Sell My Timeshare

With so many resources touting the message that you cannot sell timeshare, how does a timeshare owner who wants to resale his or her property know where to turn? 2012 has certainly been the year in which the mainstream media is stuck on a message that if you do sell timeshare you currently own, you will only receive a dollar, or perhaps a penny for the vacation ownership you paid thousands to buy.

What’s the truth  and how do timeshare owners know who to trust and who to believe when it comes time to sell timeshare they no longer want or use?

Sell My Timeshare NOW has been offering reliable timeshare resale and timeshare rental services for almost 10 years. We’ve seen timeshare resellers come and go in the marketplace. But our company has steadily moved ahead. We have grown our inventory, expanded our customer base, and expanded our services, as we continue to help more timeshare owners buy, rent, or sell timeshare on the secondary market.

See for Yourself that We Sell Timeshare

And you can see for yourself that we really do sell timeshare. We publish our daily business online on our website to prove it. Visit our Live Offer Feed. Here, 24/7 you can see the offers coming in to buy or sell timeshare through our websites.

In a live feed, you can see the Ad Number for every timeshare unit, interval or timeshare points we have advertised for sale or rent on which a buyer makes an offer. You’ll find the name of the resort and information that tells you whether this is an offer to rent timeshare or to buy timeshare.

On our live fee of Timeshare Offers, you will also find the amount of the offer and the day, hour, and minute the offer is being made. Many of the offers you see are the initial offer on a timeshare unit or interval, meaning that after negotiations either between the buyer and seller or between the timeshare broker and the buyer, the final offer accepted was higher.

Not only does our feed of  Timeshare Offers show you what is happening today, it also shows you week by week, this same offer information for every week since January 1, 2005, when we first began tracking our timeshare sales and rentals in this way.

Yes, you really can resell timeshare. See for yourself.

Last week, our company had a series of conversations with one of our clients. He was upset that we hadn’t told him that his timeshare would be worth only $1 on the secondary market. We had not told him this because, based on the timeshare he owned, it simply was not true information to say he owned a 1 dollar timeshare.

The gentleman believed his timeshare was worth $1 because he had read a major news publication reporting that timeshares resales were worth $1 and then he had seen the headline again on a website. Because he had read it in a well-known source, he assumed it must be valid and it must apply to all timeshares.

Our company, VacationOwnership.com, (the companies you formerly knew as SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and Timeshare Broker Services) had never told this client that his timeshare was worth $1 for one important reason—it would not have been accurate information!

Timeshare Misinformation and the Damage it Can Do

In this situation, the timeshare owned was an Orlando timeshare at a very popular resort that is part of a major hospitality brand. On the resale market, the timeshare in question is typically worth thousands of dollars—money the owner would have lost, had we not followed up with him, and explained to him that his timeshare was certainly worth far more money and that selling his timeshare for a dollar would mean a substantial and unnecessary loss to him.

Would our company have lost money if the timeshare owner had chosen to drastically mark his timeshare down below market value and resell it for a single dollar? No, because he was selling on a by-owner basis. But, we didn’t want a piece of misleading information to cause him to give away his timeshare and as a result lose thousands—yes, thousands—of dollars himself.

In the end, the client appreciated our diligence to follow through with him, to take the time to educate him on why he should ask much more than $1 for his timeshare, and thanked us for our commitment to help him assess the best price he might ask for his timeshare and still anticipate a timely sale.

The Truth about $1 Timeshares

No timeshare owner should buy vacation ownership expecting to later resell it at the same price he or she initially paid, if that timeshare was purchased as a new property. Buying timeshare is like buying a new car; timeshares, like automobiles, do not resell on the secondary market for the same value they had in the initial purchase.

And some timeshares ultimately have very little resale value, depending upon the condition and popularity of the resort, demand for week or weeks owned and other market variables. But of the more than 40,000 timeshares advertised for sale or for rent through our websites, fewer than 40 of them have an asking price of $1.

That’s right. Less than 40.

You can search our website for yourself. If you structure your search parameters to bring up only timeshares for sale for $1, (being careful not to  search for timeshares for sale for $1 or MORE and to exclude rental properties) you will find the exact number of timeshares we have advertised for only one dollar at the time of your search. It will be fewer than 40 of the 40,000.

Remember that game you played in elementary school where one person started a whispered rumor and by the time the message had been shared from child to child around the room, it had changed, getting farther and farther from the original truth?

If someone wants to resell timeshare for a dollar that is ultimately his or her business, but when the message gets out that one dollar value is the only option, then timeshare owners will find their timeshares deeply and disastrously devalued.

There are two trustworthy ways to resell timeshare: (1) by owner or (2) through a licensed Broker.

At our company, VacationOwnership.com, (the companies you formerly knew as SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and Timeshare Broker Services) we offer timeshare owners a dual option—that is, a choice in whether they choose to sell their timeshare through by owner advertising or choose to use a licensed Broker.

Why this choice? Because timeshare owners can have many types of needs and the timeshares they own come in all brands, sizes, venues, and popularity levels. And now more than ever, when the daily news is filled with accounts of timeshare scam and timeshare resale fraud, it is important for owners, sellers and future sellers to understand which choices are reliable and effective.

Timeshare for Sale By Owner

FSBO –for sale by owner—is a term many people have gained familiarity with through the residential real estate market. Homeowners choose to resell their residential homes themselves for a variety of reasons. Some homeowners have limited or no equity in their properties and cannot afford to pay the commission a real estate Broker would require from the sale. Other owners believe they can show off their property’s features and benefits better than anyone else. Still others have different reasons for wanting to be hands-on in the real estate resale process. And timeshare owners are no different; they select the sell-by-owner option for the same reasons that motivate sellers of residential real estate.

For sale by owner timeshare requires that the owner market his or her timeshare property to an audience of prospective timeshare buyers and that he or she then handle inquiries about the timeshare as well as the negotiations and the steps necessary to bring the transaction to closing. Along the way, the timeshare seller may choose to pay a professional to handle some of these steps on an à la carte basis.

For many timeshare owners, the most challenging part of this process is advertising and marketing the timeshare. How do you get your timeshare real estate in front of a large base of interested buyers?

Typically your best option is to turn to a timeshare company that can offer you high visibility on the internet through a site that targets potential timeshare buyers. Our websites receive more than 1.8 million pageviews per month from website visitors who have demonstrated an interest in buying or renting timeshare.

To maintain this level of visibility takes a team of technology professionals who understand how to analyze search patterns and the behavioral intent of consumers and know how to maximize the internet marketing and optimization strategies necessary to keep your timeshare ad in front of people have demonstrated an interest in buying a timeshare just like yours. It’s a constant process of adjustments, updates, and monitoring, and we think our team is the best in the industry at doing this.

When you choose a timeshare for sale by owner service, expect to pay an upfront fee to advertise your timeshare. Note, this is not a fee to sell your timeshare, which is what  consumer protection agencies rightfully warn against. If you bought advertising space in a magazine for the purpose of privately advertising your timeshare resale, you would have to pay for the space before the magazine ran your ad.  In the same way, timeshare owners are charged a fee to advertise their timeshare on a website.

Marketing your timeshare resale on a high visibility timeshare sales website that has targeted web traffic from prospective buyers is probably the best possible way for you to advertise your timeshare by owner and offers the greatest likelihood your timeshare will sell.

But for sale by owner is not the right choice for all timeshare owners who want to sell their timeshare. In tomorrow’s The Timeshare Authority, we will look at our second option for resales: timeshare Broker sales.

“Call to Action: The Pay Off for Reputation Building through Social Media”

At this year’s American Resort Development Association annual convention, ARDA World 2012, one of the forums that generated the  most buzz (appropriately) was the Social Media Forum, of which I was privileged to be a part.

The forum leaders discussed a great deal about what their companies are doing to utilize the tools of social media but some of the most important concepts that I personally felt came out of the session were:

• You don’t have to have the biggest presence on the web or have the most followers or friends to benefit from the messaging power of social media.
• Social media is one of the simplest, most readily accessible and least expensive ways to communicate with your timeshare owners, buyers, renters, sellers and prospects.
• You don’t need an outside agency to make this work, but you do need to be consistent in your approach and your efforts.
• The timeshare industry could benefit tremendously from the positive messaging power of social media.
• And most importantly of all... social media only works if you use it.

My takeaway from the ARDA World 2012 Social Media Forum: