Buying Timeshares: Developer Sales, Resale Market
So you’ve thought about buying a timeshare huh? Well, before you go any further, you are going to want to read this article very closely because this article can save you thousands of dollars.
You can buy timeshares in one of two ways: developer sales and the resale market. If you have no stomach to read the whole article, my takeaway tip is to always buy from the resale market.
Developer Sales
Developer sales are those “preview tours” or “timeshare pitches” those salespeople always try to get you signed up and registered for. They will give you tickets to shows, free meals, even straight up cash to get your but in the seat for a timeshare presentation. The old stereotype of a fly-by-night operation is just that, a stereotype, now developers run the full gamut from shady little companies to large resort firms like Marriot and Disney. Timeshares are not scams, but they are opportunistic.
Timeshare sales and marketing (all those freebies!) can account for at least 50% of a developer’s sale price. That’s right, if they quote you a price for a timeshare, you can count on around half of that paying for sales and marketing, not the unit! That is why buying from the developer is always a bad idea.
Resale Market
Like any other property, you can sell your timeshare (or your right to use it, in right to use ownership types) so the resale market is a great way to purchase a timeshare on the cheap. This isn’t like your home, chances are you can only get a fraction of the purchase price if you ever decide to sell your timeshare because such a large amount goes towards marketing and sales. You can usually get a timeshare for its actual value, which is 50% of the sale price (and you thought cars depreciated quickly!).
Like home sales, there is no clearinghouse for the sale of timeshares and thus no “price list” to help guide you as to how much a particular property is worth. There are two resources you can count on if you want to try to figure out how much a property is worth: real estate agents who may deal with timeshares in the region and the internet.