Can one of you big dicks fill me on timeshares?
My understanding is it is pretty much impossible to get rid of a timeshare and they pass to whomever is in the will of the owner. My friend’s brother worked at a place where people PAID THE COMPANY to take the timeshare off of their hands if you can believe that.
Some Timeshares are valuable – my parents got lucky and have one that the company is constantly calling, trying buy back from them. But my impression is that most are so bad off people are willing to pay you to take them, because of associated fees and stuff to maintain the properties. But I really don’t know much about it, I get enough hotel points through work that I don’t worry about cheap lodging.
I’ve never known someone smart that owns one.
Id be curious to know how many Nobel laureates in science, math, or econ own one.
I once sat through a presentation in Vegas when I was a broke@ss grad student. For my time they gave me $200 in cash which I blew immediately at a poker table plus two tix to a show at Mandalay bay. Not a bad deal for ~3 hours of my time as a student. This was '07 so real estate was still booming and they drove us to some place on LV blvd like 30 miles south of the strip. The dude claimed this was going to be the center of the strip in 2 years, surrounded by some outragious group of new casinos including the biggest water park(!) in the US. Even then it sounded ridiculous.
One apartment complex was move-in ready and 3 more were under construction plus a common pool area. During my tour and presentation, I saw so many dumb broke people sign the papers and buy into this. Their success rate seemed insane. Now when I drive by this complex on my way to Vegas it’s still sitting in the middle of a dusty wasteland far from where the action is.
Watch “queen of versailles” on netflix… timeshare mogul/BSD/the white version of CFAvsMBA doing his thang
My parents gave me one of their timeshares. They had two and loved them but got tired of traveling 2x per year, plus they live in FL now anyway. Timeshares have almost no resale value, but they can be great if you use them correctly. Mine costs me $700 if I exchange it, which I always do. For that $700, I can get anything from a hotel room to a 3 bedroom w/ kitchen depending on when and where I want to go. If you like skiing, golf, Mexico, Orlando, or the Caribbean, you can generally get a nice place at a good time of year and $100 a night is a steal (plus you generally have a kitchen). If you like all-inclusives or do a lot of international travel (other than the Caribbean), a timeshare is probably not going to fit your needs, as there are limited places available in Europe, S. American, Africa, and Asia and the places that are available are generally located outside the tourist areas. You can get lucky though, a few years ago we were able to get a place right on Copacabana Beach in Rio (unfortunately, we had to cancel for health reasons).
If you aren’t able to travel in a particular year, there is a pretty active rental market as well.
^ so a timeshare is like buying forward vacation time? I just don’t see the value in them. I’d rather take a vacation in a location of my preference in being tied to a specific resort in specific areas.
^ Structure varies, but generally you own a specific week at at specific resort. I have never stayed at the resort I own though. For $200, I exchange my week for a week at hundreds of other resorts. What week, resort and size of unit you can exchange for depends on how “valuable” the unit you own is. For example, I exchanged this year for a week at a resort right outside of Disney World for Easter week. In the past, I’ve exchanged for golf resort in NC, ski resorts in UT, CO and VT, beach resorts in Rio, Mexico and Bahamas.
I didn’t pay for the timeshare though, my parents gave it to me. Annual cost is $500 in maintenance fees, so total cost to go someplace other than my home resort is $700.
Higgs approach is the only pitch I’ve heard that makes sense.
If you have a high credit low cost unit, and are flexible with where you travel, you can basically have an undervalued asset that you can trade annually for something nice/different.
I dont know much about timeshares, never had one and never will. The people that I know that have them get to go to places like Cancun in the summer. Higgmond’s strategy seems the most reasonable.
"I’ve never known someone smart that owns one. "
For once Tikka and I agree on something.
^ I’ve never known a guy who lived in northern CA who wasn’t gay.
Wait… so I am gay? Crap, wife will not be happy about this…
Anyway, seems like we are talking about a different kind of time share here. When I think of time shares, I picture one condo that you reserve for a fixed amount of time every year. However, nowadays, I have been hearing more about the higgmond kind of time share, where you get to swap out locations and time at different resorts. This doesn’t seem like a bad thing to have if you plan to take the vacations anyway. You’re basically just locking in future vacation time. The company that brokers these deals probably gives you a discount in exchange for guaranteed business.
It doesn’t make sense to compare this to a real estate investment. Vacation packages are for consumption, not for monetary returns.
I know a couple professors that own one, as well as some multi-millionaires that own them too. Stephen Hawking owns six.
If you’re self-made, then when you were younger the best you can afford is a time-share and the deals really aren’t that bad if you can rent it or swap it out for another location. As stated above, you can’t really sell the time-share easily, but you can rent it.
^being able to switch location has been a feature of timeshares, at least in principle, for a long time - it’s not a new thing. higgmond’s timeshare is an old contract he inherited from his parents, not a new one he bought recently. in reality there are numerous black-out dates and restrictions, and if you own a timeshare in a shitty location thinking you’d be switching - it just won’t be very marketable
ohai, I’ll be happy to comfort your wife if needed. In all seriousness though, I would not buy a time share at least not for more than $1,000. Having received mine for free though, it’s hard to argue against the value. If anyone knows another way to stay slopeside in a 3 BR condo at pretty much any ski area in the US for $100/night, please share your knowledge.
You’re married? I thought you were living the bachelor life. Or is that Black Swan?
it’s Swan.
A lot of timeshares now work on points - you pay for a certain number of points/year, and each possible destination is valued differently (based on location, time of year, etc.). When you vacation, you pay with your points giving flexibility on location and timing, and I think you’re able to carrying points over if you don’t use them all in one year. It really doesn’t seem that much different than just paying with cash (unless of course it is being offered at a discount).
I sat through a sales presentation a few years ago. Very painful experience.