Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Vacation Property Solutions is a Developer-Friendly Solution for Timeshare Sales

Author: Jason Tremblay

We have a new division at Sell My Timeshare NOW - it’s called Vacation Property Solutions. This is a revolutionary new business-to-business resale solution for timeshare resorts and timeshare developers. Vacation Property Solutions is a one-stop solution for the types of timeshare resale needs facing developers and resorts and it will utilize the services of both our brokerage arm: Timeshare Broker Services, and our closing company: Transfer My Timeshare.

Vacation Property Solutions expands our services at Sell My Timeshare NOW, to include brokers, resorts, travel clubs, and wholesalers, helping them solve the timeshare inventory problems of their customers. Working directly with timeshare developers and with resorts, we can offer them discounted rates for bulk business.

Vacation Property Solutions lets us take the same types of great services and expansive internet visibility that we already offer consumers, and offer them to timeshare developers and timeshare resorts. Developers looking to rent out timeshare weeks or Home Owners Associations needing to liquidate their delinquent inventory, have access to the more than 2 million monthly visitors to the Sell My Timeshare NOW website. Vacation Property Solutions offers a way for developers to buy back inventory, helping to stabilize prices on the resale market, and to solve the ownership dilemmas of buyers who already own intervals but are looking to buy into a new timeshare resort.

Vacation Property Solutions, an Important Part of Sell My Timeshare NOW

Freda Stemick, at Vacation Property Solutions, is the timeshare industry’s point of contact. Freda says, “Vacation Property Solutions is both developer-friendly and resort-friendly, building a bridge between the retail and secondary markets of the timeshare industry.”

Freda brings over 20 years of experience in timeshare sales, starting with her first timeshare industry job at Virginia’s Massanutten Resort.

Click here to read the press release for Vacation Property Solutions.

 

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Friday, October 3, 2008

Buy Timeshares Online - How Has the Internet Changed the Way People Buy (and Sell) Timeshare?

Author: Jason Tremblay

“There are legitimate, effective, and viable means for selling a timeshare.”

Need to sell your timeshare?

The internet really is the great equalizer for selling timeshare. Before there was easily assessable widespread use of the internet it was hard to find an effective way to resale your timeshare…what options did you have? Run an ad in the newspaper? Contract with a real estate agent? Neither of these was a very effective choice. But now, thanks to the internet, there is a realistic way to resell a timeshare you no longer use.

Your Choices for Selling Your Timeshare

You have two basic options for selling your timeshare online. One is to go through a broker, like Timeshare Hot Deal. The other is to go the, “for sale by owner route.”

If you prefer to have no interaction with the process of your timeshare sale, you can turn everything over to a credible timeshare broker. This gives you the full assistance of a licensed real estate professional, and for some timeshare owners, this is the best choice.

The more popular option however, is to sell “by-owner”. When you use a timeshare resale company, look for one that is reliable and gives you exposure - a lot of exposure. Exposure, paired with ‘right-pricing’ is the key to selling your timeshare. This short video will help you understand more about how important exposure is in the timeshare sales process.

 

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Monday, September 15, 2008

Sell Timeshare - What Are My Options?

Author: Jason Tremblay

Okay, summer is over, and perhaps you failed to use your timeshare once again. If you have a timeshare that you are not enjoying, and you are not interested in using it as a timeshare rental, then you should consider selling it as a timeshare resale.

But do you understand your options for reselling your timeshare?

One choice is to work with a timeshare broker, a real estate professional who will handle your timeshare resale for you. You will be using a licensed real estate broker, and you should expect the broker to charge you a commission when your timeshare sells. Commissions for timeshare resales are typically higher than real estate commissions for selling a home, so expect to pay as much as 15 to 30 percent in sales commission.

For Sell by Owner Timeshare Resales Advertising

Your other realistic option for selling your timeshare is to let Sell My Timeshare NOW advertise your timeshare for you. Using the vast exposure of the internet, your timeshare ad can be seen by interested timeshare buyers all over the world.

The job of a timeshare advertising company is to position your timeshare resales ad so that it draws global visibility in a worldwide marketplace. And nothing does that better than internet advertising does. Where once your daily newspaper or even television was a good way to attract many buyers, today’s tool of choice for maximum exposure advertising is the internet.

This short video can help you learn more about your options to sell timeshare efficiently …

 

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Monday, September 8, 2008

Can Anyone Guarantee To Sell My Timeshare?

Author: Jason Tremblay

When I hear people talk about a guaranteed sale of your timeshare on the resale market, it makes me cringe. Can Sell My Timeshare NOW guarantee you that we will sell your resale timeshare? Of course, we cannot. And neither can anyone else.

So if you are interested in reselling your timeshare, and someone contacts you “promising” to get you a sale - especially if that promise of a sale includes a target date - you should back away from that offer in a hurry. It simply is not logical to say that any company can guarantee that it can produce the right buyer, at the right price, on a given day, for a timeshare or for almost any other product.

But here’s what is logical and it is what we do best at Sell My Timeshare NOW: If you advertise your resale timeshare with us, we will give you expansive global visibility to a market of interested timeshare buyers and timeshare renters, greatly increasing your chance of making that sale.

At Sell My Timeshare NOW, we are committed to helping you sell your timeshare, as easily and efficiently as possible. And while we don’t guarantee a sale, we DO guarantee that if you advertise your timeshare on Sell My Timeshare NOW, but sell it through another company or timeshare broker at the same advertised price, all you have to do is show us your document of sale and we will refund the money you paid to advertise with us.

…And that’s a timeshare guarantee you can believe in and rely on.

To learn more about what it takes to sell your timeshare, take a moment and watch this video:

 

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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Selling Timeshares, Only Without the Hassel

Author: Jason Tremblay

Last night I picked up our ringing home telephone, except I failed to check the Caller ID first. If I had, I would have recognized that it was a timeshare sales call and then I would have done what most people do … I would have let the call go to voicemail.

But after I managed to exit the call (rather quickly), I started thinking about the contrast in buying timeshares, only buying them as timeshare resales compared to buying new timeshare. First of all, timeshares are spacious, available in locations around the world, and loaded with amenities for you and your family to enjoy whether you buy them from the developer or as timeshare resales. Either way you buy timeshare, you can select a type of timeshare that lets you pick the date, the location, or the timeshare exchange option that fits the way you like to vacation.

New timeshare or timeshare resales are the same product, so buy new timeshares only if you are prepared to deal with a timeshare sales pitch and to ultimately pay much, much more for your vacation ownership property.

What Makes Buying Timeshare Resales so Different

When you buy timeshare resales, you can make your purchase directly from the current timeshare owner, or you can let timeshare brokers represent your interests. Either way, you avoid the well-rehearsed sales presentations from commissioned employees who want to sell you a timeshare … regardless of whether the timeshare resort they represent turns out to be the one you want to buy.

And then the next time you get one of “those” phone calls, you can tell the caller, you already own timeshares, only you bought them at the right price, and at a time that fit your schedule, not because of a telephone call that interrupted your evening meal.

Visit Sell My Timeshare NOW to learn more about the opportunities in timeshare resales and timeshare rentals.

 

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

Timeshare Resales Companies and the Overall Timeshare Market

Author: Jason Tremblay

Do you know that you can resell your residential home (or any other type of real estate) without hiring a real estate agent or Realtor(r) to assist you? Of course you know that, and you’d be indignant and probably downright angry if it was any other way.

If you own a home, a piece of land, an office building, or other type of property, you have choices when it comes to reselling it. You can handle the sale yourself or hire a real estate professional to help you. You can use a buy-owner company to assist with part of the process, or you can select a range of services, from title agents to real estate attorneys, using only those you need to help you.

And the fact that no law requires you to buy or sell real estate from a real estate professional hasn’t done a thing to harm the real estate industry as a whole. In fact, the diversity of ways to sell is part of what makes the industry competitive and fair.

Millions and millions of people, who have sold their homes by a method, other than hiring a real estate professional, will tell you that they saved a lot of money that would have gone to an agent or a broker for advertising and showing the property or other fees that are paid as part of the commission. You also see the same ads on television that I see, with testimonials from people who have used a buy-owner real estate company to help them sell their homes, and are thrilled with the money they saved, or other features of the service they received. And as with anything, there are stories of people who tried to sell property themselves, and for whatever reason, got burned and wished in hindsight they had used a Realtor(r).

In any industry, including those that involve the sale of real estate, and those that involve the sale of timeshare real estate, there are good services and bad ones; there are services that work well for one person but maybe not for another. But American business is built on our freedom to choose to work with companies that we think, best serve our individual needs.

Ways to Sell Timeshare and Timeshare Resales

Timeshare developers, timeshare resellers, and timeshare advertising and marketing companies are all valid and contributing parts of the timeshare industry. Professional associations, such as ARDA, the American Resort Development Association, recognize this and support all factions of the industry.

While a few timeshare developers offer buy-back programs, the majority does not, leaving timeshare owners to come up with their own ways to sell timeshare they no longer wish to own.

Some people have a network of personal contacts that is so large, and a way to get the word to all of them, that they can sell timeshare themselves. But most of us don’t, nor do we want to hit on our friends and family members, trying to convince them to buy timeshare from us.

Some people want to sell timeshare but be separate from the process, letting someone else handle all the details, and for them it may be a great idea to work with a timeshare broker. And other people, just need help marketing their timeshare resale or perhaps handling the closing paperwork. The right choice for them could be a timeshare advertising and marketing company or perhaps a timeshare title transfer company. But it all goes back to choices

Real Estate and Timeshare Real Estate in the US

Let’s face it. The residential real estate market in the US is about as bad as it has been in many years. But who do we blame for that? We can lay part of the blame on the rising price of oil that leaves people pumping larger and larger chunks of their paychecks into their gas tanks, with less and less money to spend on a new home.

We can blame a greedy element of the mortgage industry, that put people into mortgages that were so riddled with hidden charges the people couldn’t get out of them before the one obvious cost - that ever- adjusting interest rate, soared through the roof. We can blame politicians, heads of business, or just a predictable swing in the pendulum of life, but we can’t logically say that buy-owner or help-u-sell real estate services are to blame for the falling value of home prices. And it wouldn’t make any sense to say that timeshare resale companies are responsible for the resell price you can or can’t get for your timeshare property.

Whether you are looking at residential real estate, timeshare deeded property, timeshare points, or something totally different like new and used refrigerators, things sell for what the market will bear. People, not companies, set prices by what they are willing or able to pay.

New cars sell for prices that are comparably much higher than the price for which used cars sell. And new cars will continue to sell for that higher price because we are willing to pay the price, and because auto manufacturers spend huge dollars on advertising to convince you to buy their product instead of someone else’s. When that same car is resold, the second buyer pays market value (the price the market will bear) because he or she no longer has to absorb the cost of the car manufacturer’s pricey advertising.

The lower resell price has nothing to do with the used car dealer; it is just a fact of economics that applies in much the same way for resale timeshares as it does to resale automobiles. The economics of this aren’t complicated, but sometimes, you have to keep explaining them over and over again, because a few people, just don’t get it.

 

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Saturday, March 22, 2008

Question of Taxes on Timeshare Sale

Author: Jason Tremblay

USA Today ran a question and answer this week in their “Personal Finance” segment that was intended to deal with an IRS tax issue. Instead, it sounded more like a ‘criminal’ matter to me.

A reader posed the following question to tax expert, Andy Mattson of Mohler, Nixon, Willams and Campbell:

“I sold my timeshare for a gross gain of $3,000. However, because of the huge commission I paid to the timeshare company for selling it, my net was a loss of $6,000. Do I have to pay capital gains on $3,000 or do I consider it a loss and not report anything?”

Wait! Set aside the matter of capital gains and taxes owed for a minute. Is this reader really saying that he or she paid a $9000 commission to sell a timeshare unit for $3000? If this was the case, then I say that the terms of this timeshare sale are a lot bigger problem than the matter of paying capital gains taxes.

Selling Timeshare through a Timeshare Broker

There are times when a timeshare owner who wants to sell timeshare needs or prefers to work with a licensed timeshare broker. The broker earns a commission when the timeshare unit or weeks sell. People who are considering selling timeshare with the assistance of a broker, should understand from the beginning what the commission rate is and of course, the rate should be clearly defined in the written agreement between the seller and the timeshare broker.

But there is simply no way that you should ever have to pay a $9000 commission on a $3000 timeshare sale - that’s why I called it ‘criminal’. If you are facing this scenario, why wouldn’t you donate your timeshare, save the sales commission, and perhaps gain a tax deduction in the process? Or consider using Sell My Timeshare NOW to help you advertise and market your timeshare resale, and handle the sales transaction yourself. Either option makes far more sense than paying 3 times more in commission than you are grossing in your timeshare sale.

Answering the Question of Capital Gains on Timeshare Sales

Now back to the matter of the capital gains owed. Mattson, the tax expert, must have interpreted the timeshare seller’s question the same way I did, because his answer was this:

“It sounds like you had to pay a commission of $9,000 on gross proceeds of $3,000.

You determine your gain based upon the amount realized. Per IRS Publication 523, the amount realized equals the gross proceeds minus ’selling expenses,’ and commissions are considered a ’selling expense’.

Therefore, you do not have a taxable gain.”

What a shame this timeshare owner didn’t contact Sell My Timeshare NOW.

 

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

FL Attorney General Steps Up Efforts to Fight Timeshare Scams

Author: Jason Tremblay

Last week, Florida’s Attorney General, Bill McCollum increased his focus on consumer education specifically targeting scams in timeshare sales.

It makes sense that McCollum would have a particular interest in timeshare issues since more timeshare resorts are located in Orlando than in any other city, and more timeshare resorts located in the state of Florida than any other US location. McCollum’s office recommends that people who want to sell timeshare use either, a licensed real estate broker or they sell by owner — and both are excellent suggestions.

Sell Timeshare Through a Timeshare Broker

A licensed real estate broker, like Sell My Timeshare NOW’s sister company, Timeshare Hot Deal, is an excellent choice for some people who are ready to sell timeshare. A timeshare broker gives you the benefit of a commission-motivated sales professional and the plus of paying no fees until your timeshare unit or timeshare weeks actually sell.

Sell Timeshare By Owner

Selling timeshare by-owner is also a good option. By owner selling lets you control every detail of your timeshare resale; and it is the way many of the timeshare sellers at Sell My Timeshare NOW handle their timeshare resales transaction. Sell My Timeshare NOW advertises and markets available timeshare real estate, attracting over 1.7 million visitors per month to our website. In 2007, more than $274 million in offers to buy timeshare or rent timeshare were made on properties in our inventory.

But Attorney General Bill McCollum’s message for more consumer education is important! Before you buy, rent, or sell timeshare, do your research to ensure that whomever you hire to help you is reputable and has a proven track record in the timeshare resales industry.

To read more about the importance of consumer education for people who want to buy timeshare, sell timeshare or rent timeshare, click here to read Sell My Timeshare NOW’s press release.

 

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The Truth About Paying Upfront Fees to Sell Timeshares

Author: Jason Tremblay

Sell My Timeshare NOW will help you get out of timeshare you no longer wish to own.

I know you’ve heard it before, the admonishment that one should, “Never pay upfront fees when trying to sell timeshare.” Unfortunately, this advice always comes from people who work in timeshare resales businesses that are based on being able to extract money from timeshare sellers through one add-on fee after another before ultimately hitting the timeshare owner up for a hefty commission when, and if, they ever sell the timeshare unit.

Dollar by painful dollar, some timeshare resales companies, (and some unethical timeshare brokers) charge timeshare owners fees for services the owners do not really need. Property appraisals are a perfect example of an unnecessary service used to generate an add-on and unnecessary fee. Under most circumstances, resale timeshares simply do not need a property appraisal.

When you buy residential real estate, you pay for an appraisal, typically because the mortgage lender requires you to do so. When you buy a resale timeshare, there is no need for an appraisal, unless the timeshare unit itself collateralizes a loan (very rare with resales) and the lending company requires the appraisal as a condition of the loan.

Yet over and over again, you hear warnings directed to people with timeshares they wish to sell, to never pay an upfront fee to sell, advertise, list, or market their timeshare. The warning should be, “never pay an upfront fee unless you know specifically what the fee covers and that the company to whom you pay it has a proven track record of helping timeshare sellers successfully connect with timeshare buyers.

If you have timeshare you want to sell, visit the website of Sell My Timeshare NOW. Read the information offered there to help you understand more about your options for selling timeshare. No one answer is right for every situation, but I can tell you that Sell My Timeshare NOW averages six hundred thousand dollars per day, in offers made to timeshare owners who are trying to sell or rent their timeshares. Obviously, sometimes, paying an upfront fee for the right services is a pretty good idea.

 

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About The Timeshare Authority

    Jason Tremblay, Founder and CEO, Sell My Timeshare NOW, LLC Jason Tremblay's The Timeshare Authority is a wealth of tips and information on timeshares, fractionals, condotels, vacation ownership and travel.

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