For the first time in my life, I am considering buying a timeshare, and after seeing some of the good advice given by TUGers on similar topics, I was hoping to mine the wealth of knowledge on here to challenge my thinking. Here is a bit of the backstory as to how this idea got planted. In the fall the wife and I are headed to Mexico for a reunion with some old military friends, we have been in the past, and were always tempted with the timeshare, but there were always too many reasons not to, didn't want to spend the cash, didn't plan on taking too many vacations for one reason or another, etc... Every time we went to Mexico with this group of friends we agreed to attend the sales pitch as the group always wanted some perk (private dinner, private yacht for the day), and we were always fine with saying no... We started joking about what kind of "deals" they were going to be offering this time around and out of curiosity I started looking at timeshare resales for fun. I have come to a couple of conclusions that may have varying levels of accuracy.
I am not in a hurry, I appreciate any advice, and already have read a invaluable amount of information here in the forums....
- I believe that there is hidden value in some timeshares if there are bought correctly (ie the right resort, the right location, the right management, and most importantly the right price).
- Anything that I would be buying would be a cash transaction.
- I would be hard pressed to see a value proposition that led me to buy from a developer. A timeshare in not (under most circumstances) a investment, certainly not purchased at retail. I don't believe in the term "vacation ownership" any more than "pre owned car" (its used...).
- One of the options that I am considering is forming a corp (due to the nature of the business a C corp) for the sole purpose of having timeshares, initially starting with 2-4 weeks and seeing how it goes. The business purpose would purportedly be for profit, but realistically it would be a low profit or break even enterprise with a side benefit of allowing sales of the weeks without adverse tax penalty's as well as providing a layer of protection against disposal. My wife is good at managing things like this and would basically be putting in her time for some vacation options (reserving, renting, trading, etc.), and if everything goes well the occasional discount vacation. Initially we would be using whatever we bought. Has anyone had experience with doing this?
- One of the large reasons that I am considering #4, is that I know that our vacation needs will change dramatically over the next 15 years, and if we could have some flexibility with management of the income/loss we would be able to have more options available to us.
- Even if #4 does not work out I am still interested in something. It seems as thought the fixed weeks offer the best value if you are going to use them, and you end up paying more for the points systems. The Hilton HGVC is a interesting "hybrid" model that also seems promising to me, but in any case I would probably be sticking to the major players. Anybody got some pros/cons/gripes with their similar situation?
- It seems the bigger players generally have some resale value, as many as I see at a $1 there are plenty that sell for more. There are also resorts that have very few listed, and none at a give away price...
- By and large if you tell someone in the general public (ie a friend) that you are actually thinking about buying a timeshare, you get a look like your from mars and in some cases I can see people mentally deducting IQ points from me while I am talking. Some of these people come to me for financial advice, and some I am business partners with, so it is rather shocking to me that everyone I have talked to about the idea has stopped listening. I believe that this is because the horror stories are always passed around and in some cases overstated.
I am not in a hurry, I appreciate any advice, and already have read a invaluable amount of information here in the forums....
