure everyone understands, and agrees upon, the terms your group has laid out can save you from a ton of potential issues down the road.

A great starting point is figuring out a minimum and maximum amount of days, or weeks, each party can claim access to the vacation home. By splitting a month’s worth of vacation time into two weeks or weekends each, two parties have a solid structure to then negotiate different variables like birthdays and other personal events, or what to do if one party can’t claim their full allotment of vacation home time.

Next, create a way for everyone to easily notify the group of their time requests. This way there’s no miscommunications about who wants the house when. Now, whether it’s through a single calendar app that everyone agrees upon or email thread, it’s important to find a means of communication that works for everybody.

Holidays can be stressful enough without having to negotiate access to your vacation home. That’s why we recommend divvying up holiday access amongst property owners early on in the year. This way, even if plans change, you avoid a lot of last minute negotiations that can cause undue stress and strain.

Finally, make sure you clearly lay out proper guidelines for using the property. Making sure that when anyone leaves the property that the pool is covered and set to a specific temperature, the beds are clean and made, the fireplace is cleaned out, etc. will make a world of difference. It’s great to include smaller details too, like who covers the cost of replacing propane tanks for the grill, restocking firewood, any other specific home-maintenance things that you can think of. The moral of the story here is the less you leave up to interpretation, the more you can minimize potential issues.

Example agreement

  1. Each party can claim up to 7 days per month for individual use.
  2. Any remaining days are considered “flex” days and are open to usage for all parties
  3. Claim your allotted days via our shared google calendar, and then immediately share those dates on our email thread.
  4. Holidays will be divvied up at the beginning of the year (sometime in January). Be mindful of which holidays you had claimed the previous year. These include
  5. Memorial Day Weekend
  6. 4th of July
  7. Labor Day Weekend
  8. Thanksgiving
  9. Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/etc.
  10. New Years
  11. Upon leaving the property make sure all trash bins are empty, all beds are made, the fireplace is cleaned out and propane and firewood are restocked. AND cover the costs of scheduling a cleaning with *insert local cleaning agency* - here’s their number: (XXX) XXX-XXXX

Choosing a calendar

When choosing a calendar for your group, make sure it’s free, mobile friendly, and easy to use. Google Calendar is always a safe bet - it’s simple, easy to use, group-friendly and easily syncs up with a ton of other calendar apps. Also, don’t forget to make sure everyone sets up reminders and notifications so everyone knows right when requests are made and schedules changed.

Conclusion

Finally, keep track of everything: holidays, who paid for maintenance issues, etc. Visibility - knowing who did what and when, who paid for what, who claimed which holidays - will always make future planning easier, as well as recognizing what changes might need to be made to the operating agreement.

There will always be unforeseeable issues you and your group will run into, but with organization, communication, and planning ahead you can do your best to avoid most of them.

Nestment, Inc. does not guarantee and is in no way responsible for the accuracy of information provided in this blog post. All information is provided “AS IS” and with all faults. Data presented here may not reflect all real estate activity in the market.  While the information on this site is about legal and tax issues, it is not intended as legal or tax advice or as a substitute for the particularized advice of your own attorney and tax professional.