Crown Realty Timeshare Resales St. Martin

[Marty in DC]

I have 2 timeshares in St. Martin that I am interested in selling. I have been referred to Crown Realty on the island and am interested in whether anyone has ever dealt with them, and their experiences.

 

[johnmfaeth]

Hi Marty,

They have a office on the main road in Simpson Bay, doubt they are financially as good as just selling it yourself. See the "how to sell" sticky on the TUG forum at the top of the buying and selling board.

Big downside of selling the Sapphire Beach is that the resort charges a $800 resort transfer fee to process the ownership change. That is more than the units usually cost on the resale market (and probably a cause of their low price for the high quality).

Good luck!

John

 

[jfitz]

I purchased a unit through them several years ago. I made an offer on the unit while in St. Maarten. The seller, who lived in France, accepted the offer about a week later. Crown completed the transaction and I had the deed within thirty days. From a buyer's perspective they were very good to deal with.

 

[dchilds]

Buying from Crown

We stayed at Pelican a few years ago, and decided to buy. We checked with the Pelican sales office, and asked for a list of available resale and foreclosure units that were available to avoid the hard sell. We had been to a few timeshare presentations before and resisted the hard sell.

We waited until we got home, and checked online. We found Crown. They had almost exactly what we wanted, and it was a great price. We verified that it was still available, got a contract, and sent in the signed contract with a $2000 deposit. Three to four months later, calling about every 2-3 weeks, we still hadn't heard anything more on the purchase. I contacted Pelican, and found out the there was a different owner listed than Crown had on the contract. After informing them of the problem, they tried to offer us other weeks that they had in inventory.

We didn't think we would see the money again, but Pelican has/had an employee on the St Maarten timeshare committee, that knew the owner of Crown, and said that they dealt with Crown often, and thought they were reputible. We were able to get most of our $2000 back by having Crown send the money to Pelican, which we used as a down payment on one of their weeks. There was a $75 foreign check processing fee that we had to pay.

Crown is actually located right next to the Simpson Bay draw-bridge about a mile from Pelican. We had not seen it on our first two trips to St Maarten, and we've never seen it open since we first noticed it.

I would think it is safe to list with them, if they don't charge an up-front fee.

 

[johnmfaeth]

Hi,

Just wanted to point out that no timeshare units on St. Maarten are deeded due to foreign ownership regulations. They must have supplied a "membership agreement" which is actually a right-to-use lease. This is issued directly by the resort's management company upon submission of the executed transfer forms.

John

PS. But the real issue is the fees that they will charge you as seller if they sell or list your unit.

 

[Blondie]

Their prices always seem decent. I sold a Royal Palm unit and a La Vista unit myself using Redweek and it was fairly easy. Check with your resort- often they will handle the transfer (as does Pelican) for a nominal fee thus making a closing company unnecessary unles the buyer wants one. Good luck.