Timeshares can allow you and your family to spend quality time together and create lifelong memories of days at the beach. But if you find yourself too busy or financially unable to take your vacation each year, a timeshare can quickly become a burden on both you and your heirs.
Problems with timeshares include an immediate loss of value the moment you sign the contract, annual maintenance fees whether you use it or not, and travel expenses to use your timeshare.
If you decide that the benefits of owning a timeshare no longer outweigh the costs, you have a few options available to you.
1. You can simply transfer ownership to someone else as an outright gift. For example, if you want to give your timeshare to your son or daughter as a gift, all you have to do is transfer title to the timeshare in your name and file all the appropriate paperwork, including the deed of resignation, with the authorities.
2. You can sell your timeshare through a timeshare broker and expect to make a profit on the sale.
A couple of things to keep in mind: Unlike traditional real estate agents, the timeshare broker does not work on a contingency basis. Instead, most brokers charge an upfront fee. This fee is paid even if a buyer is never found.
The timeshare broker may use their best efforts and most honest intentions to sell the timeshare, but if there is no market and no one is willing to buy, then the timeshare remains yours, along with all related costs, and you also lose the money you paid up front to the broker.
3. You can try to cut your losses and sell directly to a “fake corporation.”
Sham Corporations “buys” the timeshare from you, the timeshare owner. But instead of receiving money from this “sale,” you actually pay the Corporation a service fee to take over ownership of the timeshare.
Why would you want to pay someone to take a timeshare off your hands? To avoid ongoing annual fees which again, you pay whether you use your timeshare or not.
Once you “sell” it, the timeshare is now owned by Sham Corporation. Theoretically, the timeshare resort management company will try to collect any related fees from the corporation/business entity instead of you.
However, these bogus corporations usually refuse to pay maintenance fees. But with no longer a person for the resort management company to send threatening collection letters or harassing phone calls to, the timeshare is in limbo.
The Sham Corporation gets its money from the service fee they charge when they take possession. Obviously, there are enough people willing to pay someone else to take over their timeshare to keep these Fake Corporations in business.
Some of the more creative Sham Corporations will contact the resort management company to sell them the timeshare. It may be better from the resort’s point of view to repossess the property and sell it to someone else than to have a timeshare sitting in limbo without receiving maintenance fees.
Because of this, many resort management companies will now no longer accept the transfer of ownership to a business entity such as a corporation or limited liability company. Instead, they continue to hold the previous individual owner responsible for maintenance fees even though he has officially transferred ownership to “someone” else.
So be aware that this “opportunity” to download your timeshare will cost you upfront and may not work out in the end.
The safest way to transfer your timeshare is to gift it to a friend or family member. Deed and Record offers an alternative with genuine and bona fide gifts for friends and family.
