Certainly, those in the business of selling fractionally-owned properties strenuously deny that the principles are the same as timeshare. The biggest – and probably the most critical difference – they can point to is the fact that a part or fractional ownership is just that. It’s a part ownership of the freehold of the property and comes with the relevant Title Deeds, secured at the Spanish Land Registry. Alternatively, the property deeds can be held by a company, in which you own the appropriate number of shares.

Unlike timeshare, therefore, the fractional owner should enjoy a share of the property’s true asset value, which will appreciate at the current property market rates (which, of course, are especially favourable in Spain at the moment).

As with timeshare, your shared interest in the property means that you have a specified period of time during the year in which to enjoy occupancy. In the case of most current fractional ownership schemes, shares are generally sold by a twelfth or quarter shares – i.e. giving you occupancy rights either for a month or one of the four seasons each year respectively. Nevertheless, most schemes allow the purchaser to spread occupancy in equal periods throughout the year, in order to enjoy the benefits of all the seasons.

If the fractional owner decides not to use all or some of his or her allocated weeks, a rental income can be obtained, thus offering still greater flexibility.

In most shared ownership schemes – as in timeshare arrangements, of course – a professional management company will look after the property, paying bills and maintaining the property, eliminating many of the headaches associated with ownership overseas. As part of the set up contract, a pre-signed agreement will usually be in place detailing procedures for the owners to abide by the rules – for the mutual protection of their investment and their piece of mind. All annual running costs can then be divided equally among the owners to cover administration, rates, utilities, insurance, periodic external painting and maintenance of pools and communal areas, with a sinking fund providing for refurbishment of the interior of the property to help ensure that it is always maintained to a high standard over the life of ownership.

So when and where did this notion of fractional ownership begin. Like many a novelty, it probably has its origins in the United States, where groups of friends or relatives simply shared the cost and use of a holiday home. The experience here showed that everything was just fine and dandy until someone needed to sell or died. Rather two many of these pioneers in shared ownership discovered that the only two truly happy times in this type of deal were when they purchased and when they sold!

Similarly, it was in America where the timeshare industry first surfaced during the 1960s and immediately attracted many buyers to the concept of buying a week or two at their favourite resort, and owning the rights to use it for many years – generally with the option of trading those weeks to visit other resorts. It made regular vacations affordable for many Americans, attracted by the idea of being able to pre-pay their holidays at today’s prices.

During the 1970s a number of disreputable developers got involved in the timeshare business on both sides of the Atlantic and as horror stories spread of people being swindled in one way or another, the word “timeshare” soon became an unmentionable one.

In the 1980s, some of the better known and more reputable hotel chains sought to breathe new life into the timeshare industry. In the more up-market sectors of this economy – led in the United States by the Marriott Hotel group – the timeshare image began to re-establish itself and achieved a reasonable degree of success. The worldwide timeshare industry seemed to gain a second lease of life and continues to prosper today and into the foreseeable future.

The growth of the travel and leisure industry, together with a steady rise in the time available to many people for recreation, consumers began to purchase multiple timeshare weeks. Given the rise in demand, therefore, it was really only a question of time before some enterprising developer found another way of selling “larger pieces” or “shares” in a holiday villa, apartment or condominium.

In fact, it was as early as 1971 that an American developer offered “quarter shares” in the properties he had built in Massachusetts. Although “quarters” soon became all the rage up and down the east coast of the United States – especially in the Hilton Head Island area of South Carolina – the boom was short-lived because in order to sell quarter ownerships, the price per quarter was more than the market could bear. Second-home prices and property taxes in the United States were so reasonable in the 1970s that people simply bought the entire property!

During the same period, yet another American developer extended his existing timeshare business by offering what some people believe to be the original “fractional ownership” deal, simply because it gave timeshare accessibility for more than a week but less than a quarter – a one-fifth offering at a resort called Brockway Springs in King City, Nevada. Once again, although the project met with initial success, the fractional timing still wasn’t quite right for the American market and interest dried up there, where “timeshares” continued to rule the scene for the next 20 years or so.

Although stimulated by the same sorts of interests and goals, the British market was exposed to slightly different influences during the late 1970s and into the 80s.

During this period, the residential housing market – led by the Housing Corporation and its associated housing associations – itself began to experiment with the notion of “shared ownership” and “shared equity”. The result was that the population at large became far more familiar – and comfortable – with the concept of shared or “fractional” ownership of homes.

And what was good for home ownership could of course be just as good for second- or holiday-home ownership.