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Buy a Timeshare
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Buying a timeshare can be as complicated as buying a home. When you buy a timeshare you are purchasing a fractional ownership at the resort this means that you physical own a deed on your Timeshare, much the same as you would with a house. There is a small percentage of timeshare owners that truly should own timeshares because timeshares require you to be flexible with your vacation time and also be able to vacation every year.
People who live busy lives or someone that might not be able to afford a vacation every year probably shouldn't buy a timeshare. However a lot of people when they go on vacation they feel the urge to purchase one. Most times it is not because they want to purchase a timeshare it is that they are on a vacation having a good time, when they hear that they can purchase into a timeshare and enjoy that same feeling every year they feel really excited about it.
Resort tours are created to sell timeshares, they will give you almost anything to attend a tour of the timeshare resort. After the tour you sit down and a sales person sells you on the idea of vacationing every year for much less than they currently paid to be on vacation, but is that really a true statement? Most people won't have the $10,000 to $20,000 to pay for the timeshare upfront so you will have to take out a load, which they provide for you. So now that you have a $200 to $400 a month payment my math would tell me that you are not getting a cheap vacation. That is $2400 to $4800 a year not including maintenance fees and taxes which could run you from $400 to $900 sometimes even more a year. Now the idea is you would pay the load off then you would only be paying the maintenance fees and taxes every year.
Now what happens if you can't use the resort this year? Well you will either lose the week (still having to pay the maintenance fees' and taxes) or you can bank the week with RCI () or II (). Both of these companies are designed to allow timeshare owners to bank there week in exchange for someone else's week. Again this isn't free you are looking at having a membership fee as well as banking fee's.
So if you are not somebody who can go every year I don't suggest a timeshare. Unless you are part of the growing timeshare resale market. When people don't want there timeshare anymore they are left with very few options to sell there timeshare. The resorts unless sold out won't want to buy back because they have you and you are paying your fee's. So you would figure since a timeshare is so much like a house you could go and list it with a realtor. That works but realtors are not designed to sell timeshares, they rely on customers coming in and knowing where they want to own and then being able to show the property. The resort is not going to let your realtor onto the property to sell your timeshare.
Because both of those are not an option there is a new emerging market which relies on internet advertising to sell your property. About 10 years ago many companies started up with the invent of the internet and started marketing timeshares for sale. As you can imagine there were good and bad companies, unfortunately for some they might have listed with a bad company. Over the past 10 years the industry as really weeded out the bad companies leaving a few good companies.
Now that this market has emerged you also have another great way to purchase a timeshare. Timeshares typically have priced into the selling price from the resort all of their advertising cost. Now as you can image with all the free items you get to take those tours sometimes the cost could be over 50% of the value. When these owners go to sell the timeshare typically they will not recover the 50%. This is great for someone who is looking to purchase on the timeshare resale market. Timeshares that are purchased at the resort for $10k are now $6k and under. Timeshare resale is really making the timeshare concept affordable and a good deal to the occasional vacationer.
See Also Timeshare, Sell a Timeshare, Rent a Timeshare
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