Four longtime friends from the Kansas City, Missouri, area don’t know it, but they are on the leading edge of a growing phenomenon in vacation homes. They are buying places collectively: first in Vail, Colorado, and then in Nashville. Now they are searching for a spot in the Tampa Bay area.

“We buy ‘together places,’” says David Vanlerberg, spokesman for the four longtime construction industry buddies.

At one time, Vanlerberg owned a place in Florida all by himself, but rarely used it. “I got sick of paying all that money and it was not being used,” he says. So he and his friends threw in together. They buy new condos -- “they’re so easy to take care of” -- with at least three bedrooms, and they don’t rent them to others.

With the four owners taking turns, “it seems as though someone’s always using (the condos),” Vanlerberg says. “That’s what so nice about them. They’re always being used.”

Broker John Pfeiffer, president of Vail's Slifer Smith and Frampton firm, doesn’t see that many four-family groups like Vanlerberg’s buying places in the Colorado mountains. But he says there are a lot more families buying together than there used to be.

“Multiple buyers, like the guys from Missouri, are not as common,” says Pfeiffer, whose firm sold the group their latest mountain home. “Usually, it’s one or two high-income, high-net-worth families. Sometimes its multi-generational families, or baby boomers who are bequeathing their apartments or houses as their legacy.”

Groups like these want more square footage, the broker reports, usually for entertaining. Massive kitchen islands, sometimes 20 feet long with lots of seating, also are the order of the day. The more bedrooms, the better, and it’s really nice if each bedroom is a suite.

Group-buying is what gave birth to the timeshare business years ago. Under that concept, instead of spending beaucoup bucks on a place all by yourself, you can share in the cost with other like-minded buyers by purchasing a week or two’s usage.

Now, for the most part, the big timeshare developers like Hilton, Marriott and Diamond are selling points that can be converted for time at their properties. But the concept of shared ownership is the same. And after a run of bad publicity and flagging sales, the business is enjoying renewed vigor.

Indeed, timeshare sales increased in 2018 -- the ninth straight year -- rising nearly 7 percent to $10.2 billion, according to figures from the American Resort Development Association. The average price of a timeshare interval last year was just under $21,500.

ARDA counts 1,580 timeshare resorts with some 204,100 units. More than two-thirds of the units have two or more bedrooms and at least 1,180 square feet.

Two other important facts about timeshares: According to ARDA, the annual maintenance fee paid by each owner is $1,000, an increase of just 2 percent from 2017. The average occupancy rate was 81 percent, whereas it is 66 percent for hotels.

That last point doesn’t square with a Lending Tree poll of people who have whole ownership of a vacation property. It found that almost half “feel guilty” about not using their properties as much as they anticipated.

Of course, families buy holiday homes with good intentions. They expect to make good use of them, and some hope to use them to generate income. But Lending Tree found that only 1 in 4 use their places more than five times a year, and 37 percent use them once a year or less.

While about half the respondents bought their homes to rent to others, 41 percent have never done so. A third rent year-round, meaning they never get to use their places at all.

Meanwhile, one section of the shared-ownership business, known as fractionals, isn’t doing so well. According to the latest report from resort-industry research firm Ragatz Associates, sales are stagnating. Last year’s sales dipped to $471 million, the lowest in 15 years.

Fractionals come in all shapes and sizes, and include deeded shares ranging from two weeks to three months of annual use. It also includes private residence clubs and destination clubs, which typically sell 30-year memberships.

Ragatz found that of the 316 fractional properties in the United States, only 50 made sales last year. The rest are either old, or sold out.

A few other vacation-homebuying trends worth noting:

-- Vacation rental company Vacasa says many people are building portfolios of vacation properties. Its survey of 1,700 buyers actively searching the market found that more than half already have one holiday place, and 1 in 4 are looking to buy multiple places.

-- Tiny homes are finding their way into the sector, said Brian Corbett of Inspirato, an outfit that manages luxury vacation homes. Corbett predicts landowners will temporarily place rentable tiny homes, tents or other accommodations on their properties to create a resortlike experience until they ultimately decide what to build. “It’s a creative way to test concepts on land, rather than letting it sit idle,” Corbett told Urban Land, a trade journal.

-- When people think of vacation homes, they tend to think of ocean properties or mountain chalets. But don’t forget lake homes. “It’s not a small niche; sales could hit $40 billion this year,” reports Glenn Phillips of Lake Homes Realty, which has some 87,000 listings on (or adjacent to) a lake.

“What housing needs is a General Motors.” -- Leo Grebler, father of modern housing economics

Leo Grebler called for auto-like assembly line production of new homes back in 1973. But the new-home business came the closest to that method even earlier: in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, when Levitt and Sons built some 140,000 inexpensive houses along the Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere.

The Levitts broke down the construction process into 27 steps, and specialized crews repeated their jobs from one house to the next. Every third or fourth house was exactly the same. Even the landscaping -- two trees in each front yard, each placed exactly the same distance apart -- was identical.

At the time, Levitt was building up to 180 houses a week when most builders averaged four or five homes a year.

Nowadays, only a handful of residences are built entirely in a factory. Many more are built with factory-built components, such as floor and roof trusses, that are delivered to the building site. But no GM or Ford Motor Co. has emerged to take the industry by storm.

Not that people aren’t trying to industrialize the process, using 3D printing, robots and other technologies that are a far cry from those Levitt and Sons employed.

Today, much of the talk centers around robotics. But for the most part, advances in that field have been limited to commercial construction. For example, a Pittsburgh company has an autonomous rebar-tying robot, which can cut labor costs in bridge deck construction. In San Francisco, another outfit is selling robotic upgrade kits for heavy construction vehicles so they can operate independently of human drivers.

More relevant to housing, New York-based Construction Robotics has developed a bricklaying robot that can lay 3,000 bricks in an eight-hour day, as opposed to roughly 500 for a human. But it works best for multi-family buildings and other larger structures. Smaller walls would need to be built in a factory and driven to the construction site. And a Japanese government-owned research facility is working on a bot that installs drywall (though it’s just in the prototype stage).

Printers seem to hold more promise for housing. What is said to be the first 3D-printed house in the country was unveiled in Austin, Texas, last year by nonprofit New Story and sustainable-housing startup ICON. Now, the team intends to use the technology to build an entire community in El Salvador, housing more than 400 individuals.

Also in Austin, architectural firm Overland Partners has offered a series of proposals for 3D-printed neighborhoods. Teaming with ICON and nonprofit 3Strands, the collaboration wants to address the housing crisis and give disadvantaged families a sense of community.

While 3D printers can extrude plastic, metal or concrete, ICON uses a proprietary, secret cement-based mix that allows it to “rapidly print homes that are beautiful, structurally sound and cost-effective,” the company says.

Gary O’Dell, CEO and co-founder of 3Strands, agrees, saying that these innovations “will allow us to drive down the costs of building and operating new homes and, in turn, reduce the stress of housing in people’s lives.”

American researchers and entrepreneurs aren’t the only ones pursuing new technologies. Last year, for example, a French family of five was reportedly the first to actually inhabit a 3D-printed, 1,000-square-foot house. And in the Netherlands, multiple partners have come together to erect a five-house project using 3D printing.

In Switzerland, meanwhile, researchers have developed robotic and 3D-printing technologies to build a 2,150-square-foot, three-story smart house. It includes a digitally designed and 3D-printed floor slab, plus a casting system that digitally pours concrete into flexible frames that shape the pour as it hardens. A robot builds timber frame modules by following a computerized layout, and an on-site construction robot assembles the parts based on a sensing and computing system.

According to Land Lines, the publication of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “the advantages of this still-evolving form of building include more efficient use of materials, which both cut costs and minimize waste; speed of construction; and potential for customization.”

Finally, we can’t forget academia, which also is trying to push the construction envelope. Take Clemson University’s newly patented Sim(PLY) system, which is best described as a cross between a do-it-yourself kit home and a 3D puzzle.

Developed by faculty and students, the system allows a house to be built without the use of power tools or nails. Not even a hammer is necessary, according to the school. The various pieces are held together by steel zip-ties.

The technique calls for off-the-shelf plywood to be cut by routers into interlocking tab-and-slot pieces that fit together to form a solid, tight frame. Pieces can be fabricated anywhere, then shipped flat-packed to the construction site, ready to be assembled by hand.

“Unlike traditional framing systems, which generally require onsite cutting and other operations that require expertise in the construction process, Sim(PLY) streamlines assembly to the point that no advanced construction knowledge is required,” said a release from the university. And since the plywood pieces are not nailed, the resulting structure can be disassembled, modified and reused elsewhere.

Prototype Sim(PLY) houses have been built and tested in South Carolina. Now, the system is set to debut commercially in British Columbia as part of an effort to build affordable housing for teachers, nurses, police and firefighters.

Homebuyers sometimes pour every dollar they have into the transaction. But it’s important to maintain a reserve, should something unexpected strike.

How important? A new study found that buyers with post-closing liquidity of three months or more were five times less likely to default on their mortgages.

Specifically, the research by the JPMorgan Chase Institute found that borrowers with three of four mortgage payments’ worth of money in the bank had a three-year default rate of 0.3 percent. On the other hand, the default rate for those with less than the cash equivalent of one month’s payment was 1.8 percent.

While neither of those is particularly high, the difference is striking -- so much so, that buyers should consider slowing the purchase process down until they’ve built up a cushion, should something go wrong after they move in.

Sign of the Apocalypse, Part One (apologies to Sports Illustrated): Stock brokerage EF Hutton has admitted in court that it has defaulted on its mortgage on the 10-story EF Hutton Tower in downtown Springfield, Ohio -- one of the largest buildings in the city. The troubled company had suspended operations in April.

In its court filing, the firm agreed that it owed more than $4.6 million on a loan taken out just last year. It also owes Clark County $67,000 in back property taxes, according to the Springfield News-Sun, and $7.5 million on an unsecured note it used to purchase the structure in September 2016.

Sign of the Apocalypse, Part Two: A Pennsylvania bank has filed a foreclosure action against the Conneaut Lake Park Volunteer Fire Department to collect more than $400,000 in unpaid debt, interest and penalties. This follows a judgment the bank filed against the department for defaulting on three construction loans.

The bank wants the building back so it can sell it for some $382,000, according to the filing. Meanwhile, the fire department, which was organized in 1933, remains active answering calls; it serves the western portion of Sadsbury Township, near Philadelphia. Its social club, with a restaurant and liquor license, remains open.

Selling a house makes some people want to cry -- more than once, according to research from Zillow. And the simple act of living in a house or apartment causes some folks to lose sleep over covering their monthly payments, says Bankrate.com.

The sales process is so stressful that more than a third of the sellers queried said they were brought to tears. Of those, 1 in 5 said they had cried at least five times. Millennials and parents were the most likely to tear up.

“Our survey found more Americans were more stressed over selling their homes than planning a wedding, getting fired or becoming a parent,” said Zillow’s Jeremy Wacksman.

Stress comes in many waves, according to the survey. Some 70% were freaked out over uncertainty about their asking price, and 69% worried their homes wouldn’t sell in their desired time frame. Even after accepting an offer, 65% stewed about whether the contract would fall through.

Buying another house at the same time you’re selling is especially daunting. Nearly 7 out of 10 mistimed the process, with more than a third admitting the sale of their old house took longer than expected.

Meanwhile, Bankrate’s poll of 2,500 people found that 18% lose sleep worrying about making their mortgage or rent payments. Almost a third toss and turn over everyday expenses.

You’ve heard of storm chasers, those bravehearts who follow tornadoes as they cross the land. Now come the baby chasers: baby boomers who plan to move near their grandchildren when they retire.

Consulting firm Meyers Research says 25% of boomers are following their adult children so they can be closer to their kids’ own youngsters, even if it means moving to another state or less favorable climate. That’s just the opposite of previous generations, who moved away from their children, not to them, says the firm’s Tim Sullivan.

According to director of economic research Ali Wolf, Grandma and Grandpa want to downsize, but without sacrificing quality. Their preferred house has less than 2,500 square feet -- “smaller, but not small,” says Wolf.

The firm found that boomers hope to pay for their new digs with the proceeds from the sale of their current residences.

The item above begs the question: How close is too close, when it comes to living near family? An Ally Home survey put that question to some 2,000 adults across all age demographics, and the largest segment of respondents said that a drive of 15-45 minutes is just right.

In other words, grandparents, siblings and adult children should all maintain some distance from one another if they want to maintain healthy relationships.

A little more than a third (37%) of all respondents agreed that family should not live close enough to just pop in whenever they want, with an even greater percentage of millennials (42%) feeling that way.

Finally, a word of caution to the old folks thinking about becoming baby chasers: By a slim percentage point, adults would rather have their siblings and/or their own adult children living nearby than their parents.