Timeshare Resales

There is no doubt that the Sheraton Vistana timeshare resort in Orlando, Florida has sprouted a few gray hairs lately. Wrinkles are beginning to show up in a few places, and frankly, Vistana was beginning to lose the pep in her step.

…Age will do that to you.

RCI took notice of it and downgraded the Sheraton Vistana timeshare resort from a gold crown to a silver crown ranking. Fortunately for Sheraton Vistana timeshare owners, the resort’s Board of Directors also noticed the decline and made arrangements for a little timeshare nip and tuck.

The resort reportedly had nearly $4 million in accumulated reserves—this is one of the reasons timeshare owners pay those annual fees. Additionally, Vistana is assessing owners a fee to be billed in two increments over a six-month period. The total to be collected from the owners will be roughly an additional $10 million, targeted to cover the improvements.

The planned changes include:

• New furnishings in many of the rooms.
• 42-inch LCD televisions with Bose ® sound systems.
• New linens, window treatments, and light fixtures.
• New paint, trim, and carpeting. Wooden kitchen cabinetry, appliance upgrades, and granite countertops.
• Make-over for the general store and the fitness center and basketball courts.

No word on a target completion date for the project, but it seems to me this could be an excellent time to purchase a Vistana timeshare resale from current owners looking to avoid any possible inconveniences that may occur during the renovation. Buy now at “old property” prices, then enjoy the benefits of owning a “new and improved” Vistana timeshare in the near future.

Apparently other people have had this idea too, because Sheraton Vistana is one of the timeshare resorts that showed up near the top of the Sell My Timeshare NOW Hot Properties List during the first quarter of 2007.

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.

Buying new timeshare at the developer’s price is not always a day at the beach…

Singer Island, just north of Palm Beach, Florida, is home to the community of Riviera Beach. Marriott Vacation Club International has a splendid timeshare resort on the south shore of the island at Ocean Point Reef, but in recent months has been in negotiations with the city council of Riviera Beach to build a timeshare resort on the northern end of the island.

Marriott timeshare’s plan was to raze a beachside Crowne Plaza Hotel and replace it with two, 19-story timeshare towers. Because some area residents were opposed to the action, and several council members likewise had objections, a series of negotiations began. The result was council approval in a 3-2 vote for the construction of the Marriott timeshare towers, with certain “community benefits” to be thrown in as part of the deal.

The required community benefits call for Marriott timeshare to give the city of Rivera Beach $1.4 million in cash contributions, of which $1.2 million will go to the city’s minority housing trust fund, with $100 thousand going to the beautification of highway A1A, and another $100 thousand going to the Riviera Beach job-training fund. Marriott timeshares also agreed to give 25 percent of the hotel’s supply orders to minority or women-owned businesses and to hire 60 percent of its operational staff from minority groups.

Ocean Point Reef is a magnificent Marriott timeshare and I feel certain that the new Marriott Singer Island timeshare resort will be just as luxurious, with similar breathtaking ocean views. But when $1.4 million gets tacked on to a project, before the first shovel of dirt (or in this case, sugary-white sand) gets turned, who do you think absorbs this cost?

Timeshare resorts are expensive to build. But basic mathematics tells us that the number of units in a timeshare resort multiplied by the developer’s selling price per unit, and then multiplied by the fact that each timeshare unit is sold at that price, to 51 separate owners, yields a tidy sum of money, any way you figure it.

Buying timeshare from the developer often results in a net savings to the timeshare owner on the cost of vacation accommodations, over multiple years of usage. However, the timeshare resale market probably reflects the true market value of timeshare units or intervals more accurately than the prices developers charge for new timeshare. Yet, as long as people are willing to pay the prices developers charge, the mark-up on timeshares is not likely to go down.

If you are considering buying timeshare, I seriously recommend you shop the inventory of timeshare resales that are available to purchase directly from the person who actually owns the timeshare unit. The website for Sell My Timeshare NOW offers a great place to start your search.

Don’t criticize timeshares because they are not something they were never intended to be.

Last week, the blogsite http://www.channel4.com/, an independent news agency based in Belfast, Ireland, published a post titled, “Timeshare Properties ‘Worthless’“. Channel 4’s blog posting was based on a PA News release that came on the eve of the European Commission issuing proposals to tighten legal protections for consumers who buy or resell timeshare vacation properties.

But the loud banging noise you hear as you read this, is the sound of me, jumping up and down on my soapbox.

The Channel 4 blog posting frustrates me because it depicts the timeshare resales industry as a floundering failure. The blog describes a situation that has come about, in their words, because of the, “apparent market slump in timeshare second-hand prices…now so poor that ‘existing timeshare owners are having very great difficulty getting rid of their ownership.'” The post goes on to say, “Far from keeping pace with house price inflations, the value of a partial stake in a holiday home has slumped in parts of Europe.” Channel 4 also quotes Sandy Grey, of the Timeshare Consumers Association, who says, “…timeshare owners who thought they were making an investment are now finding there is no residual value in something they may have spent £10,000 on.”

My frustrated response to this is: wrong, wrong, wrong! The timeshare resales industry is far from floundering. In 2006, timeshare owners who advertised their timeshares units or timeshare intervals for sale or rent with Sell My Timeshare NOW received $229,962,492 in offers to buy or rent their resale timeshares. And while Sell My Timeshare NOW is the best timeshare resales and timeshare rental advertising company in the business, we are certainly not the only company. Think about it—that’s a quarter billion dollars in offers generated by one timeshare resales company alone. You just can’t put timeshare resellers on a list of failed or failing industries.

Now let’s look at the second part of this misunderstanding. Timeshares have never been intended to be an investment for financial return. No one should buy a timeshare with the idea that it will appreciate in the same way a residential or commercial property may appreciate. As I have often said, even implying that a timeshare is an investment vehicle, is a breach of Security and Exchange Commission law.

Timeshares are an investment in quality vacations, an investment in a lifestyle. Timeshares greatly encourage holiday time enjoyed with your family and friends or as a much-needed quiet getaway. Because timeshares afford you the opportunity to lock-in the price of vacation accommodations, they may even net you a savings on the cost of vacationing over your years of timeshare ownership. And timeshare vacation ownership is one of the easiest ways for busy people to plan and book vacation accommodations. But the fact that something does not appreciate doesn’t, and shouldn’t, stop you from enjoying ownership of it. If that were the case, who would ever purchase an automobile? Criticizing timeshare ownership or lambasting the timeshare resales industry because timeshares do not typically increase in value is pretty much like saying a thoroughbred horse is a worthless animal because it doesn’t have wings and fly around the stable.

Understand and enjoy timeshares for what they are. And to help keep timeshare depreciation to a minimum, don’t pay the developer’s price for new timeshare. Buy resale timeshares that accurately reflect the market value of the property.