Many people are allured by the siren song of the timeshare. The concept of owning a piece of a house or condominium can seem like a great idea. Getting swept up in the glory of a vacation and feeling like you want to recreate it every single year leads to a lot of timeshare purchases.
A lot of people change their minds afterwards. While there are a lot of beautiful timeshares that people truly love, there’s also a lot of sales as people want to move on to different vacations or different timeshares. Here’s some information about selling your timeshare and how to go about it.
Do’s and Don’ts
There are some pitfalls when you are selling your timeshare. You need to make sure you avoid those. You can also make some good choices and make selling your timeshare easy and quick.
- Do check with other owners – Since a timeshare is spread out into multiple intervals, there are people directly before or after you that may wish to extend their vacations. A lot of sales happen to those who want to extend their timeshare.
- Do use a local timeshare broker – You want to use a timeshare broker that knows the lay of the land in the area. They should be specialized in timeshares because timeshares need a specialized sales technique. The market for a timeshare is very different from apartments or houses.
- Do make use of the internet – There are specialized resale websites that will allow you to get in touch with people interested in purchasing a timeshare. These listings are often free and allow you to sell privately if that’s what you’re hoping for.
There are also some things you should avoid.
- Don’t assume you can resell to the company you bought from – It’s true that some timeshare companies have a resale program. I mean, why wouldn’t they? But these programs will often not provide you with adequate compensation. They’re more interested in moving new units than used ones.
- Don’t get scammed! – There are a lot of timeshare resale scams that crop up when times are tough. More timeshares are sold off during economic downturns, and as a corollary, that’s when scams are more active. Beware of anytime you have to pay a bunch of money up front to a resale company. That money may disappear very quickly.
Personal Sale vs. Hiring a Real Estate Agent
One of the first things you need to decide is if you want to use a real estate agent or work on a personal sale. There are a lot of resources online to allow you to sell your timeshare by yourself. You will need to put in a lot of time and effort. The timeshare market is not what it once was and seems to be struggling more every year.
If you do hire a timeshare specialist real estate agent, they will often be able to access additional leads and resources to try and help sell your timeshare. You’re able to sit back and be far less active with the process while they take care of most of the work and paperwork.
Donating Your Timeshare
There’s two ways you can donate your timeshare to a charity. The first way is that you keep the deed, but you donate the vacation weeks. This lets the charity auction them off. The reason for this is that many charities aren’t allowed to own them. However, more are becoming able to own the timeshare. These timeshares can be sold off or the weeks used by the charity to bring in donations to it. You will receive a tax deduction of up to $5,000 for your donation. However if it’s worth more than that, you’ll need to receive clearance from the IRS.