How easy to rent?

[Picker57]

I'm sure that we own about as much timeshare as we can reasonably use, but I've become intrigued by some timeshare bargains on eBay. I'm guessing that any additional purchases would be used only occasionally, and put up for rent otherwise.
I realize there are tons of variables, but what has been the experience of the group in renting your timeshares through the TUG site - preferably in the regular classifieds but also in the 'last minute rentals' section? (It's not something that I want to have to work at.) How often have folks just had to eat the maintenance fees for the year? Thanks for any observations / advice.
--Zach Kaplan

 

[theo]

It depends...

...what has been the experience of the group in renting your timeshares through the TUG site - preferably in the regular classifieds but also in the 'last minute rentals' section? --Zach Kaplan

Zach:
Absent specific info about the particular resort / unit / season / week, I don't think that a truly accurate "one size fits all" answer is really possible. That said, I have found both RedWeek and MyResortNetwork to both be excellent advertising sites for rentals. I've never actually used TUG for rental ads, mostly because of the (soon to be resolved) onslaught of spam which has historically and inevitably arrived as a result of TUG ads.

If what you're attempting to rent out is desirable, the site on which advertised won't likely matter a whole lot --- it will rent. On the other hand, an off season dog week in a dumpy place might take long legged dancing girls and Goodyear blimp advertising just to elicit anything more than stifled yawns. But I'll bet you knew that already.
===============================================
P.S. Some years ago, I did some bicycle business with a knowledgeable guy named Zach Kaplan; a real whiz with wheels and custom / recumbent bikes. Would you, by any chance, be that very same Zach Kaplan?

 

[Dave M]

The energy to rent a week isn't horrible, although it can sometimes get frustrating responding over and over again to tire-kickers who really have no intent to rent.

The challenge is buying the appropriate timeshares to rent. The best weeks, by far, are the weeks that potential renters will lust after - beach weeks during the summer or during a holiday week in sun-tan weather, ski weeks in prime winter weeks, etc. Off-season and secondary location weeks will often go unrented at any price. eBay bargains, unless you know what the rental market is for each timeshare that you consider, can be a disaster as a rental proposition. And don't even think about buying in Orlando or another overbuilt area if your plans are to rent weeks to others. You'll get lucky occasionally, but why bother?

TUG is a good place to list, although you'll get a lot of spam as a result of listing here until the new ad software is put in place. Based on the reports here by those who rent, it would appear that there are other sites that get better responses from rental ads than TUG does.

 

[sjuhawk_jd]

renting

I'm sure that we own about as much timeshare as we can reasonably use, but I've become intrigued by some timeshare bargains on eBay. I'm guessing that any additional purchases would be used only occasionally, and put up for rent otherwise.
I realize there are tons of variables, but what has been the experience of the group in renting your timeshares through the TUG site - preferably in the regular classifieds but also in the 'last minute rentals' section? (It's not something that I want to have to work at.) How often have folks just had to eat the maintenance fees for the year? Thanks for any observations / advice.
--Zach Kaplan

TUG classified's is not very effective
TUG's last minute rental is highly useless
Redweek.com is the place

 

[dchilds]

I'm sure that we own about as much timeshare as we can reasonably use, but I've become intrigued by some timeshare bargains on eBay. I'm guessing that any additional purchases would be used only occasionally, and put up for rent otherwise...
--Zach Kaplan

We own 5 ski weeks in Colorado. We rented a Christmas week in Avon (Beaver Creek/Vail) for a nice profit, but well below resort rental price.

We also tried renting 3 others at moderate profit last year with no luck. One week 6 in Dillon (Keystone), one week 7 (President's week - floating unit) in Vail, and one early March (floating week) in Vail. I listed on VacationTimeshareRentals, MyResortNetwork, RedWeek, and last minute on Tug. I priced the rentals about half-way between the resort rental price and the maintenance fees. I had two nibbles, and nothing else.

I found I was competing with owners who would take the maintenance fee as the rental price, and people who listed exchanges for near maintenance fee prices. Both types left their ads running after they were rented, so my price looked expensive. I think renters refused to rent my weeks, because they saw what price they could have rented at, if they had only been quicker.

Because I live in Colorado, I ended up using my weeks as 3 day weekends, which was cheaper than renting a hotel room for 3 days. We decided we would rather use our weeks than supply someone a cheap rental.

We own a spare week 24 in St Maarten, that I banked 61 days out, about 5 weeks ago. In the last 2 weeks, we have had two queries. The two queries were from a listing in the resort owner's newsletter, not from the other websites listed.

 

[NTHC]

Highly demanded weeks listed in a competitive range will rent. Everything else can be hit or miss....the buying public does not always act in predictable ways. I think that buying a timeshare for the sole purpose of renting is a gamble.

JMHO,
Cindy

 

[JMAESD84]

but I've become intrigued by some timeshare bargains on eBay. I'm guessing that any additional purchases would be used only occasionally, and put up for rent otherwise. --Zach Kaplan

As the other posters have stated it's a mixed bag as far as renting goes. When you say "timeshare bargains on eBay", I hope you mean the timeshares you can steal at $3,000 plus and not $125 when you are talking about possible rental inventory.

Gold Crown - 5 Star "Bright Red" weeks are what you need for easy rental inventory, anything else will involve a bit of work and worry on your part.

If you are willing to tie up the capital it can easily be done.

 

[brucecz]

We do a fair amount of rentals and although Tug is not the best site we have in the past two years rented out one of our 3 bedroom Keys weeks for $1,400 and just last week the party rented our week 26 at The Rushes for $1,500.

Both of those rentals were from Tug ads.

The reason they rented were that our Rushes resort charges $2,100 for the same week and takes 25% that = $1,575 for the owner.

With the Rushes rental program I do not know were I would be in line on their list for that week but by renting it out by myself place myself at the top of my week 26 list at the Rushes. Some of the other owners week 26's in the Rushes rental program may not rent out.

I feel the same way about the resort rental programs at any resort we have ever owned at.

There have been others who have rented off of the regular Tug ads.

A couple of points. These were non Tuggers that rented those 2 units.

I agree with James on several points. If Tug was the only place we advertised we would have a hard time covering our maintenance fee costs on the 100 or so weeks we rented out last year.

But because some of our ownerships are unique and we get quite a few low cost reservations that are with 45 days of check in we do post a goodly amount of ads on the Tug LMR. A lot of them did not rent but it keeps our name in front and we do get a few rentals at no cost. On the ones we do not rent out we give those back to the resort and rebook something else at no additonal cost to us.

But we use a mix of ad sites.

I will advertise almost all our rental weeks as soon as we can on both fixed floating weeks. I have one steady customer who rents one of our floating units almost a year ahead of check in time.

A one resort we have in Puerto Vallarta we can only reserve our floating weeks 11 months out. ASAP whem I get a confirmed reservation for that resort we put it up on the websites.

With in one month of posting those ads some one grabbed 2 Feb 2009 weeks. The other 4 January-Feb 2009 weeks reserved at our same resort will most likely rent out for us. There will some others who will not start running their ads for the same resort and unit-week at the same asking price until months or less before check in and theirs have a far less of a chance to rent out.

Their problem seems to be that they are penny wise but IMHO dollar folish on their ads and wait to long to start ads.

Yes there are tire kickers but we will respond to them 4 or even 5 times and send them a rental agreement for their inspection and consideration. Yes there are almost always going to be someone with what appears to be cheaper prices. But maybe that 4th or 5th response might be the charm.

But they know that we will not sit on a reservation for them as we state in all of our full rental agreements that state Quote" IMPORTANT PLEASE NOTE, in order to try to be fair to all interested potential interested renters the first prospective tenant to send the landlord payment in full will secure the unit fot thier use. Other later arriving payments will be returned. The EARLIEST POSTMARK gets our unit if two checks arrive for the same confirmed reservation unit- check in date." Unquote


Renting does take a time and effort committment to learn. It also takes a money committment to develope a rentable inventory and time and effort to rent them out.

Bruce

 

[brucecz]

Highly demanded weeks listed in a competitive range will rent. Everything else can be hit or miss....the buying public does not always act in predictable ways. I think that buying a timeshare for the sole purpose of renting is a gamble.

JMHO,
Cindy

But Cindy IMHO it is such a fun way to gamble and I can stack the odds in my flavor if I do things correctly
. So I have in all cases except for one have boughten were we would want to go if it goes not rent out. It also is a great help if if your ownership has a lot of useage flexability.

But it can be exstremely addictive IMHO.

Bruce

Bruce

 

[pointsjunkie]

i have been extremely lucky renting on TUG. i have had 2 rentals rented for the list price. i have 2 more listed for November so it is still early to get any bites.i am giving it till July and then i will convert my weeks to points.

 

[Floridaski]

Renting has it's risks

I have had great success in renting out our Morritts Grand Cayman 2 bedroom unit. I have learned to just go ahead and reserve Presidents Week and post that as the unit. I have had the best luck with redweek and I have posted on TUG and myresort also. But, it seems that redweek always gets the units rented out.

I always rent it out for a slight profit to make up for my time and effort. But, I do worry sometimes that I might be left holding the risk if the resort had another hurricane.

If a hurricane hit the resort and it was closed, I would have to refund the renters money. So, I personally I do not think it is really worth the risk to purchase Beach front for rental purposes. It is to high risk and we only rent out what we cannot use. JMO....

 

[JLB]

As I said in another thread within recent memory (the past hour ), since 90% want to go to 10% of the weeks, 90% of the weeks are tough rentals, profitwise. You are lucky to recover your fees, with no compensation for your hassle and risk.

JMHO, realizing that I may stepping on the toes of a few here who make renting timeshares sound like really, really big business, but when I listen to them, and see all their listings on LMR for a song and dance, reduced to just a song , I believe the truth reveals itself, that being that if they applied their efforts to something else they would probably do better $$$-wise.

Maybe one or two are making a go of it, but maybe they would make a better go at something else with the same effort.

 

[Picker57]

Thanks VERY much to all for your insights and observations. I agree with the comment that it can become addicting. It sounds to me like the rental aspect boils down to (a) be prudent (b) be flexible, and (c) keep my day job.

---Zach

 

[brucecz]

Agreed that vey few make big bucks, I know that a few of my timeshare friends (not me) make over $100,000 profit a year.

But even on Tug LMR some who rent out weeks or reservations at $400 to $600 are still making a profit. It depends on what type of ownership and the cost per week which can vary greatly.

For some points ownerships the amount of points needed can drop by a goodly amount the closer to the check indate the reservation is made.

But some of us old retired folk do OK in making a few bucks, getting low cost exchanges and reduced airfares and great the exchanges that we want.

It has turned out for me as a nice retirement hobby avocation. With the internet allowing us to be on timeshare vacations and still follow up on inquiries it for me is way better than a part time job.

With a part time job I would have to drive to work and punch a timeclock. I did not retire in 2001 after running my bussines to work part time for someone else.

If a person can use a very low cost week to get a exchange, those about $450 to $600 $aving$ per exchange are not taxable like income from rentals or flipping.

The same holds true for $aving$ on airfare gotten through timeshare ownerships.

Bruce

 

[Picker57]

The same holds true for $aving$ on airfare gotten through timeshare ownerships.

Bruce

This is something I've not heard of other than the Shell points buys. How might I find out more about airfare savings?

------Zach

 

[tombo]

As we discussed tonight on another thread, this might be the worst time to be involved in timeshare rentals or sales. I have several weeks that I rent every year, and I simply vacation in my locations that don't rent. I don't own a week that I wouldn't like to spend a week in if it was available.

That being said, I have had to bank 2 weeks this year that rented easily every year for the last 3 years but didn't rent this year. I still have 2 more weeks for rent that were rented this time last year and I don't have the available vacation time to take advantage of the unrented weeks. So many people are listing weeks on red week and my resort network that it is getting harder and harder to rent weeks for a decent profit. People with the same week as you lower their price because the lowest priced week is the first to rent. You can drop your price and match them or wait until their week rents. Many weeks don't rent at all or rent last minute even at great locations with good weeks.

The price of fuel and food is putting a lot of middle class people in financial distress, so many renters will cut out vacations to cut expenses as vacations are usually considered a luxury item. If less people are traveling (including timeshare owners), more weeks will be for sale and rent driving rental prices down even lower. You can already rent at many resorts (including Hawaii) for cheaper than the MF's. Click through redweek and check rental prices vs MF's and you will see many for rent for $100 or $200 more than the MF's. If you make $300 profit a year for 2 years and it doesn't rent the 3rd year, you don't have enough profit to even pay the 3rd year's MF's. Dont forget the $40 you will spend to advertise each week on 2 web sites each year. Then there is the acquisition costs and possible assessments.

If you have 6 weeks to rent, and you rent 3 of them, you will be lucky to break even for all 6 MF's and rental listing costs for the year not taking into account how much you paid to buy the weeks. If you want to do it for fun and as a hobby, go ahead and try it. You might make a little or lose a little every year. Just remember that you could pay the MF's for all of them renting none if fuel costs keep rising and the recession deepens. People who are trying to make ends meet and keep a roof over their head don't pay for vacations. If I had known how bad the economy was going to get, I wouldn't own very many weeks that I wanted to rent. Hindsight is always 20/20.

 

[JLB]

As I sat in our first presentation 20 years ago, using TSs to make money was exactly what was going through my head. Actually, not buying to rent, but buying to exchange to rent. I actually said it out loud to all of the sales weasels that week. They all agreed and said it was a great idea and something they did.

Then, in 1999, Georgio at Poipu Point said the same thing, that he traded his weeks for prime Caribbean weeks, and rented them for $10K each!!!

Greed and the lure of $$$ has always been woven into the TS pitch.