Partial Interests in Recreational Property

Changing demographics, growing real incomes, and friendly tax laws underlie the continuing growth in demand for recreational real estate in the US. The market for recreational property has undergone a major transformation over the past decades, with the refinement and deepening of markets for partial property ownership vehicles. This paper represents the first to analyze the factors underlying the demand for partial ownership interests. It develops a theory of partial ownership demand that focuses on the roles of familiarity and location-specific human capital in mediating the consumption uncertainty associated with particular recreation locations. Using private data from a survey of partial ownership participants, the empirical analysis yields results consistent with the theory: factors associated with greater site-specific recreation price, like distance between the primary residence and the recreation site and frequency of visits per week, reduce the share of ownership demanded, while factors associated with lower consumption risk tend to increase the share of ownership demanded.