Time Share for your Primary Residence

No one will dispute that we have a serious traffic problem in this country. Until recently, everyone lived outside the cities and commuted in, which was bad enough. But more and more, we're getting a situation where people commute the opposite direction or directly through the center of the city to a job in the suburbs on the other side of downtown. So no matter which direction you're going, you're stuck in traffic. And that traffic gets worse and worse from year to year whether you live in a major city like Chicago or a relatively small university town like my hometown of Provo, Utah. I heard on the radio the other day that it takes residents of some San Francisco suburbs as long as three hours to commute forty miles into the city to their jobs!

Thinking about this gave me an interesting idea awhile back. What if someone were to start a sort of timeshare-like deal where families would own shares in hundreds of houses located all throughout the entire metropolitan region where they lived? Instead of owning only one or two weeks' worth of the year the way most timeshare works, you'd own the whole year for a condo or townhouse upgradeable to a single-family home if desired. If you were living in Scottsdale, Arizona and got a new job twenty miles away on the other side of downtown Phoenix, you could put in your name for a dwelling of the size you owned shares in closer to your job. The larger the pool of available homes, the quicker you could get your house close to work. Appliances and some furniture items would belong to the house so that you wouldn't have to move much of this stuff when you re-located. A bulk contract with local moving companies could be negotiated by the company so that you could get them to move you for an affordable price without being hassled with the details. Or, at your option, you could move yourself and get extra credit toward the principal on your loan.

One problem with this plan is that real estate in certain areas of a metro area (typically close to but not directly in the center) is much more expensive than in other areas. I don't know how this problem would be addressed, but my gut reaction would be to just even out the costs among everyone figuring that anyone taking part in such a program must be mobile enough that they would be spending time in both the more expensive and the cheaper areas. Much of the reason more centrally located areas are more expensive is because they provide close proximity to work, which is what you are buying by taking part in this program. So I think people would go for it. I sure would. Another option would be to award more credit to the principal loan value while people are living in lower-priced areas and then lowering the credit for the same monthly payment when the owner is inhabiting a more expensive home closer in to town. There should be a way of creating a formula to figure this all out, I would think, using the same assessment values the government uses for figuring property taxes.

Another problem is that you could never really settle into a house the way people historically did, building memories like those associated with my grandparents' homes in Odgen and Logan, Utah, for example. But as mobile as people are today, I don't think that's a big issue anymore. Those that want that won't take part in such a program. The majority of Americans are pretty mobile, though. And the fact is, you often don't have a choice where you live simply because you have to go where the jobs are.

Some advantages to this idea:
Some possible disadvantages:
The plan I have outlined here is similar to how something like insurance works. You pool your net worth with that of thousands of other people's and then if you or anyone else has an accident, the money comes out of the pool to cover the costs. (Although, in reality, the insurance company never loses except in extreme cases where critical medical care is needed because they have it rigged so that you cover the cost of the claim through higher premiums for a period following the payout. But unless you're rich enough to guarantee the funds yourself, you're stuck buying it. Particularly since the government requires it in the case of automobiles). In this case, many owners are pooling their resources so as to make a wide variety of housing available all over a metropolitan area or, eventually, an entire region of the country.

Anyway, I'd appreciate hearing what you think of this idea I'm sure there are things I've neglected to take into account. But I think it's an idea worth playing around with. So e-mail me if you wish: forgetfuljones@oocities.com

Thanks,

Dave

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Addendum: It also occured to me that those customers who are handy with repairs could pay part of their mortgages in service, with those working full-time perhaps even covering the whole cost each month in addition to a living stipend. Again, your thoughts would interest me. Thanks.

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