Yes!!
People who are knowledgeable, serious timeshare buyers go through the eBay timeshare listings regularly. There is no better venue than eBay if you want to ensure that your timeshare is viewed by a significant number of serious buyers within a 30-day period,
provided you make it worth their time to visit your auction. And you make it worth them investing their time in your auction by putting it up as a no reserve auction with a minimum opening bid.
When you put the unit up on a no reserve auction with a minimum opening bid, you are inviting all of those people to come in and take a look. In contrast, if you list the unit in an ad at Redweek or a TUG classified, many of those same buyers will bypass your ad because it's not a resort they're currently interested in or your price might be too high. That minimum opening bid and no reserve auction lets people know you are truly serious about selling and invites them to come in and take a look. You will get buyers taking a look at your listing who would ignore your listing if it was a conventional ad, or a reserve auction.
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It's still a buyer's market out there. Look at the sheer number of timeshares that are listed on eBay at any given time. Do you have the time to pay even scant attention to every one ot those listings? Half of those listings? One-quarter of those listings? Even a tenth of the listings? Probably not,
and neither do the people you want to visit your auction. Be sure you understand this:
your listing is competing with every other eBay listing for the attention of the much smaller number of serious buyers.
Let me be blunt for a moment here and provide some thoughts from someone who has been involved in selling professional services for about 20 years. For those of you who are concerned that you might get taken advantage of if you do run a no reserve minimum opening bid auction, almost all of you are making a classic sales error. You are far too focused on ensuring success on your end of the transaction. If you want to sell your unit, whether it is on eBay or any other venue,
you need to quit thinking like a seller and start thinking like a buyer. Quit focusing on how you might get taken advantage of. Once you've created a decent description of your unit and you've identified a location where you can put your listing in front of buying eyes,
you need to obsess over how you can drive interest in the item you are selling, not how you can ensure you're not taken advantage of. If you don't make that switch in thiking, it is almost assured that you will end up selling it for less than it is worth, or you will fail to sell it at all.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy - if your primary goal is to protect your interest in a transaction, you will come out on the short end in the transaction. You will either not conclude the sale (which will leave you stuck with an item that you've already decided you would rather sell). or you will be forced to make a deal in market where you've depressed the price by driving away potential buyers.
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Divide the world of timeshares into two broad classes
- recognized ownerships. These are resorts that are sufficiently attractive that a listing of the resort will generate a reasonable numbers of inquiries from an ad listing.
- unrecognized ownerships. These are resorts and weeks that aren't very popular and are not likely to generate any ineterest in an ad.
For the first type of resort, an eBay auction will probably net you somewhere between 80% and 100% of what you could realize in a conventional listing sale, provided you have described the unit accurately, properly, and completely. A badly written listing will drive down the net proceeds. The advantage of the auction in ths case is that it almost guarantees that a sale will be completed.
For the second type of resort, an eBay listing may well be the only way to attract interest.