The generational house is probably different from something like this though. Even if all the second cousins don't necessarily really know each other, a lot of the owners will have grown up going to the house starting as kids. And, as you say, families will get together etc. That seems a rather different situation from buying a luxury timeshare with strangers.
You don't always hang with family, but you get a part time use of a house that is a consistent place - that really is very nice and I think a lot of folks laughing at this idea do not understand either the market or attraction in what they are offering.
Do you pay $3M or $500K. That is the question you need to ask. Is it worth $2.5M to have more than your standard locker of crap at the vacation house?
Even family houses - generally you need to keep your personal crap to a minimum, everything is shared. You can buy a bogie board for everyone, but the folks on here talking about how they need to fill a $3M 6 bedroom house with their personal crap - this is not for you. Most of us can get buy much more simply.
This is why I'm glad we can let market decide not folks on HN. Almost every neat thing, from iphone to this would just be poo poo'ed away.
Alternatively, renting or staying in a hotel/resort is _significantly_ cheaper than $500k, even amortized over 10 years. TBD how much you can sell your timeshare back for at the end, but I'd argue the risk + the significant upfront capital + not getting to put your crap in your expensive rental™ makes it a tough sell for all but a small niche.
>let market decide not folks on HN
I'd point out that a number of the threads on this are more upset that this seems to be a timeshare system that dodges regulations around timeshares, just as Uber is a cab system that dodges cab regulations and AirBnB is a BnB/home rental. It's more anger that these startups raise massive cash to distort the markets in ways that have some advantages but aren't always long-term positive, and it takes regulation too long to catch up. Comparing regulation dodging timeshares to iPhones feels disingenuous.
There's definitely the principle of the regulation dodging. That said, aside from the existence of a matchmaking company, I'm willing to bet that the legal structures around a large shared extended family home probably doesn't look a lot different.
Yep, with family, you can live your stuff there... clothes, fishing poles, boat, even your toothbrush, and not be afraid, someone will do something really wrong with it.
Even if that's probably a somewhat idealistic view of many large extended families :-), there is shared context and history which makes it at least feel different.
