It isn't always easy getting rid of vacation properties owners spent thousands to buy.
June 5, 2011
Ingrid Holland has a beachfront time-share down in Daytona Beach that she'd like to give away, if she could only find someone to take it.
Beverly Green has the same problem with their time-share right outside Walt Disney World.
And Scott Aronowitz has a membership in resorts all over the world open to his family. He'd like to give that away, too.
It's that way everywhere. On message boards, on eBay, it's the same thing: "Take my time-share, please."
And along the way, owners are falling victim to all sorts of proposals to either sell or take their time-shares at costs that can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. Some may work, some may not and others are outright scams, according to those in the business.
"The biggest scam right now is someone calling up and saying they've got a buyer for you," said Brian Rogers, who owns Timeshare Users Group, which is based in Orange Park and calls itself the oldest and largest website dedicated to time-share owners.
"But they're just looking to collect an upfront fee. There's absolutely no chance they'll sell your time-share."
People have always had some trouble selling their time-shares, Rogers said. And people who did sell them were lucky to get half of what they paid, despite the fact that owners often expected them to appreciate. That's because much of the cost in a time-share went to marketing: For every person who bought one, there were another 10 who got that free weekend who didn't.
But the recession of the last couple of years has made it much worse, Rogers said. People have been simply trying to dump them, in some cases paying companies $3,000 or $4,000 to take them. Called "postcard companies" because they advertised with large postcards, the buyers then simply dumped the time-shares on eBay for $1 apiece.
"Why would people pay $14,000 for your time-share," Rogers said, "when the one right next to it is going for $1? I've got a neighbor down the street who paid $80,000 for worth of time-share points when she could have had them for pennies."
His site, for example, lists plenty of time-shares for sale and boasts of $3 million in sales and rentals arranged through it last year. But it also has time-shares available free for the taking from Mexico to Michigan, the Florida beaches to the California coast.
Time-share owners all have their own reasons for selling or giving theirs away.
In Holland's case, she's had her unit for 16 years and is simply tired of it.
Beverly and Terry Green bought theirs back in 1989 when their daughter was small and they went to Walt Disney World often. They paid about $7,000 for it back then, and it gave them a week every other year.
They're still paying $1,000 every other year in fees, up from $400 when they first bought it. But they didn't use the two-bedroom unit at Westgate two years ago and don't plan to go this year.
Aronowitz and his wife paid about $18,000 for a Wyndham point-based time-share in 2004. He pays about $900 a year in fees, but lately the booking and housekeeping fees have added another $200 or so to that.
"It's even more of the inconvenience than the cost," he said. "It's just easier to book a hotel."
Meanwhile, Steve Berry is paying for not one but two time-shares. He bought into Hilton Grand Vacation Club for about $44,000 in 2001 and two years ago paid $17,000 for a week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
He and his wife are still paying the mortgages on both of them, though they did take a cruise on the Hilton points last year. And the drug violence in Mexico has made them afraid to go back there since 2009.
Tom Tubbs is a licensed real estate broker in Sarasota and has had his own time-share resale business for 18 years. He said that contrary to what some people believe, there is a resale market out there, but people often have an inflated idea of how much they're worth.
"The rule of thumb," he said, "if you bought it at the resort and paid full boat, it's worth 10-15 percent on the resale market."
A few name brands such as Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton and Disney can go as high as 25-30 percent.
But he realizes that market is full of free time-shares.
"There are some that are so darn tough to sell that you do have to give them away," he said. "Others have been scammed five or six times and they get desperate."
The so-called postcard companies, like the seminars that Holland went to, do take your time-share at a fee. Occasionally, Tubbs said, you pay them and find out later you're still owner and responsible for the fees. But most actually take ownership and transfer it to a company set up just to receive a lot of them.
If they can't sell them for $1, they simply close the company and the time-shares go back to the resort, he said.
The first rule, Rogers said, is don't pay any money upfront. If someone says they have an owner, they don't.
The second rule, Tubbs said, is to use a licensed real estate broker.
"If they're going to sell your property for you, they have to be a broker," he said.
"That's the law. They may charge you $800 to put an ad on the Internet, but if someone wanted to buy it, they couldn't sell it for you."
June 5, 2011
Ingrid Holland has a beachfront time-share down in Daytona Beach that she'd like to give away, if she could only find someone to take it.
Beverly Green has the same problem with their time-share right outside Walt Disney World.
And Scott Aronowitz has a membership in resorts all over the world open to his family. He'd like to give that away, too.
It's that way everywhere. On message boards, on eBay, it's the same thing: "Take my time-share, please."
And along the way, owners are falling victim to all sorts of proposals to either sell or take their time-shares at costs that can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. Some may work, some may not and others are outright scams, according to those in the business.
"The biggest scam right now is someone calling up and saying they've got a buyer for you," said Brian Rogers, who owns Timeshare Users Group, which is based in Orange Park and calls itself the oldest and largest website dedicated to time-share owners.
"But they're just looking to collect an upfront fee. There's absolutely no chance they'll sell your time-share."
People have always had some trouble selling their time-shares, Rogers said. And people who did sell them were lucky to get half of what they paid, despite the fact that owners often expected them to appreciate. That's because much of the cost in a time-share went to marketing: For every person who bought one, there were another 10 who got that free weekend who didn't.
But the recession of the last couple of years has made it much worse, Rogers said. People have been simply trying to dump them, in some cases paying companies $3,000 or $4,000 to take them. Called "postcard companies" because they advertised with large postcards, the buyers then simply dumped the time-shares on eBay for $1 apiece.
"Why would people pay $14,000 for your time-share," Rogers said, "when the one right next to it is going for $1? I've got a neighbor down the street who paid $80,000 for worth of time-share points when she could have had them for pennies."
His site, for example, lists plenty of time-shares for sale and boasts of $3 million in sales and rentals arranged through it last year. But it also has time-shares available free for the taking from Mexico to Michigan, the Florida beaches to the California coast.
Time-share owners all have their own reasons for selling or giving theirs away.
In Holland's case, she's had her unit for 16 years and is simply tired of it.
Beverly and Terry Green bought theirs back in 1989 when their daughter was small and they went to Walt Disney World often. They paid about $7,000 for it back then, and it gave them a week every other year.
They're still paying $1,000 every other year in fees, up from $400 when they first bought it. But they didn't use the two-bedroom unit at Westgate two years ago and don't plan to go this year.
Aronowitz and his wife paid about $18,000 for a Wyndham point-based time-share in 2004. He pays about $900 a year in fees, but lately the booking and housekeeping fees have added another $200 or so to that.
"It's even more of the inconvenience than the cost," he said. "It's just easier to book a hotel."
Meanwhile, Steve Berry is paying for not one but two time-shares. He bought into Hilton Grand Vacation Club for about $44,000 in 2001 and two years ago paid $17,000 for a week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
He and his wife are still paying the mortgages on both of them, though they did take a cruise on the Hilton points last year. And the drug violence in Mexico has made them afraid to go back there since 2009.
Tom Tubbs is a licensed real estate broker in Sarasota and has had his own time-share resale business for 18 years. He said that contrary to what some people believe, there is a resale market out there, but people often have an inflated idea of how much they're worth.
"The rule of thumb," he said, "if you bought it at the resort and paid full boat, it's worth 10-15 percent on the resale market."
A few name brands such as Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton and Disney can go as high as 25-30 percent.
But he realizes that market is full of free time-shares.
"There are some that are so darn tough to sell that you do have to give them away," he said. "Others have been scammed five or six times and they get desperate."
The so-called postcard companies, like the seminars that Holland went to, do take your time-share at a fee. Occasionally, Tubbs said, you pay them and find out later you're still owner and responsible for the fees. But most actually take ownership and transfer it to a company set up just to receive a lot of them.
If they can't sell them for $1, they simply close the company and the time-shares go back to the resort, he said.
The first rule, Rogers said, is don't pay any money upfront. If someone says they have an owner, they don't.
The second rule, Tubbs said, is to use a licensed real estate broker.
"If they're going to sell your property for you, they have to be a broker," he said.
"That's the law. They may charge you $800 to put an ad on the Internet, but if someone wanted to buy it, they couldn't sell it for you."
Closed November 2010
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