Splitting a Second Home With Family or Friends? Get a Lawyer

Buying a vacation home with family or friends might seem great on paper. Often, those who do so regret the decision.

Home buyers who split the purchase of a vacation spot with family or friends say they are doing so to cope with high mortgage rates, steep home prices or rising home-repair costs. Others are inheriting vacation property as more of their baby-boomer parents die.

In both cases, homeowners say disputes about house guests, repairs and maintenance threaten to spoil the arrangement. Conflicts over the homes can ruin friendships and split up families, while co-owners sometimes end up in legal battles.

The pandemic-fuelled housing frenzy has made the situation worse, say real-estate lawyers, given the surging price of homes has led to more fights about the use and renting of properties. The typical property in second-home markets such as Naples, Fla., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., sold for about $558,000 in June, according to the latest data from Redfin. The typical U.S. home sold for about $426,000, Redfin said.

In Sevierville, Tenn., Avery Carl’s HVAC unit started to act up.

Carl and the woman with whom she owns the home disagreed on how much to spend to fix it. The options were to pay more than $6,000 to install a new system or a few hundred dollars to periodically replace the problematic part.

“Things were tense for about two weeks,” said Carl.

The women eventually found common ground, invested in a new HVAC unit and remain friends, Carl said.

Lawyers and financial advisers say the key to avoiding dangerous scenarios with family or friends is communication and a plan in writing before potential problems arise. Here are three areas where co-ownership can go awry and advice on how to keep the peace:

Set expectations in writing

Financial planners often advise against sharing the ownership of a vacation home with extended family or friends. Don’t assume that even small conflicts will be breezily resolved, they say.

Will Clauss, a Realtor in Hawley, Pa., has seen joint ownership start off smoothly and then go south when a co-owner’s personal circumstances change.

He recently worked with four siblings who bought a vacation home in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. They had agreed in writing to share expenses equally and rotate which of their immediate families would stay at the house on the Fourth of July and other big holidays.

But when one sister moved away, she no longer wanted to pay an equal share of the home’s expenses. The family ultimately agreed to excuse her from the property’s utility bills. She would need to keep paying her share of the mortgage as she will benefit if the house appreciates and they eventually sell it.

Clauss advises clients with a shared property to hire a lawyer who can put in writing key points such as how an owner could sell his share, how disputes are resolved and who pays the bills.

“A vacation home is unlikely to be shared long-term without serious disagreements and aggravations,” said Avi Kestenbaum, a partner at Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone, who has helped several heirs settle disputes after they inherited a vacation property.

For instance, decide whether each owner is expected to have the home cleaned before departing, who gets to use the primary suite bedroom if several owners are there, and whether the home might be used as short-term rental, said Clauss.

Remodelling and repairs headaches

A recent rise in natural disasters has also created more discord about who will pay for improvements, renovations and maintenance on the home, said Michele McCallion, a financial adviser with UBS Financial Services in Greenwich, Conn.

Minimize this conflict by having a plan for how bills will be paid.

For routine operating expenses such as taxes and insurance, Jonathan Lauer, his brother and two cousins each pay about $11,000 a year to help maintain the Point O’Woods beach house they co-own on Fire Island, N.Y. Sharing the financial burden is helpful, especially in light of rising costs, he said.

Deciding on bigger and less-routine expenses is trickier. The family’s formal legal operating agreement for the home requires a unanimous decision on any discretionary spending above $10,000, so all four owners have to be on board with any big project.

This winter, the family completed a much-needed kitchen renovation and put in new front steps that cost about $140,000 in total. While the spending guideline helps keep the peace and put a lid on costs, it sometimes slows down decision making, Lauer said.

“It took seven years for all of us to agree to go through with the project,” he said.

Have an exit plan

If you own a house with others, consider how you will eventually unload your share.

Parents who plan to leave the home to their heirs can help prevent future fights by having a candid dialogue with their children to find out if they even want to keep the vacation home after the parents die, said Kestenbaum, the lawyer with Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone.

Brent Weiss, a financial planner in St. Petersburg, Fla., works with a man who inherited a vacation home with his three siblings.

After the first year of co-ownership, two siblings wanted to sell and the other two wanted to keep it and rent it out part time. The family ended up in a legal battle.

The property was recently sold and some of the siblings aren’t speaking to each other, Weiss said.

“If clear expectations aren’t set early on, pressure can build and eventually blow the top off the partnership,” said Weiss.

For Jack Freeman, a compelling interior should not look as though it was completed in a single shopping trip.

The founder and designer behind FREEMAN & CO prefers rooms that develop through art, travel, commissioned furniture and objects collected over time. It is an approach that treats the home less as a decorative project and more as an evolving portrait of its owner.

“I am a true believer in collecting versus decorating,” Freeman says.

That distinction underpins the international practice he has built across private residences, hotels, property developments, yachts and private aviation. Its projects stretch from Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay and Toorak to Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean.

Although the locations and architecture vary considerably, the work is connected by a restrained design language. Natural stone, warm timbers and sculptural furniture establish the foundation, while art, bespoke lighting and individual objects give each interior its identity.

The objective is not to overwhelm a room with obvious symbols of expense. It is to create an environment that feels calm, layered and particular to the people living within it.

“The greatest luxury isn’t about excess,” Freeman says. “It’s about creating an oasis where you come home and feel immediately grounded — effortlessly chic and deeply personal.”

Collecting instead of decorating

Decorating can imply the completion of a room: selecting the required furniture, filling the available walls and producing a coherent finished image.

Collecting is less conclusive.

A collected interior has room to change as its owners travel, discover artists, inherit pieces or reassess how they use their home. Its character comes from the relationship between objects rather than adherence to a single brand or season.

That does not mean placing unrelated pieces together without discipline. The designer must understand scale, proportion, material and provenance well enough to create a dialogue between them.

A contemporary artwork might sit beside a historic piece of furniture. A precisely detailed new interior may be interrupted by an irregular object made by hand. Smooth stone can be balanced by timber, textiles or a patinated metal surface that becomes richer with age.

The tension between those elements is part of the appeal.

For Freeman, art is not an accessory to be added once the furniture plan is complete. It forms part of the architecture and atmosphere of the room from the beginning.

Lighting is considered in the same way. Beyond its practical purpose, a bespoke fitting can operate as a suspended sculpture, changing both the room’s composition and the way its materials are experienced after dark.

A design perspective shaped by travel

International travel plays a significant role in Freeman’s creative process.

Design fairs such as PAD Paris and Salone del Mobile in Milan provide opportunities to encounter emerging designers, established galleries, new materials and collectible furniture away from the filter of social media.

More spontaneous discoveries can prove equally important.

“Sometimes it’s the simple things,” Freeman says. “That piece found on a shopping trip with a client in Paris, stumbling across an artisan’s workshop, or a special memory that forms the narrative of the story.”

Objects selected during travel bring more than visual interest into a home. They carry an association with a place, maker or experience, giving the client a connection that cannot be reproduced by ordering an entire interior from a catalogue.

Freeman’s influences are international, but his projects are not conceived as replicas of Parisian, Milanese or Californian style. Each commission responds to its architecture, setting, natural light and the daily lives of its occupants.

A waterfront Sydney residence demands a different treatment from a Mayfair townhouse. A Caribbean estate shaped by brutalist architecture and reflecting pools calls for another response again.

The designer’s role is to absorb those references without allowing them to overwhelm the individual qualities of the property.

Designing the complete experience

FREEMAN & CO extends beyond conventional interior decoration.

The practice’s stated services include interior design and architecture, project management, property acquisition, development advice, concept design, documentation, furniture and lighting design, procurement and art curation.

That breadth allows the team to become involved before a room’s dimensions and finishes are fixed.

Early participation can be important at the top end of the residential market, where architecture, landscape, interiors, technology and art must operate as one environment. Decisions about ceiling heights, wall dimensions, sightlines and lighting can directly affect where art is installed or how custom furniture is proportioned.

The practice can then carry those decisions through to procurement and final installation, maintaining the design narrative as a project moves between architects, builders, specialist craftspeople, dealers and suppliers.

Its residential portfolio includes a South Coast retreat conceived as an escape from urban life, a Caribbean estate with reflecting pools, an East Coast-inspired Palm Beach residence and a Mayfair townhouse organised around an expressive drawing room.

The studio also says it has worked on highly tailored Sydney residences with values exceeding $100 million, although the private nature of such commissions means individual addresses and clients are not always disclosed.

A home that can keep changing

The risk in creating a perfectly resolved interior is that it can become too static — a composition that looks exceptional in photographs but leaves little room for life.

Freeman sees the home as something that should evolve with its owners.

“I love the evolution of design,” he says. “We are talking about people’s lives, and as they evolve, so too should their private sanctuaries.”

That evolution might involve adding art, reupholstering a significant piece, adapting rooms as a family changes or making space for objects gathered through future travels.

The original design needs to be strong enough to accommodate those layers.

This may be the clearest expression of Freeman’s approach to luxury. It is not simply access to rare stone, collectible furniture or commissioned craftsmanship. It is the creation of a personal environment whose meaning deepens rather than diminishes with time.

Fact box

Designer: Jack Freeman

Role: Founder and managing director

Practice: FREEMAN & CO

Base: Australia, with international projects

Project locations named by the practice: Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay, Toorak, Palm Beach, the NSW South Coast, Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean

Sectors: Private residences, hotels, residential developments, private aviation and superyachts

Services: Interior design and architecture, property development, project management, property acquisition, documentation, furniture and lighting design, FF&E procurement, interior dressing and art curation

Design philosophy: Collected, personal interiors shaped by art, craftsmanship, travel and enduring materials

Website: free-man.co

Splitting a Second Home With Family or Friends? Get a Lawyer

Plan specifying how bills are paid might reduce conflict among co-owners

Set expectations in writing

Remodelling and repairs headaches

Have an exit plan

Jack Freeman believes the most compelling interiors are not decorated, but collected. The FREEMAN & CO founder creates layered, personal spaces shaped by art, travel and craftsmanship.