Here’s an idea: Create a corporation and sell shares in your house
Leesteffy Jenkins doesn't want to sell her picturesque vacation home in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. Rather, she wants to sell shares in it.
Jenkins, an international policy attorney turned novelist, bought her 1781 farmhouse in Deering more than a decade ago. But she also owns a home in France and with less time to spend in her New Hampshire home than she first thought, she's opted to do something out of the box.
Instead of renting out the house over the summer and fall, Jenkins has created an LLC now plans to sell shares in the home.
Ideally, Jenkins would keep one share and sell three others for $120,000 each. One share would guarantee the buyer one week per month each quarter. In the summer, shareholders would have the right to use the house for two weeks at a time.
Jenkins bought the three bedroom home back in 1999 and has done extensive renovations on it. But as she embraces a new life as a writer, trying to keep up two homes on separate continents has proven to be too much of challenge, Jenkins told me in a recent interview.
"I can't have two houses I don't live in full-time and live an alternative lifestyle," Jenkins said. "It just doesn't work."
It's an idea that clearly works better for a vacation home - it's harder to see how practical this arrangement would be for a primary home.
Still, lenders are not totally on board with this idea either. While the idea is more common in Europe, it's relatively new in the U.S.
"I am really interested in creating a market mechanism where it feels safe," Jenkins said. "This is exactly what I own, but it's (also) easy to sell."
Jenkins apparently believes lenders will come around.
We'll see, but she gets an A for creativity.
