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Realty Check: Timeshare Pain

June 12, 2008 4:32 PM

Oh, my poor Aunt Liz. I could not sleep last night because I literally could feel her pain. We’re a big, close-knit family -- four sets of aunts and uncles, all with one to three children and attendant grandchildren. So… several years ago, when the aunts and uncles (including my parents) were on vacation in Daytona Beach (Daytona Beach? I thought that was for kids, not for septuagenarians!), there they were, holding hands, walking the beach, thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all come here together every year?”

Well, lo and behold, there was a timeshare salesperson just waiting to make that dream come true. So in they went to Wyndham Ocean Walk, and they bought 405,000 Fairfield points. Now here is where all this loses me -- you really do need to speak a Martian language to understand all the timeshare terms. But I’ll try to explain as best I can,in English. Depending on the time of year, the popularity of where you buy, the wind direction (kidding), 405,000 points will get you two or three weeks a year at a pretty nice resort. Sounds great so far. Except that they paid about $55,000 for it, upfront, in cash from their hard-earned savings. Those savings were seriously hard-earned -- most of these folks were school teachers, school principals, and civil servants. That’s a lot of savings. But that wouldn’t be so bad if you got those dream vacations every year in those beautiful resorts and never had to pay another penny for it. But no, because a timeshare is considered real property, there are property taxes to be paid, on their unit to the tune of almost $500 a year. And maintenance on "your" unit -- $160 a month. For life.

“We got carried away,” Aunt Liz says now. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” She and her husband, Uncle Joe, had purchased a unit previously in Edisto, South Carolina, but caught a quick case of buyer’s remorse and rescinded within three days. Phew…disaster averted. That time.

Uncle Herbie and Aunt Ruth have a timeshare in Cancun. Aunt Geral and Uncle Grover have one as well. And my parents,they are the King and Queen of Vacation Rentals! They have SIX WEEKS worth of timeshares, purchased as a block at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Add that to all the "bonus" weeks they get, and they are happy retiree timeshare owners. They vacation about eight weeks a year (retirement will do that for you), and stay in fabulous places virtually anywhere: Branson, Lake of the Ozarks, St. Maarten, Palm Springs, Vegas, Florida, Hawaii, the afore-mentioned Edisto, and my own personal favorite, a fly-infested farmhouse in the Scottish highlands that was absolute bliss (once we ran out and bought flyswatters and waged all-out war).

But that penthouse unit at Ocean Walk and the beautiful sand of Daytona Beach proved irresistible. Things were working out pretty well for a while. I have to say I’ve even enjoyed some nice vacations courtesy of their timeshare -- the two weeks the family spent at that really nice yellow cottage in Edisto was great. Thanks, Aunts and Uncles! But everything has to be put in one couple’s name, so all expenses can be pulled out of one account. That fell to Aunt Liz and Uncle Joe. And then, as with many groups, things fall apart. One group can’t go when the others can. Someone wants to take their children and grandchildren, and they have more than the others so there’s not enough room unless they get the place to themselves for the week. People lose interest in that one vacation spot every year.

Sunset was dimming on the Daytona timeshare. And for Aunt Liz, tragedy. Uncle Joe died New Year’s Eve 2006. She no longer wants, needs, or uses her timeshare. Or, I should say, she uses it even less now than she did before. “We knew we were not timeshare people,” she says. “We were not good at planning ahead, and you don’t ever get the place you want at the time you want to go if you don’t plan ahead. And we wanted to be spontaneous.” But the maintenance fees are still coming out of her bank account, being reimbursed later. So now they are DESPERATE to sell this “albatross.” And of course -– no surprise -- there are no takers. Oh, sure, there probably are plenty of people still walking into the Wyndham Ocean Walk and other timeshare offices, plunking down thousands of dollars for points and weeks, even in this tightening economy. But a USED timeshare? The market is tiny. Virtually non-existent. And those who know about it know they can get a timeshare for PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR. Pennies!

I asked Aunt Liz and my dad how their attempts at selling the timeshare have gone. Not well, they say. “Some companies want you to pay $500, $600, $800 upfront with no guarantee that they can sell it,” Aunt Liz tells me. “I ask if they will offer it for half price, they say no, they’re not allowed to do that. Ha!” she says. “If they thought they could get that they would list it at that amount. But they try to get you to pay that upfront fee by saying they can get you $30,000 for it when they know that’s a lie.” Aunt Liz is a feisty 70-something. That’s why she’s a hit with all the nieces and nephews. But sometimes she needs reeling in. So when she suggested that her next move might be to stand outside timeshare sales offices, wearing a sandwich board that reads, “Honey, you can have mine for half price!” we have to talk her out of that. “I’m about ready to walk away from it,” she says.

Tomorrow: Why that would be a disastrous mistake...

-Vicki Mabrey

June 12, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

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Posted by: coco-roach | Jun 12, 2008 8:08:42 PM

Posted by: bud28dy | Jun 12, 2008 8:47:49 PM

Posted by: TimeshareRevealed.com | Jul 20, 2008 1:04:15 PM

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