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Sometimes the best businesses don\u2019t begin with a business plan. They begin with a problem you are trying to solve for yourself.<\/em><\/p>\n Meridian36 began with a conversation between my wife, Kay, and me.<\/p>\n We love Southern Spain. The climate, the lifestyle, the food, the people, the pace of life. It is somewhere we could genuinely see ourselves spending more time.<\/p>\n And that naturally led to the idea of owning a home there.<\/p>\n But the more we thought about it, the more I kept coming back to one very simple question:<\/p>\n If we\u2019re only going to use a second home for part of the year, why would we need to own 100% of it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Buying the entire property would mean committing 100% of the capital, paying 100% of the ongoing costs, maintaining it 365 days a year and dealing with everything that comes with owning a home in another country.<\/p>\n All for something we might use for only a few months each year.<\/p>\n There had to be a better way.<\/p>\n The obvious answer might seem to be timeshare.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t what we wanted.<\/p>\n We wanted to own something real<\/strong>.<\/p>\n We wanted an ownership interest with proper legal documentation, clearly defined rights and responsibilities, professional management and a sensible way to eventually sell our position.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t want high-pressure sales tactics.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t want complicated points systems.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t want to wonder what we actually owned.<\/p>\n And we certainly didn\u2019t want to discover years later that getting out was considerably more difficult than getting in.<\/p>\n So I started looking at fractional ownership and co-ownership models.<\/p>\n The concept made sense.<\/p>\n The structures often didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n This is where Meridian36 really began.<\/p>\n I stopped looking at the idea purely as a business opportunity and started looking at it as a purchaser.<\/p>\n What would Kay and I need to see before we were comfortable buying an ownership position ourselves?<\/strong><\/p>\n The questions started piling up.<\/p>\n What exactly do we own?<\/p>\n How is our ownership legally protected?<\/p>\n How is usage allocated?<\/p>\n Who maintains the property?<\/p>\n How are monthly costs calculated?<\/p>\n What happens if something breaks?<\/p>\n Can our family use it?<\/p>\n What happens if another owner doesn\u2019t pay?<\/p>\n What happens when we want to sell?<\/p>\n And perhaps one of the most important questions of all:<\/p>\n What happens to the owners if the company managing everything is no longer there?<\/strong><\/p>\n Those aren\u2019t small details.<\/p>\n They are the difference between an attractive idea and an ownership structure I would actually be prepared to put my own money into.<\/p>\n As the idea developed, I began working with my co-founder, Katriina Raiskio-Flygare, a lawyer with extensive experience in Spain.<\/p>\n Together, we started working through the legal, financial and operational questions behind the concept.<\/p>\n Not simply:<\/p>\n How do we sell shared ownership?<\/strong><\/p>\n But:<\/p>\n How would we want shared ownership to work if we were the purchasers?<\/strong><\/p>\n That distinction has shaped Meridian36 from the beginning.<\/p>\n We wanted fair value.<\/p>\n We wanted clear agreements.<\/p>\n We wanted transparent ongoing costs.<\/p>\n We wanted professional management without taking control away from owners where it mattered.<\/p>\n We wanted a straightforward path for someone who eventually decides they want to sell.<\/p>\n And we wanted protections built into the structure for circumstances nobody likes talking about, including what happens if Meridian36 itself were ever unable to continue operating.<\/p>\n Because buying a home abroad should create freedom.<\/p>\n It shouldn\u2019t create another collection of things to worry about.<\/p>\n That remains one of the simplest ideas behind Meridian36.<\/p>\n If you spend 60 or 90 days each year in Southern Spain, you don\u2019t necessarily need 365 days of property ownership to enjoy the benefits of having a home there.<\/p>\n Your capital doesn\u2019t need to sit inside an empty house for most of the year.<\/p>\n You shouldn\u2019t necessarily have to manage repairs, gardens, pools, utilities, insurance and local contractors from another country.<\/p>\n And you shouldn\u2019t have to choose between renting every time you visit and taking on the entire responsibility of a second home.<\/p>\n There is another possibility.<\/p>\n Own what makes sense. Use what you own. Share the costs. Have it professionally managed.<\/strong><\/p>\n That sounds simple.<\/p>\n Building a structure capable of delivering it properly is considerably more complicated.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been working on.<\/p>\n There will always be easier ways to structure a business.<\/p>\n But that isn\u2019t the standard we use at Meridian36.<\/p>\n Whenever we face an important decision, I keep returning to the same question that started all of this:<\/p>\n Would I be comfortable with this if Kay and I were the ones buying?<\/strong><\/p>\n Would I consider the price fair?<\/p>\n Would I understand exactly what I own?<\/p>\n Would I consider the agreement fair?<\/p>\n Would I know what I\u2019m paying every month and why?<\/p>\n Would I know how to sell if our circumstances changed?<\/p>\n Would I feel that someone was looking after the property properly when we weren\u2019t there?<\/p>\n Would I know what protections existed if something went wrong?<\/p>\n If I can\u2019t answer those questions satisfactorily for myself, I don\u2019t believe we should expect someone else to.<\/p>\n Meridian36 is still growing, and we will continue learning, improving and challenging our own assumptions as we build it.<\/p>\n But the principle behind it isn\u2019t going to change.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t build Meridian36 by asking how little an owner needed to receive.<\/strong><\/p>\n We built it by asking what we would expect if we were the ones buying.<\/strong><\/p>\n And in many ways, we are.<\/p>\n Because this whole journey began with Kay and me imagining what it would be like to have a place of our own in Southern Spain.<\/p>\n We simply found ourselves asking:<\/p>\n Is there a better way to own it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Meridian36 is our answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes the best businesses don\u2019t begin with a business plan. They begin with a problem you are trying to solve for yourself. Meridian36 began with a conversation between my wife, Kay, and me. We love Southern Spain. The climate, the lifestyle, the food, the people, the pace of life. It is somewhere we could…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83607,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[234],"class_list":["post-83606","insights","type-insights","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWe Weren\u2019t Looking for a Timeshare<\/h2>\n
I Started Asking the Questions I Would Ask Before Writing the Cheque<\/h2>\n
Then Meridian36 Started Taking Shape<\/h2>\n
Why Own More Than You Need?<\/h2>\n
We\u2019re Building Something We Would Buy Ourselves<\/h2>\n