Fine & Country (F&C) intends to become the first international agent network in Europe to launch a dedicated fractional sales division, according to OPP.

The company, which has over 350 licensed affiliates across the UK, as well as in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, hopes to sell fractional property through its individual offices, supported by a central department.

Having a network of branches dealing with fractional would make resales easier and so encourage consumers to buy into shared ownership, F&C’s head of international, Richard Combellack, told OPP.

“We want to educate every one of our offices on what fractional is and how it works,” he said. “No mainstream agent has yet done this in Europe, possibly because of some of the taboos associated with timeshare here.”

The question of how buyers can sell on their fractional property is one of the major issues the industry faces in making shared ownership more popular in Europe, where it has yet to enter the mainstream.

Although F&C's plans are still in the early stages of development, the support of a major international agent network could substantially raise fractional's profile among European buyers.

Combellack added: “We’ll be looking for the right partners to work with this year, but we’ll only be looking for developers that sell whole ownership as well as fractional properties.”

New offices
F&C has just opened its first affiliate office in Madeira and branches in Portugal, Spain and Russia are due to follow later this year. The firm will also launch its first branch in the Far East with an office in Thailand in February.

Combellack said the location of the new offices didn’t represent a definite global strategy and the company’s priority was finding the best people to work with. “But we are keen on developing further in the Middle East, Russia and India, where we already have a lot of customers through our existing offices. The US is also our next big challenge.”