Just an observation that probably means only something to a newbie like me, but . . . I have been monitoring Ebay auctions for the last few weeks. . . waiting for the right deal. Lately I'm seeing auctions that are ending early . . . apparently the early endings were initiated by the seller(s) with the explanation that the timeshare is no longer for sale. And now an auction I was monitoring just disappeared with no explanation. It was offered by "wanted_weeks." Curiously I did an Ebay search for any other items for sale by "wanted_weeks" and there were no auctions listed. I thought it odd as I always seem to run across auctions from "wanted_weeks." Something weird seems to be going on? Or is this not out of the norm?
We have been running ebay ads since November. Ebay auctions generally get a lower rental price that we get from other website ads. We have posted in ALL of our ebay rental ads that we have the right to pull that ad if we get a better offer generated from another website.
We have not up to this time not pulled a rental ad if there has been a opening bid. The only time we would pull auction that had a bid is if we made a big mistake.
As a example, here below is a recent ebay cancellation of one of our auctions. Most ebay messages from ebayers are well thought out.
Here is one of the messages we got while our auction was live.
The email message sent sent stated that party wants a sleep 6 unit for a major high demand holiday and want to pay less that $4.80 per day per person.
In fact they wanted 3 units for $199 each per week. They did not make the Mininum opening bid of $499 for that Limited Prime New Years week.
They felt $199 for the week was a "right deal". Seeinfg that is a fair amount below most Maintenance fees their chances of keeping a "Right deal" are very slim epecially if they are floating weeks that can be cancelled and rebooked for differant dates.
After 3 messages like that I replyed and posted for all to see that it was economically reasonable the rate they offered. I posted that at $11.88 per person per day that was still a low price per day for a condo.
I later rented 2 unit-weeks off of ebay for about $200 more than than that opening bid price that got no bids for several days before we rented them out.
I paid the ebay listing bid, but seeing it was sold from a non ebay lead from Tug I did not owe the fees for selling on ebay.
On the other hand we rented out one of our New Years units at a differant resort through ebay this week for abou $1,100.
So ebay can produce for both owners and renters if they are both realistic. We list our ebays rentals in most cases about 2 months or less than their check in dates.
But we list our ads on other sites asap on our floating and fixed weeks. On one of our ownerships we have our six 2010 floating weeks listed on one of the websites we use. Websites like Tug on the average net us better prices than ebay. All of the sites can be usefull tools if you have good weeks at good resorts to rent out.
I think rentals have not dropped in volume as much in comparison to resales because the rental is only a one time committment compared to buying and having on going maintenance fees.
I hope my explaination of why we sometimes cancell auctions, etc helped give some insight.
Bruce
