Help you get out of your timeshare???

[Reason10]

For those of you who don't know any better (a lot of reasons for that. Maybe you don't live in a resort area, maybe you don't care what timeshare is, maybe you're just plain STUPID), timeshare is basically shared ownership of a condominium in a resort area. One has to have a real estate license to sell timeshare in Florida.

The sales pitch is basically directing the money you'd spend on hotel rooms into a week of deeded real estate. Once you own it, you don't pay for hotels any more. Because you're only paying for what you use, you aren't having to buy an entire second home, or condo.

In the late 80s, a week of timeshare would retail for about $9000. 52 of those weeks means that condo was worth about half a million. Was that possible? Was even a resort area condo worth half a million? When you look at hotels charging (back then) around $40 a night for basically a one room apartment, you have to ask yourself if a one-room apartment in the 80s was worth $1200 a month.

The math works, for people who vacation every year. I sold in the Disney area, which back then was high in demand. I had to have a real estate license to sell that stuff.

If one didn't want to return to Orlando every year for vacation, there is a company called Resort Condominiums International (RCI) where you can trade your week for a week at any of thousands of resorts all over the world, everywhere including Europe. Tahiti, Hawaii, places that would cost a fortune to vacation at.

RCI actually started out as a vacation club SCAM that actually wound up working. People used it, got exchanges they wanted, paid the fees and were happy.

The "get you out of your timeshare" hawkers require an up front fee, and you're lucky to hear from them again. Why is that? Getting financing for a timeshare is impossible. The resorts sold weeks with their own in house guaranteed financing, so that every Joe walking through the door was qualified. And those interest rates were at the Jimmy Carter 18 percent levels.

The "get you out of your timeshare" hawkers also mention maintenance fees. As part of the sales process, the licensed salesman has to tell the customer up front of not only the existence of the maintenance fees but the EXACT amount at the time the sales is being made. This is after all a condo, and all condos come with monthly assessment fees, which cover maintenance, insurance and property taxes.

Yes, the cost of some maintenance fees can spiral up. Timeshares on the beach are particularly hit hard, since people track sand into the rooms, (which is hell on the carpet). Also insurance is pretty high on any ocean front property, especially one in the path of hurricanes. So there's no surprise there, (except that these "get you out of your timeshare" hawkers don't mention the reason for maintenance fees.)

I've heard some of these bozos come on the radio and from the way they talk I could tell they were reading from a script and had NO idea what a timeshare actually is.

In the state of Florida, timeshare is strictly regulated, and each sale has a ten day right of reccission clause (meaning you had ten actual days to think it over and change your mind and get all your down payment money back). Here, timeshare IS deeded real estate.

Not all timeshare is as tightly regulated. I happen to know that Cancun timeshares do not have such protections, and it is actually common for the salesman to get the buyer drunk and then get him to sign, with no right to cancel.