Is Dumping Your Timeshare the Best Way to Save Your Home?

In: Personal Finance

3 Apr 2009

Times are tough at the moment, with a lot of us having a hard time juggling our mortgage, paying the bills and keeping the gas tank full. At the same time, people are being laid off by the thousands and wave after wave of home foreclosures are sweeping across the country. If you happen to own a timeshare, then things are even worse. The maintenance fees keep going up every year and owners are frequently invoiced hundreds or even thousands in special assessment fees. Now is the time to get rid of your timeshare before the added expense causes even more economic stress on your household.

If your timeshare is financed, then you’ll want to pay everything off as soon as you can. This will get rid of those interest payments which can be very high on their own (and unlike the interest payments for your primary residence, these payments are not tax deductible). Additionally, you’ll find it difficult, if not impossible to sell your timeshare if there is still a mortgage on the property. With so many other timeshares on the market that no longer have mortgages, it is extremely unlikely that you’ll find a willing buyer.

It’s always been tough to resell a timeshare; a report from the FTC tells us that only 3.3% of timeshares listed by owners have been sold in the last twenty years! Given the state of the economy at present, a timeshare is an especially tough sell. You may have to wait a long time to sell your timeshare — and you’ll have to pay for advertising and broker’s fees, even as you continue to pay for maintenance and special assessments! You need to get rid of that timeshare right away to be rid of this financial burden.

Renting does not make sense when you could be invoiced for thousands of dollars in special assessments. You might make some money in rent, but lose money overall without ever going to the timeshare resort yourself.

Furthermore, fewer charities are taking ownership of timeshares because of the inherent cost and liabilities. Again, like selling, donating your timeshare may take too much time to find a proper charity that will take it. Unfortunately, the clock is always ticking and the next timeshare bill may be just around the corner.

If your checkbook cannot handle a sudden $1,000+ special assessment with the possibility of future fees, do your best to part with your timeshare as soon as you can. As you have read, trying to discard it yourself may or may not quickly end in success. Meanwhile, the time spent waiting will only build more stress on yourself. So, if you want a fast solution, go to a timeshare transfer company to get relief from your timeshare today.

A good timeshare transfer company will guarantee the transfer of a timeshare out of an owner’s name so that the owner is no longer responsible for any fees associated with that timeshare. This service is performed for a fee. The transaction is quick and should be binding the minute that you sign a contract. In other words, any fee that is mailed to you after the contract is signed should go to the transfer company and not to you. Your financial responsibility for the timeshare will be lifted upon signing the contract.

You’ll want to choose a timeshare transfer company which has been in operation for at least four years; this will weed out the fly-by-night operations. You should also look up any company you are thinking of working with at the Better Business Bureau. Of course, no company has a track record which is completely free of complaints; but you should make sure that complaints have been addressed by the company and that it is highly rated by the BBB.

Whether you go with a timeshare transfer company or sell it on your own, when you get rid of your timeshare you also free yourself from a financial burden and a great deal of stress. This lets you turn your attention to the important task of keeping your home!

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