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My suggestion... get the Maint fees paid, and then your new hobby for the next couple of months is "Rental Agent". find renters for the weeks to recoup all or most of the maint fees. family, friends, local classifieds, Craigs list. TUG classifieds, TUG last Min Rentals etc. even if you recoup 1/2 the maint fees it's better than nothing if you aren't going to use the units! then try selling them later in the year RT
I think that renting off-season Williamsburg & Cape Cod weeks in this economy will be next to impossible. I just had a Week 52 at Park City that I had listed for months all over the place at $800, with no offers. I dropped the price to around $500 a week before check-in -- still no offers. I ended up renting it on December 28th -- the day AFTER the week started -- for just $250, to someone who wanted it for only part of the week. In general, I'd say renting off-season weeks is far harder than getting good exchanges for them. The rental market is just much more sensitive to season than the exchange companies are.
Nancy, I see two general approaches you can try:
1) Try to get rid of the weeks. You can try listing them on various sites (here, eBay, Redweek, Bidshares, Craigslist) for $1, and maybe offer to handle the closing yourself to reduce transfer costs. However, depending on how high the annual fees are, you may not get any takers. Some of those listing sites have fairly high listing fees ($35 for eBay, $50 for Redweek), so you may want to start by listing just one or two weeks, on one or two sites, to see how it goes.
Other approaches to getting rid of the weeks are: try donating them to a charity (they may or may not take them); offer to throw in the 2009 week with the deal (i.e, offer to give up on getting reimbursed for the MFs for 2009).
I would NOT pay any substantial fee to a "postcard company" to take the week off your hands. There will certainly be cheaper ways to dispose of the weeks. Also, do NOT pay any substantial upfront fee (more than $50) to anyone who says they can sell these weeks for you -- that will almost certainly be a scam.
2) Try again to exchange them. You CAN get good exchanges, even if you have off-season times. (And, there are far worse times in both Williamsburg and Cape Cod than what you own.) There are independent exchange companies that value all weeks (or all weeks of a give size) the same. There are also some locations that have lots of availability -- if you are still interested in Williamsburg and Cape Cod in the spring, you should have no trouble trading back to these locations at a time that fits your spring break. What company have you been using to trade?