Defaulting Mexican Timeshare

[TUGBrian]

Rereading this thread feels like it needs some more granular explanations as so many terms are used very loosely in this space both intentionally and accidentally.

1. if you default on any debt, be it a loan or just your maintenance fees. you can expect SOME effort to get you to pay what you owe. Plenty of owners claim they "never heard from the resort again"...but thats unusual. letters reminding you that you havent paid are perfectly normal and expected.

2. there is a vast chasm of difference between getting a notice of late assessment, notice of default, notice of lien, notice of intent to foreclose....and you being "sued" or "foreclosed on". granted its part of the process, but these notifications exist to get you to pay WITHOUT further action...and they are usually very effective!

3. being turned over to a collections agency is also a possibility where you will then likely get a whole new round of angry sounding notices as THEY now attempt to get you to pay without having to perform any further action other than calls/emails/letters sent, they earn money by getting owners to pay.

all of these activities/attempts cost VERY little in the grand scheme of things and as mentioned above are all tried and true efforts to convince you to pay without the creditor/etc having to put anything more than the bare minimum of cost/time/effort into pursuing a delinquency because these strategies have been proven to work while still abiding by most collections laws (that are quite consumer friendly).

where the rubber meets the road is what happens at step 4 and every situation is different. the main difference for owners is are you defaulting on your annual dues, or a loan balance.

will the resort or collections firm report the delinquency to the credit bureaus?

non payment of mf? unlikely (based on reports, the chances of it NOT happening are greater than it happening just remember its never zero %)
non payment of loan? very likely

will they actually pursue foreclosure?

highly unlikely in any situation because you aren't going to dispute or fight it as you dont want the ownership anyway, foreclosure is time consuming and expensive for the resort, not the owner. After enough time has passed in default, "in lieu" of going thru foreclosure the resort usually makes an effort to contact the owner a final time to negotiate a settlement/agreement that results in the owner willingly signing the deed back over to the resort/developer/association/etc because they know full well that you wanted to give it back in the first place.

will they pursue a judgement(ie suing you for money)?

non payment of mf? unheard of
non payment of loan? unlikely UNLESS you owe enough to make it worth their while to pursue! its likely not worth the time or effort to pursue 20k. however if you stop paying on a 6 figure loan balance, that is certainly enough to put you at risk of collections efforts and in that situation with that much debt you should be speaking to an attorney that specializes in bankruptcy and or debt collection in your home state because if it ever got to that point, your states collections laws would dictate the steps any organization must follow to collect on a judgement.

lastly the attempt to collect a debt across international borders is also almost unheard of (cost/time/effort all much higher). but again, expect threats via email/letter/phone!

 

[WorldT]

Thanks @TUGBrian for the reminder.

 

[Passepartout]

REALLY GOOD synopsis, @TUGBrian . This info should be in a sticky placed somewhere that folks (usually newbies or Google searchers) can find it. It would eliminate or certainly reduce the ongoing barrage of requests- which will only get more frequent.

Jim

 

[Beach57]

I rent on RedWeek. Have you tried that?

Another option is to vacation with a large group of family and friends, and everyone pays you for the points they use.

I have over 8000 annual points and use them all up every year, and often have to borrow from future years.

Good luck! I hope you’re can work it out.

 

[jules54]

Thank you all for your thoughts...I'm not sure what route we will take yet. I am thinking that since it is only about $2500, just pay it and get over it. But the problem still remains...if we pay it, does that stop MF payments from here on, or will they keep billing us? I don't ever want to go to Villa del Arco again!!

Why throw more money at something you don’t want. You have tried to give it back, the resort company would t take it. You have no loan on it right? If there is still a loan on it I can see why the resort company won’t let people out. Just stop paying. If debt collectors call you don’t answer or hang up. If they send you letters don’t answer. Let them keep billing you, return the bills to sender or ignore them they will stop. If your credit takes a ding it won’t mean much. Credit rating companies are aware what a timeshare is and what people have to go through to get out.

 

[easyrider]

I have read most of the feed and like many others, I am confused. We have owned at Villa del Arco since June 2007 and have paid maintenance fees all the years until 2020. We stayed there in 2020 to get information on our options of giving it up and while there, we went to two presentations that they offered for members to upgrade our membership. Each time we told the Vill del Arco manager in charge, that we were trying to get out of our time share, not upgrade it. BOTH times the managers told us to just quit paying for it then, that the funds were in a Mexican bank and they couldn't do anything to us in the USA if we quit paying the maintenance fees. We also talked to another manger at another time share and he told us the exact same thing..."just don't pay any more maintenance fees". Today we received a notice from Monterey Financial Services about the $2475.54 we owed to Villa del Arco and if we didn't pay, it would affect our credit report. I am scared, because we have a 692 credit rating and we work hard to keep it up, without any negative items on it. We have paid them so much over the years and rarely used the Time Share!! My husband wants to ignore it, but I don't want negative credit for seven years or however long!! Can Monterey Financial relly enforce that??

What has happened in the past is Resortcom would have sent you notices of delinquency and then attempted to negotiate before going to collection. If it's a Mexican loan they can get a Judgement in Mexico. Basically, Monterey Financial buys debt for very little and uses debt collection tactics to negotiate a payment. I copy pasted what happens below.

Bill

What if I am sued by Monterey Financial?​

If you receive notification that Monterey Financial is suing you in an attempt to collect a debt, you'll need to take action immediately. Typically, you'll have a limited amount of time to do so. It's usually 14-35 days or less.

First, you'll want to respond to their complaint by filing an Answer in your local court. The answer should contain the following information:

• A response to each of the claims against you
• Validation that the debt belongs to you
• Verification that Monterey Financial has the authority to file a lawsuit against you
• A request for documentation for their claims

In many cases, debt collection agencies purchase old debts for small amounts of money from a variety of different creditors. In some cases, they may not receive the appropriate documentation required to validate their claims. Once you file your answer, they will need to respond to you with all of the information you've asked for.

Sometimes, this may be enough for the debt collector to drop the lawsuit against you, especially if they don't have the required information to collect on the debt. It may become too expensive for them to follow up on, and they'll simply cut their losses.