This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 61-year-old Doug Beachy, a Cincinnati-based business owner who bought a vacation home with Pacaso in 2022. Pacaso is a platform for fractional ownership of luxury vacation homes. The company allows multiple individuals to co-own a second home and share ownership of the property. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I’ve been married to my wife, Jamie, for 37 years. We have four married children and 16 grandchildren. Our oldest grandchild is 12, and our youngest isn’t quite one yet.
Once our kids started having children, they all moved back closer to home in Cincinnati, where we live. We own a five-bedroom home that’s about 4,000 square feet. We’re empty nesters, so there’s plenty of space for us, but when the whole family is over, everyone is on top of each other.
We’ve converted one room into a kids’ playroom and another into a nursery, and we have a finished basement where the kids can play, but family gatherings are still a bit hectic.
In the past, to bring everyone together, we would either rent a large beach house or book a cabin-style retreat in the woods here in Ohio.
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We did that about every other year because it’s hard to coordinate everyone’s schedules — especially with grandkids in school — and seasonal rates for a large home are expensive. It was a big chunk of money for just a week’s experience.
We bought a vacation home
Hilton Head Island has always been a fun family destination for us. It’s an island in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, just outside Savannah, Georgia, with about 12 miles of pristine beaches.
There’s so much to do here from a family activity standpoint, in addition to simply soaking up the sun and going to the beach — it’s just a great place to relax and unwind.
Homes here can be expensive, though. The average home is priced in the upper $700,000s, and properties can sell for as much as $10 million. For a while, I thought about buying a second, larger home here, but I’m not retired yet, and I realized that putting that much money into a house where I don’t live full time just didn’t make sense.
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In early 2022, I started exploring different homeownership options, including shared or fractional ownership. That’s when I found Pacaso online and saw they had some homes available in Hilton Head.
We ultimately settled on an about 5,000-square-foot home with six spacious suite-like bedrooms — five with king-sized beds, large walk-in closets, and private bathrooms, and one with several bunk beds for the children — and seven and a half bathrooms.
As you can imagine, taking 20 people out to eat all the time is not exactly fun, so we wanted a house with a large, well-stocked kitchen. Our kitchen almost occupies the entire second floor and, by my last count, it can seat 19 or 20 people. It also has a beautiful ocean view.
Co-ownership was the best fit for us
When we bought the home, it was valued at over $5 million. We own a 1/8 share — we made a 50% down payment on our portion of the home — and there are seven other owners, whom we don’t know.
Our friends will say, “It sounds like a timeshare.” But I think it’s much more transparent than a traditional timeshare. There are no extra markups or mystery fees added on top.
I also feel that, unlike a timeshare, which can leave you feeling stuck and lose value over time, this is a long-term investment. Of course, everything depends on the real-estate market, but I feel fairly confident this is an appreciating asset.
Courtesy of Pacaso
I think going this route, instead of buying another second or vacation home, has eliminated all the concerns I had about upsizing — like having to maintain the home ourselves or deal with high HOA fees. We wanted a place we could share with family, and this setup works well for us at this stage of our lives.
We spend more time together as a family
Pacaso provides a house manager who handles everything. It’s essentially a concierge service — the home is clean when we arrive and fully stocked with towels, linens, soaps, and disposable items, such as paper towels and paper plates.
When we go, the only thing we really need to think about is what food we want to buy, depending on what we plan to cook — and we have a lot of good cooks in the family.
We have the home reserved for 44 nights a year, and we use nearly all of that time. Not everyone in the family is there for every stay, but they come as they please.
Our family gets together more often now, about twice a year. In the summer, during the high season when the kids are out of school, we typically reserve the house for a couple of weeks at a time.
Courtesy of Doug Beachy
The grandkids look forward to each trip and talk about it all the time. Many of them are around the same age, and they love the opportunity to spend time with their cousins.
The house came with six beach cruiser bikes, which is perfect because there are plenty of biking trails on the island. It also has a private pool and hot tub, and the grandkids love that it’s fully stocked with games and puzzles.
Our favorite things to do with them are spending time in the pool, watching the sunrise, and hanging out on the beach. We also take a lot of bike rides and play pickleball. We just love how much more quality time we’re spending together as a family.