Welcome to the first in a line of articles exploring the world of fractional ownership and asset sharing. To kick off allow me to introduce myself and take a little trip down memory lane explaining how I personally became involved in this area.

A number of years ago I found myself in the position of having acquired a small amount of ‘spare’ (well, I justified it as such!) money through a property sale. One of my rather expensive pastimes is motoring and as such I was interested in putting some of the available funds into the purchase of a classic car for a bit of sunny weekend fun.

Unfortunately once I had actually looked at the amount of money I had compared to how much it would realistically cost to run anything with true classic pedigree I resigned myself to the fact that, for the time being at least, classic car ownership was to remain a pipe dream. With a heavy heart I continued to pick up the odd magazine and gaze longingly at the chrome-festooned slices of loveliness that stared back at me from the classifieds until one day the planets aligned and I chanced across an article on asset-sharing classic car ownership which profiled a company only a short walk from my office.

The following day I found myself pouring over some of the most lust worthy metal I have ever seen gathered in one showroom- from a number of Jaguar E-Types of various iterations to more modern fare such as the Audi Quattro. Long story short- a deal was struck whereby through membership of the profiled company I would have use of such vehicles for around 40 days per year. The price of which was around £3,000 at the time, small beer compared even to just the purchase price of one of the cars- perhaps I could have got myself a ratty MG for similar money but instead I had a whole fleet of meticulously maintained classics at my disposal. Sure, they weren’t just at the end of the driveway everyday but there was the bonus of the variety as well as the lack of maintenance and insurance costs to me.

Skipping forward a few years, during which I enjoyed many memorable trips behind various non-airbag steering wheels, and a the concept of asset-sharing and fractional ownership (more on exactly what the difference is in the following article) had gained momentum leading me to become aware number of companies around the globe. But I wasn’t the only one who had noticed this growth area- Piers Brown, a good friend employed in the asset-sharing industry had also been following the market trends and saw that these relatively early stages were the foundations of something big yet there was no one place were consumers could review all the various options so it was a fractured and confusing marketplace for the layman.

Another fast forward moment- in a short space of time Piers branched out on his own and set up www.fractionallife.com. Due to my experience in the market I joined his team as Editor of the site- offering articles and reviews on the opportunities available in all areas from classic cars as above through to private jets, yachts and property and everything in between.

All of which brings us pretty much up to date- although www.fractionallife.com is an ever growing resource there may be particular questions that remain unanswered or something that could potentially be explored in more detail. This is where this column comes in- I would like your input so that in amongst the broader articles on the marketplace I can answer some more specific queries. It won’t be called anything as cheesy as ‘Ask Aaron’ (although that is catchy…) but that will be the crux of it so if you do have any questions drop me a line at and I will endeavour to shed some light in a forthcoming column.

Look forward to hearing from you.

All the best,

Aaron Weddell

9/19/07