Hello Timeshare Owners.
My name is Uri Fried. I am the
founder (now retired) of The Timeshare Company, LLC, a company dedicated to
rescuing desperate timeshare owners looking to unburden themselves from the
endless financial liabilities of their timeshare interval ownership. But not only did I start this company, I am
the creator of the timeshare disposal industry itself.
Back in the mid 1990’s, when our kids were small, we owned a
couple of weeks of timeshare. They
weren’t what they were cracked up to be but we made them work and took our boys
on several nice vacations. Once the boys
were a bit older they no longer wanted to vacation with mom and dad. That’s when our timeshares no longer worked
for our family.
Well, just like you, it didn’t take me long to realize that
‘selling’ my timeshare was virtually impossible. Can you imagine? I paid a lot of money for those
timeshares. Two weeks in a Florida
resort right on the beach. I tried
everything, spent a lot of money on ads and even got scammed once by one of
those off-shore outfits. I couldn’t
even give them away. My sons didn’t want
them. My relatives didn’t want them. I even offered to donate them to a couple of
local churches, but even they didn’t want them.
Turns out they didn’t want the financial burden that came with the
timeshares. I can’t blame them.
Well, I came to find out that I’m not alone. A little light reading on the internet was
all I needed to realize that there were literally millions of timeshare owners
in the same boat. That’s
right…millions. Did you know that it is
estimated that more than half of all the timeshare owners in the United States
no longer want their timeshares? Turns out that the majority of us simply don’t
use our timeshares, can’t seem to get rid of them, yet are stuck paying those
ever increasing annual maintenance fees, taxes, and special assessments.
It wasn’t until my wife and I were making out our wills that
the attorney asked us who we wanted to inherit our timeshares. It turns out that even upon our deaths,
someone has to take on the burden of our timeshares. They just don’t magically disappear or float
off into the sunset. For me that was the
straw that broke the camel’s back. I
couldn’t stand the idea that one or both of my sons would be burdened by these
two ‘mistakes’ that my wife and I made.
That was the beginning of a two-year process that led to me
starting this company. We started by
disposing of timeshares in one resort at a time, one state at a time and then
one country at a time. Today we dispose
of timeshares all over the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and many
countries around the world.
While the company I founded continues to be the leader in the industry,
I’ve since retired. While I should be
spending every waking moment trying to improve my ghastly golf scores, my aging
body just won’t allow me more than a few hours each week. So, I’ve decided to try my hand at another
item on my bucket list…..Writing. They
say the best writers write about what they know, so I’ve decided to write about
timeshare ownership and why it’s seemingly impossible to dispose of something
that one would think should have great value.
Think about it. You
pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a share of real estate. The real estate sits in a popular
resort/vacation destination in Florida or Hawaii or California, etc. As a rule, property values in these vacation
areas are generally higher than in most other locations and typically increase
over time. When one buys a vacation home
one expects to be able to sell that home years later for at least the price
they paid and usually for much more. So
here’s the $64,000 question. How is it
that an owner of a timeshare, say on the beach in Hawaii, who paid perhaps
$40,000 (about the average in Hawaii) for that timeshare, can’t find a buyer
for that same timeshare ten years later?
Not only can’t he find a buyer to pay him even a single dollar ($1), he
can’t even GIVE it away for free. Even
charities won’t take it. Those same
charities will accept your old junker car as a donation. They’ll take your boat
too. But not your $40,000
timeshare. Why? The answer is
simple.
Back in the days when the concept of ‘Timeshare’ was new,
people believed what the marketers told them…that timesharing was the greatest
thing to come along since sliced bread.
Timesharing was the future of vacationing. It would give you and your family
million-dollar vacations for pennies. You
were buying real estate and real estate always increases in value over the
years which meant that once you were done using it you could sell your
timeshare real estate for more than you paid for it. The developers spent Billions spreading that
around and millions of unwitting people, many of them quite smart people like
doctors, lawyers, engineers, and the like, literally bought into it. Now let’s fast-forward about thirty
years. Today, millions of timeshare
owners have experienced the real truth about timeshare ownership and the
ability to ‘sell’ it when you’re done with it.
While there are actually many reasons why it’s almost
impossible to sell your timeshare, the number one reason is that the developers
of timeshare resorts never developed a ‘resale’ vehicle by which timeshare
owners could divest themselves of a timeshare they no longer wanted. It’s tough enough for a developer to sell his
own timeshares; he definitely does not want or need the competition of a resale
market. Even after fifty years of
timeshares in America, timesharing has still not become a mainstream must-have
item such as a car, a cell phone, a home, etc.
These are all things that as we grow up we learn that they are the
must-have’s of life. Even life insurance
has become one of life’s must-have’s. As
few as thirty years ago life insurance agencies were calling you up and
offering you a set of free steak knives if you would allow them into your home
to tell you about their life insurance policies. Today, most people know that once they are
married, or have a child, or buy a home, it’s time to buy life insurance. The insurance companies were successful
getting us there. However, as much as
they tried, timeshare developers were not able to get timeshare ownership to
become one of life’s must-have’s. To
this day, developers still need to lure customers into take a timeshare tour by
offering valuable gifts. In most cases
these gifts are very expensive.
Televisions, Computers, tickets to DisneyWorld, and even luxury
vacations and cruises are just some of the lavish prizes one is promised just
for listening to a timeshare presentation.
And because developers sell a timeshare to about one out of ten ‘tours’,
they give away thousands of dollars in prizes to get that one sale. On top of
the cost of prizes there are commissions to highly trained sales people,
marketing costs, overhead, not to mention the cost of building the resort
itself. Building and selling timeshares
is a very expensive proposition for developers.
Potential Timeshare buyers are a very small percentage of the population
and developers simply do not want or need the competition of resale
timeshares. And because the general
public does not actively seek out timeshares for purchase (remember, they need
to be ‘lured’), resale businesses have not popped up. Don’t get me wrong. Over the years there have been a few brave
souls that have opened timeshare resale offices with the thinking that “If you
build it they will come”. Unfortunately,
those misguided shopkeepers learned very quickly that the only people that came
were the timeshare owners who wanted OUT, but not people who wanted to buy
in. No sales. No money.
No business.
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