Sonoma City Council on Fractional Homeownership The Sonoma City Council on Jan. 19 placed a ban on timeshares and fractional-interest home uses in the City of Sonoma. The urgency ordinance was passed in response to inroads the Pacaso real-estate company has recently attempted in Sonoma Valley, marketing a fractional-interest model for groups of six to eight co-owners to purchase shared ownership and shared time allowed in multi-million-dollar homes. As an urgency ordinance, which goes into effect immediately, the five-member council needed four votes for the ordinance to pass. The urgency ordinance was approved 5-0. City staff will prepare a regular ordinance prohibiting timeshares and fractional-interest use for the council to consider in the coming months. The City of Sonoma currently doesn’t cite timeshares as an identified “use” in its city code, so the time-share model is already, in effect, banned, according to city Planning Director David Storer. But city officials wanted to specifically codify timeshares and fractional-interest as a prohibited use in the city, in order to preempt any confusion over their allowed use. Pacaso’s one Sonoma property, on Old Winery Court, sits just outside city limits. -- Jason Walsh.
